Tragi-Comedy On Galapagos

Mystery of The Disappearance of the Mad “Empress”

THE Pacific can still be the background -*• for a romantic story, stark, real, and tragic—as gruesome, indeed, as any in its long and fascinating history.

A year or so ago, the world was intrigued by the erratic behaviour of the self-styled “Empress of the Galapagos.”

The majority of American newspaper editors had never heard of remote Floreana, in that group, until 1932, when the Bar oness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrborn, once of Vienna and Paris, stepped ashore there.

Strange stories drifted out to the world beyond.

The Baroness, it was said, intended to make the Galapagos islands a world sum mer resort: she planned to build a hotel there, and to arrange for American vessels to make them a regular port of call.

It was unfortunate for the Rittners and Wittmers, German couples who had retired to found an Eden on Floreana, that the Baroness should have selected their island.

The newcomer (who was accompanied by two other Germans, Alfred Rudolph Lor enz, her lover, and Robert Phillipson), soon made her presence felt.

Colony Of Queer People

THE Baroness affected an abbreviated costume of brassiere and silk shorts.

The pistol at her waist was often in use.

Norwegians who had settled in the group before her advent and came from other islands to shoot fresh meat, were driven off at the revolver point. It was rumoured that one of her “subjects,” possibly an Ecuadorean peon, was killed. A couple stranded on the island during the honey moon trip, were cast adrift again in a small open bbat.

To herself the Baroness had taken the title of “Empress.”

On occasion, her strange mania took a queer form: it was stated that she shot animals and nursed them back to life. In short, the Baroness was “copy.” The American newspapers, in particular, chronicled her queer doings, and stories of her extraordinary behaviour were pub lished in European journals. The Baroness, incidentally, thrived on her notoriety.

Dr. Rittner, a Berlin dentist, and Frau Koerwin, had already settled on Floreana.

The Doctor, since deceased, became known as “the man with the steel teeth.”

Before leaving Germany for the paradise he sought in the Pacific he had all his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel. Frau Koerwin, his companion (the wife of a Berlin gymnasium professor), kept her own. They became the Adam and Eve of the Galapagos.

Next came the Wittmers, accompanied by their half-blind son in his teens.

When I was in Tahiti last year I met a young American yachtsman who had called on the Wittmers. He told me what a shock he received to find this boy perched on a lava ridge, silent, ever watchful of their movements . . .

The Wittmers sought a peaceful escape from civilisation, though in a more con ventional manner than had the Rittners.

The respective families settled far away from each other: soon they were unob trusively arranging their own lives.

A Very Lively “Triangle”

IT was into this Eden that the Baroness came. Upon her arrival she declared herself “ruler of the island.”

With the Wittmers, in particular, she was soon at enmity. Before long her domestic affairs were in an unheaval . . .

“Instead of the highly romanticised ‘love idyll’ described in the papers,” says William Albert Robinson, in his Voyage to the Gala pagos, “life among the three was a fes tering sex-complex, culminating in a series of brawls, as the men fought with each other, and the woman cast off her lover Lorenz and took on Phillipson.

“Lorenz was too small and weak to be a match for his rival, and eventually was reduced to a sort of ‘super-scullion,’ a slave to the other two.” On one occasion, he was beaten so severely that he took shelter for several months with the Wittmers.

On March 28, 1934, the Wittmers heard another uproar from their neighbours. On investigating, they found Lorenz standing wild-eyed by the deserted, disordered shack.

There had been another fight, he explained, and the Baroness and Phillipson had gone off on an American yacht.

OY that time Lorenz had enough: he ** appealed to his brother in Germany to send him sufficient money to leave the Galapagos islands for ever.

One day Nuggerud, a Norwegian, called at the island in his little Dinamita with a deck hand, and collected the German. On November 17, 1934, all three were found on the barren island of Marchena, 160 miles to the north of Floreana, dead.

Something on shore attracted the atten tion of some American fishermen. Nearby was a dead seal. Pieces of meat had been hacked from it. There was no note ex plaining what had happened, and only one clue to identity—a German passport with the name of Alfred Rudolph Lorenz.

For a time it was thought that the

bodies were those of Wittmer and Lorenz My American friend in Papeete thought they were those of the Wittmers and their infant child; a parcel of baby’s clothing had been found near the corpses.

Later it was established that Phillips Lord, the American radio entertainer, had dined with the Wittmers. In time, it was proved that Nuggerud, from Indefatigable Island, was the companion of Lorenz: in assisting the latter to escape from his island ‘paradise” he, too, had found Purga tory.

Was Lorenz A Murderer?

BUT that did not explain the mysterious disappearance of the Baroness and Phillipson.

Mr. Robinson, in his new book, does not hesitate to accuse Lorenz of murdering them: —

“It is impossible to say what actually happened, but I am inclined to think that Lorenz . . . brooding over his troubles . . . consumed with hatred, ' conceived his revenge. . . . When an opportune moment came he killed them, probably at night while they were sleeping. Either one of the other w r as more than a match for him, so he would be taking no chances ...”

How he disposed of the bodies may never be known. If he buried them in a cre vice in the rocks they may yet be dis covered: if he placed them in a small boat and sent them to sea by the never-failing current that sweeps past Floreana, or cast them to the sharks, there will probably be no sequel.

However, one thing is certain —Lorenz paid dearly for his crime.

THE story of the “Empress of the Gala pagos” is, however, only incidental to Mr. Robinson’s fascinating account of his ill-fated trip in the Svaap. The book is full of “meat,” and eminently quotable.

Equally exciting is the author’s account of the loss of his little craft and how he, too, nearly left his bones —he was a victim to appendicitis—among those rugged, lonely islands. Throughout the book, in cidentally, he pays tribute to the courage, companionship, and ability of his young wife.

When I saw them on the foreshore of the lagoon on the western side of Tahiti, planning the home facing the dramatic peaks of Moorea (in which he has since written this racy account), one could not have conceived that the slim, attractive, golden-headed Mrs. Robinson could have faced such perilous adventure.

For those who have the enterprise, the vision—and perhaps the wherewithal —the Pacific Ocean still has adventure enough to call a young couple of the calibre and resourcefulness of the Robinsons. The only prosaic thing about Mr. Robinson is his name.

Eric Ramsden,

(VOYAGE TO GALAPAGOS, by William Albert Robinson, Jonathan Cape, London. Our review copy from Angus and Robertson, Castlereagh Street, Sydney.)