1870 Treasure Hunt: The Lost Ship Of The Mojave Desert | Myth Hunters

Deserts are brutal, bare and barren. But one desert in Southern California is said to hold something truly astonishing. The lost ship of the Mojave is one of the greatest legends that were ever told. According to the myth, somewhere in the Mojave Desert is a shipwreck. The idea that a ship got lost inland in the desert is unheard of. And this isn't just any ship. Oh, it's laden with gold, it's got silver bars, it's got jewels, black pearls, it's got everything under the sun. But could it possibly be real? One man believed it was. He was convinced that there was a ship out there. He just doesn't know where. His search would take him across one of the harshest environments on earth. The desert can reach temperatures of 120 to 125 degrees, and then that's in the shade. There are no settlements, there's no support crew, there's nowhere else for him to turn. If you're not properly prepared and you head out to the desert, you will die. This is the amazing story of Charlie Kloska. And the mystery of his quest for the legendary lost ship of the Mojave Desert. In 1847, the man who would risk everything to find the lost ship was in search of a new life. Demobilized from the army after fighting in the Mexican War, Charlie Kloska decided to head west to America's new frontier, California. To Charlie, California would have been this place of extraordinary possibility. California, even in the 1840s, was a place of magic. The very name signified fertility, potential, underexploited mineral wealth. A place where white Americans like him could go and potentially make their fortune. But getting there was far from easy. It involved a perilous journey of over 2,000 miles that would take Charlie more than three months. Charlie took the southern overland route to California. This was the cheapest way of getting to California. It wasn't the quickest, and it definitely wasn't the safest. This wasn't the journey for the faint-hearted. You had to endure huge heat, cold, snow, mud, as well as desert conditions. This was a difficult, arduous process. And it wasn't just the environment that was hostile. Charlie's route crossed the heartlands of fierce Native American tribes. Charlie may well have been worried about possible Indian attack. He may well have heard some rumors about that. In a sense, you were taking your life in your own hands. But instead of attacking Charlie, it seems that when he met one tribe, the Cahuilla, they told him a tale he would never forget. They said the desert was once covered with a great stretch of water. One day, a great bird with white wings came floating down. It stopped. Then the water went away, and the bird was left lying in the sands. Its white wings fell down, leaving a tall, bare tree sticking up. After a while, the wind blew and blew, and the bird was covered with sand. Charlie couldn't stop thinking about the story. He was sure it wasn't describing a bird. He puts two and two together. He's thinking, the white wings of the bird sound an awful lot like the sails of a ship. And the tree sounds very much like the mast of the ship. And all of a sudden, for him, it's starting to make sense. But how could there really be a ship in the middle of the desert? Charlie and the Cahuilla tribe were miles away from the sea. And so Charlie put it to the back of his mind and carried on to California. In spring 1848, he finally arrived in Los Angeles. But it wasn't what he expected. When Charlie arrives in California at the beginning of 1848, it's still essentially a wilderness. There's barely a population of 20,000 in a vast expanse of territory. The city that's going to become San Francisco has fewer than 1,000 residents. So really, it's a vast expanse with very few people in it. And the people who are there are mainly ranching cattle. It's nothing like what he envisioned. He was thinking it was going to be the land of milk and honey and prosperity, but it's barren. No one's there. There's no prosperity. And he's really disappointed. After just two weeks in California, Charlie packed up his bags and headed for another new American territory, Texas. A decision he would come to regret. Charlie made a major error. He clearly didn't give California a chance. He's impatient and he leaves. And he leaves at the worst possible time. In 1848, the California Gold Rush began. As news spreads of the Gold Rush, then so too does gold fever. And gold fever spreads across America, it spreads throughout the globe. There is a mania to get to California. And as far as everyone's concerned, every second counts. It's not just getting there, but it's getting there quickly, it's getting there near to first as you possibly can to get the easiest and the richest pickings. In 1849 alone, more than 50,000 people crossed America in search of gold. Suddenly, everyone wants to be in California. People from China, from Europe, from Australia, from South America, all are fixating on getting to California. That's the one goal. When Charlie heard about the gold discoveries, he was 1,600 miles away in Texas. Charlie would have been absolutely kicking himself when he found out about the discovery of gold in California. He could have been in on it. He could have been one of those who made incredible riches. He hears about it in Texas. At the same time, everyone else is hearing about it. He's lost any advantage he may have gained by being in California in those earliest days of the Gold Rush. Now he has to do what everyone else is doing, which is get back to California as quickly as possible. And so Charlie set off for the West once again. As Charlie heads to California for the second time, he is fraught with anxiety. He wants to get the gold, and every hour he's not in California, someone else is mining the gold that should be his. Charlie's second journey to California was nothing like his first, which was him alone. The second time, there are hundreds, even thousands of people doing the same thing he is. So it's almost like a superhighway, not so much the speed, but the fact that there's so many people making the same journey that he is on. And when Charlie arrived in California, it had been transformed. It's completely unrecognizable. He can't believe his eyes. It's like nothing that he remembers the first time. Whereas previously it had been relatively empty, unpopulated, now all of a sudden, this was a bustling, anarchic place with a large and dynamic and ever-expanding population. It was suddenly a place where everything seemed to be happening. When Charlie arrives, he essentially arrives at the most exciting point in the most exciting country in the world at this moment. He's really arrived at the place in the world that is the center of the action. In this frenzy, Charlie wasted no time staking his claim. If you wanted to stake a claim, you had to do it physically. You had to literally go and drive a stake into the ground and defend your turf. Experience the past like never before with History Hits award-winning original documentaries and ad-free podcasts. With our expert historians like Dan Snow, Susanna Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard, Tristan Hughes and myself, Matt Lewis. Sign up for an exclusive discount using the link in the description and embark on your historical journey. From the wonders of ancient Egypt and the life of Anne Boleyn to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the discovery of Shackleton's Endurance. Get history wherever, whenever, exclusively on History Hits. At first, Charlie's luck was in. He found what he'd come for. So Charlie must have felt absolutely elated the first time he found gold. It was his dream since he set out from Texas, but he had this fear that it would be all gone by the time he got there. But it wasn't. He found some. But after this initial small success, it seems Charlie's luck ran out. After the easy pickings are gone, Charlie, like many other miners, is faced with the fact that getting hold of other gold remains in the ground is going to be much harder work. You're going to need more equipment. You're going to have to invest heavily in whatever claim that you have. Obviously, none of that came cheap. Shopkeepers are price gouging as hard and as fast as they can. There is a limited supply of the things that are necessary for life, whether it's food, whether it's shovels, and so shopkeepers charge what they like. But Charlie would not give up his quest for gold. He was in the grip of gold fever. A kind of madness to possess some of these people, especially if, like Charlie, you have one stroke of luck early on. Then, like a gambler, you want more and you want more. But Charlie's losing streak continued. As more and more people make their way to California, competition increases, the struggle for land, for good claims increases. And so Charlie's chances of really finding gold, of really striking it rich, get less and less every year. Charlie found himself in a desperate situation. The dark side of the expectations and the hopes and the dreams of the gold rush is the crushing bitterness and the disappointment. By 1855, the Californian gold rush was largely over. After six years of trying, Charlie had failed to make his fortune. Charlie's experience of the gold rush is very common. Very few people, very, very few people achieve this fantastical dream of sudden wealth. People who made money from the gold rush were the merchants, the people selling equipment, the people providing services, the people supplying food. In 1862, news broke of gold discoveries in neighboring Arizona. Charlie headed south to try again. His route took him back across the lands of the Cahuilla tribe that he'd traveled through five years earlier. And it seems his mind turned back to the incredible story of the ship stranded in the desert he'd heard all those years ago. Could the Native American story be more than a myth? The idea of a ship getting lost in the desert seems like a fantasy, seems like a folklore tale or a myth, but the reality is it can happen. The Cahuilla story suggested this area of the desert was once covered in water. In fact, this was true. And it was called Lake Cahuilla. The Native American myths actually oftentimes relate to real historical events. It's entirely possible that the myth of the bird could relate to not only a real historical event, but that event could be the creation and evaporation and the creation and evaporation of Lake Cahuilla. Lake Cahuilla was tremendously important for all the Native Americans in the area. It was a lifeblood. It's how they basically lived. They needed the water in order to survive. There's remnants of the old shoreline all over the desert. Geological studies have shown that since around 700 A.D., the Colorado River has filled an area called the Salton Sink, many times forming Lake Cahuilla. Each time, the lake would eventually evaporate, returning the area to desert once more. But it's thought that at times, the lake wasn't just an isolated stretch of water. In the years Lake Cahuilla was full, some experts believe that when the Colorado River was in flood, it formed a link between lake and sea. There is scientific proof out there that the waters can actually connect to Lake Cahuilla and it's easily possible for a ship to get up into that particular area. But any ship that found its way into the lake would soon have been left high and dry. Once the ship would have entered Lake Cahuilla, the receding waters would not allow the ship to leave the area. If that was so, there really could be a ship in the desert. And it could still be out there. In September 1870, Charlie was now in Southern California, still hunting for good pay dirt. When the story goes, he picked up a copy of his local newspaper, the San Bernardino Guardian. While scanning the pages, a small article caught his eye. It told of a ship that had been spotted out in the desert. A party of Americans found embedded in the sands the wreck of a large vessel. He must have been flabbergasted. He's thinking, ha, I knew it. See, it does exist. Nearly one third of the ship is plainly visible. You can imagine his eyes just popping out of his head as he reads this. The description made it sound like a ship worth finding. The stump of the bowsprit remains and portions of the timbers of teak are perfect. He's seen dollar signs because the ship sounds like it's big and he knows a big ship is always carrying cargo. And Charlie started to wonder what sort of cargo it was carrying. At the time, speculation was rife that the wreck was a lost pirate ship. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Gulf of California was teeming with Spanish ships. Here, enterprising pirates preyed on mighty galleons, carrying priceless treasures from all over Asia back home to Spain. Oh, it's laden with gold, it's got silver bars, it's got jewels, black pearls, it's got everything under the sun. The newspaper article even told Charlie where to look. The ship lay just under 70 miles away, 40 miles north of the San Bernardino Fort Yuma Road and 30 miles west of Dos Palmos. Charlie wanted to set out for the ship as soon as possible because it's been published. Now he knows he's not the only one who wants to find the cargo. There's going to be competition and he doesn't want to be second on the scene like in the gold rush. Charlie started preparing to head into one of the harshest environments on Earth. Crossing the desert in Charlie's tame would have been a tremendous undertaking. You can go for days without seeing a soul. It's a forbidding place, that's for sure. If you're not properly prepared and you head out to the desert, you will die, period. The expedition is very, very risky. You would face death almost on a daily basis. There were several things that were out there that could threaten his life. Coyotes, wolves, snakes. There's other miners, Mexicans coming up from the border. You had the local Native Americans. There are no settlements. There's no support crew. There's nowhere else for him to turn. Charlie had to take with him everything he thought he was going to need. Dry foods, a jerky type of meat, beans, bacon, anything he could get his hands on that would get him through the day. He would have to really be very cautious about what he took, how much he took of it, and why he was taking it. Charlie knew there was one thing he needed to take above all else. Water. The desert out in that area can reach temperatures of 120 to 125 degrees, and then that's in the shade. The water points out in the desert are not something you can get to within a day. The lack of water for him or his animals would mean he would be stranded out there. And if his animals went without water, he would have a long walk to get back to some water source, which would have meant certainly probably death. This is not something for the average Joe that would be working in San Bernardino. But Charlie wasn't your average Joe. Whether in his childhood or more recently during his military service, Charlie would have been used to living in wild areas of one form or another. He would have significant experience of using firearms, so that would have been extremely useful when it came to protecting himself and possibly even finding food. So Charlie had survival skills. But finding the ship was such a massive undertaking that Charlie felt he needed help. Charlie could have done it by himself, but I think it makes a lot more sense to go out at a party. You could easily make one mistake and die on your own. So people or a group of adventurers or travellers was highly important. He probably didn't have that much trouble finding people that were interested in going out looking for the ship. I'm sure he probably had people that were volunteering to go with him. On the 1st of October 1870, Charlie's team set out. At first, they followed a route he knew well. This was the trail he had taken to try his luck in the Arizona gold fields in the early 1860s. From San Bernardino, they followed the old Bradshaw Road, working their way through the San Gorgonio Pass and down the Coachella Valley to Martinez. But soon they would find themselves in totally uncharted territory. Charlie wouldn't have had a map. Finding his way was going to be a difficult task. The Mojave Desert is one of the most difficult places to navigate, especially in Charlie's time. You can look out on the desert at what may appear to be a mile or two actually be 30, 40 miles. So at first you may think, ah, not a problem. But the reality of the situation is when you get out there, it's a whole new ballgame. Most of their travelling was done with what we call dead reckoning. They would look for certain objects or certain places that they would remember and they would know at this particular rock grouping we would turn left. But then if you're in a place where you don't know where you are, you can get lost very quickly. But after days of struggling to find their way, Charlie was sure they were getting close to the ship's location. Charlie must have been so excited when he realizes he's only 10 miles away from the ship's reported location and there's a chance they can make it there by nightfall. Then something happened that filled Charlie with panic. Charlie sees that the tracks that he's making are starting to fill up with water. And he realizes that he's standing on quicksand. It was really a horrific situation for Charlie. He's in the middle of nowhere and his horse is disappearing into the sand. He's going to lose his horse. He's going to lose everything. He's going to die. He has to pull the horse out and it's screaming and the hair is being ripped off its legs. And it's signaled to Charlie, this is too dangerous to go on. He must retreat. Charlie returned to San Bernardino. Despite his narrow escape, he started planning his next expedition immediately. Even though his companions were less than enthusiastic about returning to the desert, Charlie couldn't wait to head back out there. It's the prospector mentality he has that failure is part of the job and he needs to persevere. Only next time he needs to be even more prepared. This time Charlie was determined he would not fail. He gathered together as many wooden planks as he could get his hands on to help him cross any challenging ground. Just three weeks later, on the 5th of November 1870, Charlie set out into the desert once more. He was certain he would find the ship. He even took a different route to avoid the quicksand that had foiled his first attempt. But it wasn't long before Charlie was in trouble again. It seems that Charlie is so preoccupied with the horrific experience with the quicksand that this time he's forgotten to bring the basics. First, his food supplies run out. If you're out on the desert and you run out of food, you're pretty well doomed. Even if you were lucky you could kill a rattlesnake and probably eat it. But there wasn't a lot to eat out on the floor of the desert in that area. Despite his gnawing hunger, he plowed on towards where he was convinced the ship lay. Then, Charlie ran out of water. Running out of water in the desert is huge. You're facing death. You've got to find water now, not tomorrow, not the next day, now. You simply cannot survive these conditions without water and Charlie, at the very best, he's got a couple of days left. Even though he was still 30 miles away from the ship's reported location, Charlie didn't turn back for water. He carried on into the desert. I think it'd be crazy because when you're out in the desert and you're facing the possibility of dying because there's no water and you're still focused in on a lost ship, oh, that's huge. Then Charlie spotted something on the desert floor that told him he was getting close. These shells convinced him this area was once linked to the sea. Now, there was no way he was turning back. After a couple of days in the desert without water, keep in mind it's 100 degrees plus every day. Charlie would have been in a really bad way. Dehydration started to kick in. Your muscles would start to ache. Your sense of direction would probably be off. Diminished eyesight, tremendous headaches, the inability to be coherent. He was in a very serious, very bad state. He needed to get some sort of help or at least water as soon as possible. Charlie realized he had to turn back. Charlie would have been extremely frustrated. I mean, this is the second time I'm this close and I have to turn away. I bet that just irritated him to no end. Utterly dejected, Charlie took one last look around. Suddenly, something on the horizon caught his eye. At first, he thought his eyes were deceiving him. But as he gazed through his telescope, he was convinced he could see the mast of a ship. And it wasn't just any ship. It was huge, about 250 feet long. A mighty Spanish galleon. So when Charlie sees the ship, he would have been so excited. The story is true. The myth is true. Charlie's location of the lost ship would make sense. In the area that he was talking about, the ancient shoreline for Lake Coahuila was right there. So it makes absolute sense that the ship could have been there. Charlie was desperate to get to the ship. But by this stage, he was close to death. Physically, he would have been completely drained. His body was done. There's no way Charlie could have physically gone on. He sees the ship, he wants to go forward, but he has no choice but to retreat. For he had to go back or die. But Charlie still wasn't defeated. When he arrived back in San Bernardino, his mind was already full of plans for his return. Charlie was extremely determined to go back out, find the ship and put the legend to rest. Word of his adventures quickly spread. The town would have been going crazy. Town would have been back and forth, talking to everybody. Hey, did you hear the news? Oh my God, they found the ship. When Charlie gets back to San Bernardino, he's like a rock star. So he becomes a bit of a local celebrity. Joshua Talbot, the editor of the San Bernardino Guardian, was just about to go to press when Charlie returned. But he was anxious to report the local hero's amazing discovery. It has all the elements that readers are looking for. It's a story of individual adventure. It's into a mysterious and essentially unknown part of California still. It's romantic. It's exciting. And it also has the possibility of treasure at the end of it as well. So this is a story that's really almost tailor-made for the California market. Talbot published. The ship has been found. And promised his gripped readers a full account in next week's edition. But a rival newspaper beat Talbot to the scoop. He's interviewed by the Alta California, which is really the premier newspaper. It's the newspaper with the biggest circulation in California at this time. There was huge competition among newspaper editors to be the one who was first on a story. And Charlie's story was an extraordinary one and one that could sell newspapers. Soon the story went national. This story was picked up back east in the New York press, in the Cincinnati press, where Charlie came from. Newspapers in Kansas, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, they run the story as well. So Charlie is becoming increasingly famous across America. Charlie's story had become big business. Talbot couldn't afford to miss any more scoops. He decided he must join Charlie's next expedition. This kind of first-person testimony that he's going to bring to it is really going to help to enliven the story and to really sell it to his readership. The San Bernardino Guardian is a relatively new newspaper as well at this point. It's found in 1867, so you can imagine that this also seems like a good story to try and make the name of this newspaper on. And Talbot's interest was potentially very valuable to Charlie. I think it's very likely that the editor of the San Bernardino Guardian was paying Charlie for access, paying to, as it were, embed himself in Charlie's expedition in order to be the first on this story and to have exclusive access to interviews and to be there with Charlie when he makes this great discovery. Whatever the case, it seems Charlie was much better funded for his third attempt to find the ship. This time Charlie had a wagon large enough to carry 108 gallons of water, food for two months, and he had another crew. He's not leaving anything to chance. This will be the trip that he actually gets to the ship. On the 30th of November, 1870, they plunged into the desert. Charlie's attitude when he sets out for the third expedition is one of defiance. There is no way he will be stopped. He has enough supplies for a small army and he's determined to succeed at any cost. To ensure he didn't run out of water on his latest campaign, Charlie had a new strategy that involved yet another route. He approached the ship from a rare water source in the desert, Carrizo Creek. But the terrain on this new approach was tough. Progress was slow. There's small rolling hills, there's large mountains, there's deep depressions, it's sandy. He would be lucky if he averaged 10 to 15 miles a day. Worse, from this new angle, Charlie seemed to struggle to identify any of the landmarks he'd noted on his last mission that he needed to find his way back to the ship. Landmarks change. Those sand berms have a tendency to move. You know, what could be under 40 feet of sand today could be barren tomorrow. The desert is a living, breathing thing. Days turned into weeks and Charlie still hadn't found the ship. Talbert was expecting the ship to be found, expecting Charlie to say, here it is, this is where it's at, this is what we have, let's take a couple artifacts so we can prove that we actually found the ship and be done with it. But in reality, the desert takes a long time to explore. Talbert would have reacted to the desert a very harsh way. As a newspaper man, not realizing what the trials and tribulations would be like out in the desert. I think the very short time out in the desert, he had enough. You can imagine what Talbert is thinking as really every hour that goes by, he's losing more and more confidence in Charlie, he's losing more and more confidence in the story. Eventually, after 20 days, Talbert abandoned the expedition. He had a newspaper to run. Charlie stayed out in the desert for a further three weeks. But he still couldn't find the ship. After six weeks, he too returned to San Bernardino empty handed. So when the third expedition fails, like the first two, Charlie is absolutely gutted. He has spent six weeks, he has every supply he needs, but he returns without a single piece of evidence that the ship exists. Inevitably, the press loses interest in Charlie. Failures don't sell newspapers. Utterly defeated, Charlie abandoned his quest for the lost ship of the desert. It all begs the question, if he had really seen it, why couldn't Charlie find the lost ship again? In hindsight, you have to wonder, is there any way Charlie could have seen a ship on that second expedition that wasn't really there? And of course there is. The man is dehydrated. He's ready to die. He hasn't had water in days. And when people are severely dehydrated, they can hallucinate. So, was Charlie hallucinating? There is another possible explanation. That Charlie really did see a ship. But it was a mirage. The desert can play some very, very funny tricks on you. You may see something, you may swear it's there, and it's not there. It's something called a mirage. In contrast to a hallucination, which exists only in the mind, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon. Differences in air temperature cause light rays to refract, to form a false image. But interpreting what the false image is depends on the mind of its observer. Charlie wanted so bad to see that ship that he just imagined something that wasn't there. But Charlie had been adamant that what he'd seen was real. They even asked him if it wasn't a mirage, if he was quite certain he had saw the ship. And he, without a doubt, verified that he had saw the ship, that he had a telescope that was of good quality and he knows exactly what he saw. There is another, more disturbing possibility. Back in his office, Talbot started to write up his adventures with Charlie. And he started to focus on some strange patterns in Charlie's behaviour. Talbot can't help but notice that Charlie doesn't appear to really be in a hurry. He's taking his time, he's looking around him. And so he's looking for something along the way, as opposed to having his eyes set on the ship off in the distance. And that wasn't the only thing that struck Talbot as odd. If he knew where it was, he'd go straight there. But every day he goes into a different direction. And this leaves Talbot to wonder, what is it that he's really looking for, the ship, or could it be something else? In fact, Charlie's routes on each of his three expeditions seem to make no sense. Talbot started to wonder, what was Charlie really up to? Each time he approached the ship from further and further away, searching a broader and broader area. And each time from different compass points. Talbot realised this wasn't the behaviour of someone trying to find the ship's reported location. Perhaps Charlie wasn't really searching for the lost ship. Perhaps he was hunting for something much closer to his heart. Gold. It would make sense that Charlie was looking for gold, simply because old habits die hard. It's in his blood, it's what he's done for decades now. But if Charlie was really after gold, why claim to be searching for a lost ship? From his years of prospecting, Charlie knew there was one thing above all a miner needed to be successful. Money. Money for supplies, for tools, for everything he would need to stay in the desert for weeks to try to find the gold. Charlie's problem was how to get the funds he needed. Charlie's method for finding gold in the desert is really quite cunning. For Charlie, the ship was potentially a means to an end. If he claimed to be hunting the legendary lost ship, Charlie was no longer just another prospector looking for financial backers. He was a hero. Charlie would have wanted media attention, I imagine, because it would have been a way of raising money. If he can attract this kind of attention, then he can get people to invest in his expedition. Everybody would have known that he was looking for the ship, so it would have been quite easy for him to get just about anything he needed in order to go on an expedition. So was it all a tall tale to get money? Charlie was definitely a man who could spin a yarn. He claims that he was playmates with Abraham Lincoln as a young boy, at a point when Lincoln was certainly nowhere near where Charlie Clusker was. Whatever the truth, Charlie went on to live to a grand old age. He died in 1915, aged 105. A local tribute made no mention of his quest for the lost ship, but it did sum him up rather well. Mr. Clusker was a typical prospector and miner. Sometimes he had wealth in hand. Always he possessed wealth in prospect. But does that mean there never was a ship in the desert? Over the years, many claim to have seen it. In 1892 there was one, in 1907 there was one, in 1933 there was one, in 1944 there was one. The puzzling thing is, all these people see different ships, including a Viking longboat. Though how that might have got into the Californian desert, nobody can explain. And that's not the only problem with the numerous lost ship sightings. Nobody seems to see the ship twice. They'll see it, get all excited, retreat, amount another expedition, they never see it again. And that's all symptomatic of the fact that it wasn't there in the first place. If the ship really exists, you'd be able to find it a second time and you'd surely be able to bring something back. Despite all this, still the legend lives on. The legend of the lost ship has continued, will continue. And when all of us here are said and gone, it will still continue. For some, there will always be a lost ship in the desert. I absolutely think there's a lost ship out there and I would love to find it.