Galapagos  Source  Whalesite

chapter xviii


THE BARONESS AND THE CORPSES

      For two or three years there have been recurring news accounts of a sensational nature concerning one Galapagos Island in particular; Floreana – otherwise known as Charles, or Santa Maria – a smallish island in the south central part of the group. The popular newspapers and magazines have referred to it as the Eden island, Utopia, Pacific Paradise, Island of Love, and so forth, Floreana is far from any of these. It is a typical Galapagos island of the semi-fertile type, only 26 miles in circumference and less than 1,800 feet in altitude. Its lower slopes and shores are lava country, with a sparse growth

      Recently the disappearance of the principals, and the finding of two corpses on Marchena Island, 160 miles to the north, brought the whole thing to a sensational climax, and what is undoubtedly a definite Finis – although the actual fate of two and the relation between the various episodes was still shrouded in mystery at the end. The key to the whole thing has for some strange reason been missed or avoided. I have never seen such an incoherent jumble of conflicting facts, obvious impossibilities, and misinformation as was abroad at this time. Perhaps the explanation is in the isolation of the place, and the difficulty of communication. I too am equally remote, writing this umder my wide pandanus thatch roof

in Tahiti, with the lagoon, the rumbling reef, and the fantastic peaks of Moorea spread before me. Thus my alibi for any inaccuracies that may follow. But I have before me (besides countless newspaper clippings on the subject and a knowledge of the islands and the people) letters from various inhabitants of the Galapagos holding the key to the mystery. Also, I was in the islands myself when the last tragic act was being played. So I feel that I may as well play detective too, and offer what I believe is the true story of the Baroness and the corpses. In so doing I may as well go back to the beginning.

      The Ritters were not active participants in our little drama of love, jealousy, hatred and death – although Dr. Ritter is dead now too – but they belong to the story as background. When I visited Floreana first, in December of 1928, there were only three human beings on the island: a Norwegian called Urholt, a survivor of one of the ill-fated colonization schemes of which I and others have written elsewhere, and his two Ecuadorean peons. They were engaged in making 'bacalau', an excellent sun-dried fish. Urholt was ready to leave the island for good, waiting for a boat to take him off. Later the island was inhabited temporarily by two or three others who came to hunt for meat in the hills, or to fish. But these were merely transients. The first real settlers on Floreana in modern times were the Ritters, as they were called.

      About the time I was roaming the upper slopes of Floreana in 1928 stalking wild pig for my meat supply

for the voyage to Tahiti, Dr. Friedrich Ritter, a middle-aged Berlin dentist, was discovering a kindred soul in Frau Dore Koerwin who was one of his patients. Dr. Ritter had strange ideas about life for a staid German dentist. Perhaps I should not say strange, though, for it is not unusual for the professional man to have a wider streak of imagination and interest in the unusual, than the industrialist or man of commerce. About him Ritter saw the German people flocking to the nudist camps that were spreading over the land. There was a country-wide rage for nature fads, new strange diets, exercises . . . a mass groping for a natural life but in an unnatural, erratic, unsystematic way. If he were going to do it he would go the whole way – perhaps to some tropical island where he could discard clothing without the mass exhibitionism of the nudist camps, where he could live on vegetables and fruits that he would grow himself, working in the open air and sun . . . why if he could do that – live an entirely natural life – he could probably double the span of years allotted to man! But he would want companionship, and his wife laughed at his ideas. Frau Koerwin listened sympathetically. Before long they had decided to burn their bridges behind them and make the experiment together. Dr. Ritter, knowing professionally the painful results of neglected teeth, had all his extracted. He made himself a set of stainless steel. These should last him forever. With the perversity of notoriety these teeth became the outstanding fact known about Dr. letter by the outside world. Instead of his revolutionary ideas on life, his courage

in applying them, Dr. Ritter became known as the man with the steel teeth. There was nothing extraordinary about these teeth in appearance, however, for contrary to general belief they were coated with enamel and appeared not unlike other sets. Dore Koerwin kept her own teeth, for he could take care of hers when they gave trouble. He said good-bye to his wife; Frau Koerwin to her husband, a stiff Berlin gymnasium professor. In 1929, some months after Svaap sailed into the west from Floreana, Dr. Ritter and his former patient arrived with that small equipment they believed necessary to live there for the rest of their lives. They became the Adam and Eve of the Galapagos. Why they chose the Galapagos I do not know. They could hardly have found a more unsuitable place unless it was their idea that the very grimness and severity of the struggle necessary to produce a meagre living in the decidedly inhospitable spot they chose, would perfect their health. In any case they cast off their clothes and built themselves a shelter by a trickle of water a half-hour inland from Black Beach, moved tons of boulders from a small area that was to be their garden and planted their seeds. Unforeseen difficulties were constantly cropping up: the birds ate their seeds and their fruit, their water supply had to be constantly conserved, the mosquitoes and prickly bushes were severe on nudists. But they were full of ingenuity and determination and stuck it out like the serious people they were.

      Next came the Wittmers, another German couple, with their half-blind son in his teens. Later there was a baby. They were more prosaic in their ideas and did not catch the popular fancy as did the Ritters. Hence not so much is known about them. They were seeking their particular form of escape also, though in a more conventional manner. They settled far enough away from the Ritters so that they were not in each others' way. Soon they also were unobtrusively arranging their own lives.

      Such was the peaceful setting (peaceful in spite of friction which soon developed between the Ritters and the Wittmers) on Floreana in the first part of 1932. It was not to remain so for long, for there had already arrived in Guayaquil on the mainland a flashing young woman, a 'dark-eyed beauty' known as the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrborn, formerly of Vienna and Paris. With her were two male companions, Alfred Rudolph Lorenz, her lover, and Robert Phillipson, a friend, both German. She soon set the town agog with rumours of a project to make a world summer-resort in the Galapagos, plans to build a hotel there, and to have the islands become a regular port of call for the Grace Line ships. In August of that year she sailed for the islands with her men and arrived on Floreana, settling not far from the Wittmers. The island then and there lost whatever peaceful Eden-quality it may have had and became overcrowded and hectic. It leaped recurringly through the news in a series of sensational episodes

centring around the Baroness, or the 'Empress' as she had now become, for upon her arrival she had declared herself ruler of the island. Tolerating the presence of the other two establishments, she proceeded to exercise her authority upon stray visitors to the island, resenting their intrusion by confining them, driving them away, or even shooting them. Discretion prevailed, however, when visiting yachtsmen called, and she was then to a certain extent even hospitable. But the less influential visitors continued to be met with something different. She affected an abbreviated costume of brassiere and silk shorts, with a pistol which she was only too quick to use hanging from her waist. A young Dane from one of the other islands joined her retinue and when he wanted to leave was shot in the abdomen by the Baroness, not fatally. One Pablo Rolando and Blanco Rosa his bride, shipwrecked on their honeymoon voyage and stranded on the island, were cast adrift again in a small open boat. Fortunately they were picked up later by a fishing craft, and lived to tell their tale to the Ecuadorean authorities. There was a rumour that one of her 'subjects', possibly an Ecuadorean peon, was shot to death. There was ill-feeling with the Wittmers, whose presence she resented and who returned the feeling. Her strange mania took other forms. She would shoot animals and nurse them well again. Norwegians who came from Academy Bay to shoot fresh meat in the hills were driven off. While in Academy Bay, my friend Stampa the Norwegian told me how he had been shot at by the Baroness when he had

gone to Floreana for meat. The island was hers, she decreed, and she was there to prove it.

      Her domestic affairs were equally disturbing. Instead of the highly romanticized 'love idyll' described in the papers, life among the three was a festering 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. The quarrels and struggles (which became journalistic 'daily duels of strength between the two knights for the favour of their queen, who watched and urged them on') could have only one conclusion, for Lorenz was too small and weak to be a match for the other. Thus Lorenz was reduced to a sort of 'super-scullion' – a slave to the other two. Once Lorenz was beaten so badly that he took shelter with the Wittmers for several months. He told my friend Arthur Wörm Muller of Academy Bay, when he called in at Post Office Bay one day during this period, that he had 'barely escaped with his life'. Later, strangely enough under the circumstances, he returned to the tyrannous establishment of the Baroness, perhaps with a plan in mind. In any case all went well for a time, until on March 28, 1934 (some versions say the 23rd,) the Wittmers heard another uproar from their neighbours. Going to investigate, they say that they found Lorenz standing wild-eyed by the deserted, disordered shack. There had been a fight, he is said to have explained, and the Baroness and Phillipson had gone off 'on an American yacht'.

      Lorenz too had now had enough, it seems, and wrote

letters to his brother in Germany, yearning to return, asking that money to enable him to do so be sent to him at Guayaquil. His earlier letters had told of his being cast off by the Baroness and of his fights with Phillipson, Lorenz very distraught and anxious to leave, could only put a notice in the Post Office Bay mail barrel, asking to be taken off by the first boat that came there. Then he sat down nervously to wait. One day the little Dinamita came from Academy Bay, with Nuggerud her owner, and his deckhand. They found Lorenz's note in the barrel. When they left they took Lorenz with them, at last on the first lap of his long journey home.

      The next scene in the drama takes place four months later, on the tiny barren island of Marchena, 160 miles to the north of Floreana, far isolated from the main body of the Galapagos Islands. It was late afternoon, November 17, 1934. The Santa Amaro, one of the little fleet of American fishermen that often cruise as far south as the Galapagos in quest of the fat juicy tuna, swung in to anchor off Marchena. Something on shore caught their eye – a pole with fluttering remnants of tattered fabric. A white object nearby. A boat was manned and the skipper went ashore. They found an improvised signal mast – and an overturned skiff without oars or rowlocks. From beneath the skiff protruded a human body. A few steps away they found another corpse, its head on a pile of clothes, a white coat over its face. Both were badly decomposed. Near the bodies they found a number of letters from people in Academy Bay and in Floreana, a

bundle of baby clothing, and a little French money. There was a dead seal, with pieces of meat hacked from it, and remnants of iguana. A small pile of wood and charred paper with burnt matches completed the tragic little setting that told its story so graphically. There was no note explaining what had happened, and only one clue to identity: a German passport with the name of Alfred Rudolph Lorenz.

      Back aboard the Santa Amaro the wireless chattered away, calling the Mackay wireless station in Los Angeles, to tell what had been found. Soon the story was on the press. Eager editors looking up their files on Galapagos doings, and consulting various people who had been in the islands, concocted fantastic theories as to the corpses. The contents of the letters added to the available store of information. Anyone's theory was as good as the next man's.

      The captain of the Santa Amaro thought the bodies were Lorenz's and Wittmer's, and had a long complicated theory to explain why.

      One news service had it that they were the Wittmers, 'tired of their Eden and looking for a new island to settle on'.

      Another claimed that the Baroness and Phillipson had at last been found.

      Stampa also was said to be one of the bodies . . . Stampa who was once shot at and captured by the Baroness.

      It was even said that it was Dr. Ritter. And that it was Lorenz and Nuggerud, banished at pistol point in a small boat without food and water by the 'Mad Empress

of the Galapagos', forgetting that the 'Empress' and her last lover had preceded Lorenz in their disappearance from Floreana.

      Both the skipper of the Santa Amaro and members of his crew are quoted as hinting darkly of the contents of the letters they found, of 'things that happened on Floreana too horrible for us to imagine'. I believe I have one or two of those letters in my possession. What the men of the Santa Amaro referred to is no doubt the accusation of murder contained therein.

      The various theories were gradually disposed of. Phillips Lord wirelessed from at sea, en route from Galapagos to Tahiti, that he had dined with the Wittmers the week before. That let them out. Gradual checking up on what had happened in the Galapagos and who was missing eliminated most of the false identifications. Confused readers finally learned, if they still cared, that the one thirst-wracked body was undoubtedly Lorenz, the cast-off lover of the Baroness, and that the other was probably Nuggerud, the Norwegian from Academy Bay who had rescued Lorenz from his Paradise which had become Purgatory.

      Thus the mystery of the disappearance of the Baroness and Phillipson, and of the corpses on Marchena. All that is needed is the explanation of it all. I think that explanation is obvious.

      Peace had returned to Floreana now that the 'Empress had vanished to the South Seas'. Mrs. Wittmer wrote that 'conditions are peaceful, now that our overbearing

neighbour has gone'. She had not loved her missing neighbour too well, and did not stress too much her inexplicable departure. All sounded well – except for certain disturbing letters that Dr. Ritter now wrote to his friends in America. The Ritters had kept severely to themselves and had escaped any embroilment in the recent trouble. Now Dr. Ritter wrote: 'We hope you will come back to the islands. Then I will tell you what I cannot write because I have no proof'. One of the Americans to whom Dr. Ritter wrote did come back to the islands soon afterwards. But he found Dr. Ritter already dead, of a stroke his Eve said, his secret gone with him into his shallow grave. Dore Koerwin returned soon after to Germany, where she is said to be writing a book about it all.¹

      Another Galapagos settler wrote to me from Academy Bay after the disappearance of the Baroness: 'The Baroness and sweetheart have disappeared – no one knows where – they may have been killed'.

      I have still another letter before me, more explicit:

      'I suppose you have read of the tragedies on the Galapagos Islands, only it seems to me that the American newspapers are of the opinion that the Baroness went away. We down here that know the conditions on the islands believe differently. First it would be almost impossible for a vessel to arrive there without anybody else seeing it, and besides if the Baroness had gone away she would have taken her clothes and other personal belongings, and

everything was left behind. Also Lorenz and Wittmer started pulling down her house, and removed it and everything else to Wittmer's house a few days after her disappearance, something they would not have dared to do if they had not known for certain that she would never come back, as both the Wittmers and Lorenz were her bitter enemies. Everyone believes Lorenz guilty. But did he commit the crime alone? Nobody suspects Dr. and Mrs. Ritter. They were nice people even if they had queer ways. Dr. Ritter's sudden death is also a mystery. Mrs. Ritter went back to Germany, where she is to finish and publish a book of Dr. Ritter's. She is also writing one herself.'

      The same letter had news of the Dinamita and the homeward-bound Lorenz. They had come from Floreana to Indefatigable, where the people in Academy Bay had talked with them. Lorenz was impatient to get to Guayaquil and persuaded Nuggerud to take him on to Chatham to catch the island schooner which was leaving Wreck Bay soon for the mainland. They 'left Academy Bay for Chatham on 13th of July. They were seen in the distance off Chatham the next morning but never arrived. They were never heard from again'. . . . So near were they to safety – and Lorenz to a life haunted by the memory of what happened on Floreana. For Lorenz, it can now be confidently asserted, killed the Baroness and the man who had ousted him from her favour. He may have had an accomplice, but I doubt it.

      That the Baroness and Phillipson left Floreana on an

American yacht is, as the letter says, out of the question. Either the Ritters or the Wittmers would surely have known of the presence of a yacht. Besides, the Svaap was the only American yacht (or any kind of a yacht at all) in the islands at that time. On the 28th of March, the date the Baroness is supposed to have gone, the Svaap was serenely anchored in Wreck Bay and we were in the hills at Progresso, with Cobos and Karin. Even so the Svaap was for a long while (unknown to us, as was the disappearance of the Baroness itself) thought to have been the vehicle for the disappearance. A little juggling of dates by the press had us leaving Wreck Bay March 27th (instead of April 5th as we did) 'having had to pass by Floreana on the 28th day of March! Can this be coincidence?' In Guayaquil they did not learn until eight months later that this theory was impossible. On December 11th Captain Hancock came to Tagus Cove on the Velero III on a Galapagos expedition, and wirelessed that the Svaap was in Tagus Cove. This 'meant the elimination of the only means the Empress of the Galapagos might have had for her fantastic and mysterious departure from Floreana!' said the Guayaquil paper, coming closer to the point than most of the American papers.

      Even supposing the Baroness had gone away on some yacht not known to be in the Galapagos at the time, which stopped only long enough to take them on board and sail away – obviously out of the question – then the departing couple would have taken at least some of their possessions with them. Furthermore, the Baroness

is no woodland flower, hiding modestly from the world. Had she gone away as is claimed, her flare for notoriety would surely have brought news of her by now.

      It is impossible to say what actually happened, but I am inclined to think that Lorenz, during the period when he took refuge with the Wittmers after having been beaten nearly to death, brooding over his troubles and mistreatment, consumed with hatred, conceived his revenge. Simulating forgetfulness, he returned to the fold, took up his distasteful duties of waiting on the arrogant two, biding his time. When an opportune moment came he killed them, probably at night while they were sleeping. Either one of the others was more than a match for him, so he would be taking no chances. Whether he had help or not is doubtful. Probably not. Most likely he disposed of the bodies soon after the crime, removed any traces of what had happened, and waited until later in the day to call the Wittmers. The latter say they ran to investigate a loud disturbance and found Lorenz there, wild-eyed, alone. The Baroness and Phillipson had just left on the mythical American yacht. It is inconceivable that the Wittmers, hearing this, would not have rushed to the shore to see the yacht. The Wittmers knew as well as Lorenz that there was no yacht there, so they must have known then, if they had not already known it, what had happened to the missing lovers. As my Galapagos correspondent writes, they and Lorenz would not have dared to remove the personal belongings, the house and everything, had they not known for certain

that the Baroness would never come back. I do not blame the Wittmers for keeping silent, for protecting Lorenz as they were doing, not knowing that he would soon be beyond need of protection in this world. Anyone familiar with the events leading up to it knows that the Baroness and Phillipson had it coming to them. The wonder is that it did not happen sooner.

      I think the only doubt remaining is what Lorenz did with the bodies. He could have done several things. He could have buried them or hidden them somewhere nearby in a crevice in the rocks, in which case they will some day be found. He could have dragged them to the sea and let the sharks dispose of them. Or he could have put them into a small boat and sent them to sea by the never-failing current that sweeps past the island. This last possibly sounds far-fetched. My only reason for suggesting it is because a small boat was missed from the island about this time. This suggests perhaps that the missing two might have used it to go away in. Obviously, had they wished to commit suicide they might have done this, but then there would have been no reason for the fiction of the American yacht, nor would Lorenz have dared to strip and demolish the house, for they might have changed their minds and returned. So I think that beyond any doubt the Baroness and her paramour died in return for the degradation and cruelty to which they subjected Lorenz, the underdog, or to change the simile, the worm who absorbed his cup of humiliation to the dregs and turned.

      The final chapter in the life of Lorenz, the rejected lover, will never be known with certainty. His nervous flight from the islands was in reality a haunted effort to escape from his crime. My friends in Academy Bay saw him leave on July 13th for Chatham in the Dinamita with the unfortunate Nuggerud. They took the little package of mail from Floreana and a few letters from Academy Bay. Also the bundle of baby clothes which was found by them later, probably for Karin who was soon to have a little daughter. They were sighted from Chatham next morning. Then the veil of uncertainty falls upon the rest of the story. The Dinamita at best was a very undependable craft. She had often gone out of commission before, always in a fortunate place heretofore. Probably her engine again broke down. Possibly Nuggerud miscalculated and had not quite enough fuel. In any case, when the sun rose over the peak of El Junco that morning, and the wild horses came to drink in the crater lake, the men in the little boat out there, with their goal just out of reach, began their last journey, carried day and night to the north by the relentless current, growing hungrier and thirstier until they came within reach of Marchena. Lorenz knew then that he was to pay the penalty in full for his crime, and with interest.

      Somewhere the Dinamita disappears, possibly on the reefs jutting out from Marchena itself, and the men are in the skiff. They have enough strength to drag the skiff out of reach of the tide. But even before they set foot on Marchena they know their Fate. For there is no water

there. They hope feebly for the miracle of a passing vessel and put up the pole with the rags on it to attract attention. At first they kill iguanas, and a seal or two, and drink the blood. They cannot achieve a fire so they eat some of the meat raw. It makes them violently ill. Possibly a tuna boat passes in the distance and hope returns for a flickering moment. Then empty ocean again, with the blistering sun creeping overhead a few times. Fever runs into delirium which fades into kindly Death.

      And that is all I can tell you of the Baroness and the corpses.

William Albert Robinson.
      Voyage to Galapagos.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1936.
"Chapter 18: The Baroness and the Corpses", pp. 191-208.

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