4 88 



The National Geographic Magazine 



Lawless' s shoal, reported in latitude 

 1 8° 56' north, while the older charts all 

 indicate islands in the neighborhood that 

 have been reported long ago in latitudes 

 little north of 20 and south of 17 . 



There is another shred of circumstan- 

 tial evidence indicating the existence of 

 an island in this neighborhood. Some 

 years ago, about 1889 (?), the ship 

 James Campbell was abandoned near lati- 

 tude 20 north and longitude 120 west, 

 800 miles from the coast to windward 

 and 2,300 miles from Hawaii to lee- 

 ward. Two boats left the ship, steer- 

 ing for Hilo, Hawaii. The larger and 

 better boat, well adapted to sailing, con- 

 tained the captain with his wife and girl 

 baby and several sailors; the second boat 

 carried five or six sailors. The captain' s 

 boat made sail, and at first towed the 

 other boat, but after two or three days 

 parted company, leaving her behind. 

 After 23 days the second boat's crew 

 reached Hilo, expecting to find the cap- 

 tain's boat already there. The weather 

 had been favorable and the sea smooth, 

 and nothing had occurred to account for 

 the failure of the captain's boat to ar- 

 rive. It has never been heard from. It 

 is thought by some that the captain may 

 have sighted and landed upon an island, 

 where, if he found it habitable, he might 

 have preferred to stay rather than take 

 the risk of a further voyage in an open 

 boat with wife and child. 



The results of the Tacoma's search 

 throw no light upon the mysterious fate 

 of the Levant, unless the certainty that 

 there is no island or reef where the 

 cruiser has looked for one may, in 

 view of all the now known facts, be re- 

 garded as an indication that there must 

 be such an island or reef of rocks else- 

 where on which the Lcvaiit was wrecked, 

 since it now seems almost unquestion- 

 able that the Levant was broken to pieces 

 on a reef or island somewhere in her 

 sailing track between Hilo and Panama. 

 It is now known from his official records 

 that when the Levant sailed from Hilo 



her commander, William E. Hunt, in- 

 tended to take the northern course, 

 heading eastward toward the coast of 

 California , rather than southward toward 

 the equator, and thus probably travers- 

 ing the very region in which the ques- 

 tionable island is supposed to be situated. 

 Within nine months after her departure 

 a drifting spar and a part of a lower yard 

 were found on the Hawaiian shore 75 

 miles south of Hilo. This spar was ex- 

 amined and identified as the mainmast 

 of the Levant by three witnesses, one of 

 whom was the pilot who had taken the 

 Levant in and out of the port of Hilo 

 and who knew the dimensions of her 

 spars. 



It has been generally believed that the 

 Levant capsized or foundered in some 

 tidal wave or overwhelming sea; but in 

 such case her mainmast would probably 

 have gone to the bottom with the ship, 

 whereas the mainmast found on the 

 shore of Hawaii would seem to have been 

 torn out of the vessel when broken to 

 pieces 011 a reef. Certain sketches, cop- 

 ies of which are submitted herewith, 

 carefully made shortly after the mast 

 came ashore, show it to be 73 feet long, 

 whole from heel to top, not broken off as 

 it might have been if the ship had been 

 dismasted in a stcrm at sea, but com- 

 plete, showing in detail the framing of 

 the mast at the heel or step, indicating 

 that the ship from which it came had 

 not foundered and had not been dis- 

 masted at sea, but must have been 

 broken to pieces on a reef, and that the 

 unbroken mast must thereafter have 

 been detached and drifted awa)- with the 

 wreckage of the lower yard that was 

 found at the same place on the south 

 shore of Hawaii.* 



* These sketches were made by Mr H. M. 

 Whitney, of Honolulu, in August, 1861, a few 

 weeks after the finding ot the wreckage, which 

 had then already been identified as the main- 

 mast of the Levant, and so reported to the Navy 

 Department, at Washington. Mr Whitney vis- 

 ited the place where the wreckage came ashore 

 and made the sketches, by special request of 



