The Anson file
The information in Lord George Anson’s file does, on first reading, appear to directly indicate the island of Juan Fernandez is the place to look for the treasure. As Lord George Anson had been involved with the Horseshoe Expedition, this meant it was either a highly secretive official tasking or it was some unofficial affair that privately borrowed the use of naval resources. That no public naval records exist of this mission suggests the latter. A report of the description of the file, its contents and notations exists and runs thus (once it was all sorted out and correctly translated by this source);
THE HORSESHOE EXPEDITION
Notation: “Sent by Lord Anson to the South Seas in 1760”
Document 1: Webb’s report with added notation “This document arrived from Chile six months after my Lord passed away.”
Document 2: Ubilla’s map with added notation “This map arrived from Chile fifteen months after my Lord passed away”.
Document 3: “Altitude Schuba I Aurigae I”
The notation appearing in the file ‘This map arrived from Chile fifteen months after my Lord passed away’ suggests that at some stage others had inquired into the matter as they were not sure either of the expedition’s status.
The 1813 Admiralty tasked expedition to the Salvages under the command of Captain Robinson suggested that the Horseshoe Expedition was indeed some official state secret. Robinson was unaware he had been tasked to follow some of the details from the file in an effort to see if the treasure could be located.
As the Webb report appears to be in fairly plain English, some error therefore must have been been made regarding what it said.
A clue to an error that had been made is found in the reported text of the file’s third document that were fed to the Cousino group (not the corrected version as written above):
‘Altitude Schuba I Depth Yellow Stone I’
Cousino’s group had taken this insensible phrase to be some direction involving the height of the star Dschubba and a depth from a yellow stone. Dschubba is a star in the constellation of Scorpius.
What is now known is that the contents of the file had originally been written in Latin. A number of mistakes had then been made when translating the file’s Latin documents. One of these mistakes was the mistranslation of the name of the constellation of the Charioteer, Aurigae. Aurigae was confused with the Latin word for ‘gold bearing’, which is Auriger. The Latin word for gold is aurum and it’s from here we get the chemical notation for gold, AU. Though aurigae and auriger appear to come from the same word root ‘au’, they are in fact not related at all. Due to a simple mistranslation ‘charioteer’ became ‘yellow stone’. This mistranslation was also helped along by the earlier Spanish based parallel colour code for the stars. For now, concentration needs to be directed to the relatively simple matter of mistranslated Latin.
The phrase ‘great yellow stone’ also appeared in the Webb report that likewise had once been in Latin; the text as it appears now is just an imperfect translation.
It can now be deduced that the documents in Lord George Anson’s file, all in Latin, had been translated into English when they were discovered shortly after his death in an effort to determine what they were all about. It was upon these imperfectly translated copies that the notations explaining each one’s history were made. When the file was re-discovered in the British Museum, Wilkins was able to translate the Latin originals correctly to get their true meanings.
It was merely Wilkins’ own handwritten copies of the early flawed translations from the file that Wilkins supplied to Cousino.
A lesson in Latin
The Webb report first needs to be examined to see if there are any obvious anomalies that would indicate that more than one translation error had occurred. The following version is an amalgam of contemporary reports and Wilkins’ version as it appears in the photo (spelling mistakes included),
I, Cornelius Patrick Webb, Captain of his Majesty’s Navy, Master of the Unicorn, only survivor of the Horseshoe Expedition depute this account to my Lord George Anson First Lord of the Admiralty (courtisualy) because I judgeth malady which ailleth me will not permit to wait. Departure Unicorn June nineteen crossed Cap Horn December six arrived at position lat thirty D eight M. January thirteenth opened royal orders, located secret entrance, translated Crown’s belongins, loated eight hundred sixty four bags gold. Two hundred bars gold, twenty one barrels precious stones and jewellery one golden trunk containing rose of gold and emeralds, two foot high, one hundred and sixty chests with gold and silver coins. January twenty four fortress destroyed. When returning the twenty-eight of January before a violent storm, the ship suffered serious damage and lost a mast. We were forced to shelter on an island; the third of February found us at Longitude … Latitude… and it was impossible to carry out repairs for the safe transportation of the treasure; transferred to a new hiding place valley of Anson a cable length from the observation point in direction great yellow stone depth fifteen feet. Unicorn repaired for emergency crossing course Valparaiso; informed of plans for mutiny while the ship was becalmed to the West of Valparaiso I made use of the auxiliary boat (Pinnace). Unicorn blown up by me with all on board, six loyal men sacrificed for the cause of the Crown, I arrived at Valparaiso. 1761
Cousino interpreted this report to mean that the treasure was originally hidden on Juan Fernandez Island and it was then merely relocated to a new place there. This interpretation produces a noticeable inconsistency in that by giving the name of the new location for the treasure on the island, ‘valley of Anson’ there was no need for Webb to have written earlier ‘…..found us at Longitude … Latitude…’ as ‘valley of Anson’ immediately identifies the island. Apart from those issues, the Spanish had claimed the island in 1742 and established a settlement there in 1750. By 1761 it would have been impossible for the described activity of an English ship hiding a treasure in Cumberland Bay to have occurred un-noticed.
The particular phrase with its rather too obvious omissions, ‘…..found us at Longitude … Latitude…’ is actually just a signal that the missing bearings were to be found encoded somewhere else in the report.
To try and determine what Webb’s report really was saying requires it to first be translated back into Latin:
Ego, Cornelius Patrick Webb, navarchus classis regalis magisterque Unicorn superstes solus Expeditionis Soleanae haec verba equiti George Anson domino primo navali maxima cum concordi relinquo timens morbus qui me affligit prohibeat ne maneam Unicorn 19 June navem solvit circumnavigavit Cape Horn 6 December ad situm advenit latitude 30 D 8 M 13 January iussa regalia aperivit introitum celatum locavit tabulas con fecit et oneravit 864 saccos aureos 200 nummos aureos 21 dolia gemmarum cistam auream in qua rosa aurea et smaragdi alti duos pedes evant et 160 cistas nummorum aureorum et argenteorum 24 January castellum detrui maris rediens 28 January in tempestate maxime laesa est malumque perdidit in insulam perfugere coacti sumus 3 February eramus longitudo…..latitudo…..
neque res sarcire poteramus ita ut gazam salve transportaremus eam as nova latebras transtulimus vallem Anson funis longitudi a loco contemplationis ad magnum Aurigae alto quindecim pedes Unicorn refecta est ad transportandum inexpectandum Valparaiso certior facta est consilliori seditionis dum navis in litor manet usus sum nave auxiliari Unicorn a me fracta est omnibu nautis inentibus sex vivi fidi Regis causa mortui sunt ad Valparaiso ad veni 1761
I, Cornelius Patrick Webb, Captain of his Majesty’s Navy, Master of the Unicorn, only survivor of the Horseshoe Expedition depute this account to my Lord George Anson First Lord of the Admiralty (courtisually) because I judgeth malady which ailleth me will not permit to wait. Departure Unicorn June nineteen crossed Cap Horn December six arrived at position lat thirty D eight M. January thirteenth opened royal orders, located secret entrance, transferred Crown’s belongins, loaded eight hundred sixty four bags gold, two hundred bars gold, twenty one barrels precious stones and jewellery one golden trunk containing rose of gold and emeralds two foot high, one hundred and sixty chests with gold and silver coins. January twenty four bulwark (strongroom) broken (into?). When returning the twenty-eight of January before a violent storm, the ship suffered serious damage and lost a mast. We were forced to shelter on island; the third of February found us at Longitude … Latitude… and it was impossible to carry out repairs for the safe transportation of the treasure. We transferred to a new retreat, Valley of Anson, for rigging. Longitude for the observation point (place to look) is direction Great Charioteer depth fifteen feet (degrees). UNICORN repaired for emergency crossing course Valparaiso; informed of plans for mutiny while the ship was becalmed to the West of Valparaiso. I made use of the auxiliary boat (Pinnace); UNICORN blown up by me with all on board; six loyal men sacrificed for the cause of the Crown; I arrived at Valparaiso. 1761’.
It can be reasonably suspected that the reporting of the events that followed the loading of the treasure lost some of their flow when translated from the Latin original. It appears that Webb may have actually been saying that the ship had been prepared for the return journey but an intervening storm damaged it. This would then match the consequence of the storm given in Latin, ‘in insulam perfugere coacti sumus’, which is literally ‘on island refuge forced to be’. The inclusion of the word ‘an’ in the padded out English translation of ‘we were forced to shelter on an island’ made the report sound as if the ship had sailed with the treasure to shelter on an entirely new island prior to sailing to it ‘relocating’ to Juan Fernandez.
Webb’s report also makes a whole lot more sense now with the ship sailing to the inhabited location of Juan Fernandez to seek replacement rigging.
Though it is now understood that a basic error in translation had caused the overall message to be misinterpreted, there is still the issue of the missing directional bearings that can identify the location of the treasure with certainty.
The phrase ‘Longitude for the observation point (place to look) is direction Great Charioteer depth fifteen degrees’ is the code that gives this.
The Depths of the Star Code
The Star Code used by Ubilla and the Royal Society to encode the navigational data appears complicated but it is not.
The Right Ascension (Longitude) and Declination (Latitude) for each star can be found in star catalogues or are compiled as tabulated data that appears in publications called Ephemeral Tables. These Ephemeral Tables are used by astro-navigators to easily obtain the Right Ascension and Declination for any star to use in their calculations.
It is only necessary for the Star Code to use an ephemeral table as a cipher clerk would use a code book; to take a code name (the star) then look the values assigned to it then apply a key (a formula) to encode/decode it.
Right Ascension (RA) is measured from a point called ‘The First Point of Aries’ which is the sun’s position in the sky when it crosses the equator on the Vernal Equinox. RA is customarily measured in hours, minutes and seconds; twenty four hours being one rotation of the earth. RA is easily converted to degrees with one hour of RA equating to 15 degrees of the sky’s apparent rotation. One minute of RA would then equate to .25 of a degree. As the First Point of Aries varies over time, so to does the RA of each star. Declination (Dec) is measured in degrees above or below the equatorial line.
There was a little trick though. As Dschubba is a star not a constellation ‘Altitude Schuba I’ is referring to Antares, the Prime Star of the Scorpius that contains Dschubba also. ‘Depth Aurigae I’ is also not referring to the prime star of Capella for the constellation of the Charioteer, it was referring to a star called El Nath which is designated Gamma Aurigae. To know this requires knowledge of the colours of Alchemy.
The star Antares gets it name from Greek. As a red star it was considered the rival of Ares (Mars in Greek). Antares in Scorpio marks the autumnal equinox. Its opposite, Aldebaran in Taurus, marks the Spring equinox. Next to Taurus is the constellation Aurigae.
Capella is a yellow star. Webb used it in his coded directions due to the numeric values assigned to it by the equatorial coordinate system and it also being in the ‘opposite’ position to Antares in the heavens.
Consulting astronomical tables for the stars in each constellation plotted for the 1950 equinox (The First Point of Aries) will produce the following data;
Antares=Alpha Scorpii
RA: 16 hours 26 minutes. 20.206 seconds Dec: -26 degrees 19 minutes 21.95 seconds
To convert the RA to degrees multiply each hour by 15 degrees and each minute by .25 degrees.
(16 x 15) + (26 x .25) = 246.5 degrees
In the 18th century ephemeral tables assigned an RA value of around 245 degrees for Antares.
Here you then have the stars ‘longitude’ of RA and ‘latitude’ of Dec.
Though the phrase ‘Altitude Schuba I Depth Aurigae I’ may sound as if reference is being made to some measurement in the single dimension of height, there is actually two dimensions being referred to here. This misunderstanding may have been because the word ‘altitudo’ in Latin can be used for both altitude and depth. The words have to be used as if quantifying a three dimensional object as to its height, width and depth. ‘Altitude’ is therefore referring to longitude and ‘depth’ is referring to latitude. Anson’s code phrase, ‘Altitude Schuba I Depth Aurigae I’ then is just saying ‘Longitude Antares Latitude El Nath’
The Star Code is an overall computation which is enciphered using the Alchemic code key of adding the star’s ‘opposites’; that being its longitude (Right Ascension converted to degrees) to its latitude (Dec).
This is then modified by the use of one of two sub-rules/calculations determined by whether the star is being used to encode longitude or latitude.
Sub-rule 1: For a star used to encode longitude you subtract its RA from 360 degrees before adding the Dec.
Sub-rule 2: For a star used to encode latitude you add the RA to the Dec and subtract 90 degrees from the sum.
Here, using 1950 Equinox data;
Antares=Alpha Scorpii
RA: 16 hours 26 minutes 20.206 seconds (246.5 degrees). DEC: -26 degrees 19 minutes 21.95 seconds
El Nath=Gamma Aurigae=Beta Tauri
RA: 5 hours 23 minutes 7.71 seconds (80.75 degrees). DEC: +28 degrees 34 minutes 1.74 seconds
For the star Antares used to encode longitude (altitude),
RA=246.5 degrees
Sub-rule 1, 360-246.5=113.5
Adding opposites of longitude and latitude is 113.5+26=139.5 degrees longitude.
For the star El Nath used to encode latitude (depth):
RA=80.75 degrees
Adding opposites of a stars longitude and latitude is 80.75+28=108.75
Sub-rule 2, 108.75-90=18.75 degrees latitude (19 degrees).
The same method is used to decode the other phrase; ‘Longitude for the observation point is direction Great Charioteer depth fifteen degrees’. This phrase is referring to the Prime star of the constellation Aurigae (Magnum Aurigae) which is Capella. Here, only one star has been nominated but an extra value ‘depth fifteen degrees’ has been supplied.
Capella=Alpha Aurigae
RA: 5hours 12minutes 59.5seconds (78 degrees). DEC: +45 degrees 56 minutes 58 seconds
Adding opposites of stars longitude and latitude is 78+45=123
Now add the extra ‘depth’ of 15 degrees = 123+15=138 degrees
Using the figures as whole numbers the nomination of the position of 139º longitude and 19º latitude is immediately recognizable as the Pinaki Trinity. Wilkins had given the hint to the code key via the deeply embedded Captain Kidd’s Treasure charts hoax/riddle for Juan Fernandez Island that required the addition of the latitudes and longitudes of the opposites of the hoax and real maps of Juan Fernandez Island.
What does need to be noted at this stage is though the same code is being used, Lord George Anson’s application produces 19 degrees lat, 139 long which marks the Pinaki Trinity whereas Webb’s application produces 138 degrees longitude, being a whole degree east. Lord George Anson’s reason for giving 139 degrees was that he was referring to the Trinity group.
Webb’s report did in fact give a coded reference to latitude but you have to know of the monument’s cipher to recognize it. The text of the Webb report gives “Arrived at position lat thirty D eight M.” Webb, in conjunction with him using Capella in the Star Code to give 138 degrees, was just secretly informing Lord George Anson the longitude to find the treasure was still the same as the one given on the monument. In other words after the storm the treasure never left the vicinity of the island it had originally been cached on.
The prime meridian being used for the Star Code is that of Greenwich. It had been used by British navigators since Charles II established the Royal Observatory. Prior to this London (centre) was used. Greenwich was not adopted as the prime meridian for world navigation until 1884. That Greenwich was being used as the prime meridian mid-18th century can be verified by checking the log of a naval ship contemporaneous to the time, that of HMS Endeavour, dispatched by the King of England in 1768 for the Royal Society’s scientific mission to the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus. HMS Endeavour was commanded by the master navigator Lieutenant James Cook. He frequently referred to Greenwich as he logged the Endeavour’s course. He was then tasked to seek out someplace called Terra Australis Incognito.
Certainly there would have been no need to identify to someone like Lord George Anson which meridian was being used but in Webb’s report there is a strange reference to the ‘rose of gold and emeralds, two foot high’. In Latin this is ‘rosa aurea et smaragdi alti duos pedes’ but you need to note the word ‘alti’ is used which can mean both height and depth. It immediately suggests the phrase to be some coded reference of a 2 degree reconciliation for some navigational calculation. It is most probably, in part, a coded reference (with the clue given by the alchemic colours of gold and emerald) to the magnetic variation to be applied to the (compass) Rose. The magnetic variation for the area would need to be included for any instructions that required a ship to sail on a certain bearing in search of an island.
The whereabouts of Lord George Anson's file
The question on everyone’s lips would be what did Harold T Wilkins do with the original of Lord George Anson’s file?
After studying the extent of the hoax and the workings of Harold T Wilkins, this source is of the opinion that waiting to be recovered in the vicinity of Rennes le Chateau is a box containing the original of Lord George Anson’s file and a bottle of ‘Highland Three Star’ whiskey.
