Savage Islands

The small group of the Savage Islands (Selvagens), which is politically part of the Madeira archipelago, lies between 30º and 30º 10' north latitude and 16°7, and 16°20' west longitude of the Greenwich meridian. It is made up of the following islets: Selvagem Grande (‘great wild island’), Selvagem Pequena (‘little wild island’) and Ilhéu de Fora (‘outer islet’). The second of these islets is also known as Ilhéu Grande and Pitão Grande (‘great peak islet’), and the last as Ilhéu Pequeno and Pitão Pequeno (‘little peak islet’).

In his pamphlet As Selvagens, Mr Alberto Artur Sarmento gives Selvagem Grande a length of 2.5 kilometres, a width of 2.2 kilometres and an area of some 5 square kilometres, adding that its coasts are steep and hard to approach because of the great number of rocks surrounding it. According to Mr Adolfo César de Noronha, the island’s sea cliffs can reach 100 metres in height, although the interior is more or less flat. The exceptions are the east, where Pico dos Tornozelos rises, and the west, where Pico da Atalaia (‘watchtower’) stands above the sea, its altitude estimated at about 150 metres. To the south there is also a small knoll, that of Inferno, about 115 metres above sea level.

Selvagem Grande lies 250 kilometres from Ponta da Agulha (‘needle point’) on Bugio, one of the three Desertas (‘deserted islands’), 280 from the port of Funchal, and 165 kilometres from Ponta do Hidalgo on Tenerife, so it is closer to the Canary Islands archipelago than to that of Madeira. Like the other two islets of the group, it is uninhabited, and its best anchorages are the cove of Pardelas, to the east, and another to the south, sheltered by the knoll of Inferno. At the locality (sítio) called Estancia, to the south-west, is the best landing place, which is why boats head there when they have people to put ashore. At that spot there is a shed and a cave with a wall and a door, where visitors can take shelter, and further inland there is a small hut roofed with zinc sheets, which can also shelter those who wish to spend the night in the central part of the island. Two cisterns have been built on Selvagem Grande, holding water all year round, and there are also three small springs – das Ovelhas, below Pico da Atalaia, the Salgada and das Galinhas – which yield some water for only part of the year. There are traces of some works having been carried out at the Galinhas spring, on the upper part of the island.

The Savage Islands are of volcanic origin. On Selvagem Grande, says Mr Alberto Sarmento, the porous, blackened scoriae of which it is formed have gradually broken apart under subaerial action, making the ground brittle, a surface of lapilli of vitrified mass and microlitic structure.

Dr Gagel, who studied some collections assembled by Mr Adolfo de Noronha, supposes that the Savage Islands must be formed essentially of phonolite, with a layer of more recent basaltic lavas, and with scoriae and small fossil deposits.

An extensive underground gallery, 150 metres long, Mr Sarmento also says, is rather curious, as it may have been formed by a volcanic channel or vent, in which prolonged infiltration later deposited a bed of calcium sulphate of saccharoidal crystallisation. It is interesting too for the coatings it forms on the rocks, a crust that crumbles easily and whose underside appears studded with brilliant white flakes.

Above Pardelas, on high ground, there is a Miocene shell deposit, and at the locality of Risco (‘cliff’), at a height of 90 to 100 metres, there is another Tertiary deposit. Near the sea and close to Cabeço do Inferno (‘hell’s knoll’) there are traces of subfossilised modern marine shells.

The summit of the peak of Tenerife can at times be seen from Selvagem Grande, and we have read somewhere that at no other point on the globe can land be made out at so great a distance.

Selvagem Pequena is low, flat and covered with calcareous sands which, says Mr Adolfo de Noronha, meet marine sands deposited at the bottom of bays formed by erosion platforms, set between points that jut out into the sea. According to Mr Sarmento, this islet measures 2 kilometres long and 1 wide, but Mr Noronha tells us that its shape is very poorly represented on the old charts, both French and English, so it is to be believed that these measurements are rather far from the truth.

There are neither springs nor cisterns on Selvagem Pequena, so visitors must bring water from Selvagem Grande, 15 kilometres away. On the island there are some walls, perhaps built in former times, which can be made into a shelter by laying a ship’s sail or some other covering over them. The only height on Selvagem Pequena is Pico do Veado, a rocky knoll 140 metres high.

Separated from Selvagem Pequena by an arm of the sea about a mile wide lies Ilhéu de Fora, also low and covered with sand, about 1200 metres long and at most 400 metres wide. It has no water and no height of any kind, and it abounds in calcamares, a seabird we have already mentioned in this work, which breeds in burrows or underground galleries. Similar burrows are found on Selvagem Grande, where the same bird is also very common.

Shearwaters (cagarras) are the chief wealth of the Savage Islands. Although some 20 to 22 thousand are caught every year, as the late Father Ernst Schmitz stated in 1901 in an article published in Cosmos, their numbers do not fall, which proves how dense the population is. They must therefore exceed a total of 60,000, because each shearwater lays only one egg, and there must be at least 40,000 for an annual breeding of 20 thousand. The Savage Islands, or rather Selvagem Grande, are visited every year, usually in September, by parties of hunters, who bring back many rabbits, shearwaters and salted fish, for which they always find buyers in Funchal. The shearwater lives on all three islands of the group, but the rabbit, which is a small breed like that of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), is found only on Selvagem Grande, where it has destroyed many plant species that once grew there. Selvagem Grande also supplies large quantities of limpets, salted or pickled in vinegar (1921).

Goats once lived on Selvagem Grande. Besides the animals already mentioned, there are now two species of rat (see that entry), the lizard (lagartixa), the gecko (osga) and various birds, among them the common tern (garajau), the kestrel (francelho), the corre-caminho, the anjinho, the gull and the pintainho. A leguminous plant peculiar to the three islets (Lotus Paivae) grows on all of them, and on the Ilhéu de Fora a variety of Euphorbia obtusifolia is abundant.

The Savage Islands group is surrounded by an extensive barrier of reefs that makes its coasts hard to approach. Landing on Selvagem Pequena, and above all on the Ilhéu de Fora, is much more difficult than on Selvagem Grande. Selvagem Pequena has beaches of rounded pebbles, as in Madeira, and platforms of marine erosion, and between it and the Ilhéu de Fora there are some rocks at the surface of the water and others under the sea. The Palheiros (‘barns’) are two rocks near Selvagem Grande, and to the north of the Ilhéu de Fora there are several reefs, two of which are known as the shoal of Sarmento (baixa do Sarmento) and the shoal of Noronha (baixa do Noronha).

It is believed that a rich treasure, taken in the plunder of three Mexican ships, was hidden on the Savage Islands by the crew of a Spanish vessel, and more than once the former holders of the entail (morgado) of those islands searched for it. In 1851 some Englishmen visited Selvagem Pequena and the Ilhéu de Fora in search of the same treasure, and the same men had made other searches in 1848, 1849 [and] 1850.

The Savage Islands were discovered by the navigators of Prince Henry the Navigator, and Diogo Gomes left a manuscript account of the main island of the group. In the 16th century, says Mr Alberto Sarmento, they belonged to a Madeiran family known as the Caiados. Around 1560 Canon Manuel Ferreira Teixeira, a descendant of these Caiados, gave them to his niece Dona Filipa Cabral de Vasconcelos, wife of José Ferreira de Noronha Franco, from whom descended João T. Cabral de Noronha, the last holder of the entail of the Savage Islands.

In 1904 the descendants of this holder of the entail sold the islands to the banker Luís da Rocha Machado. On his death they passed to his son, who is their present owner (1921).

Of particular relevance to this subject is an article published in the Século of Lisbon, from which we shall give some extracts.

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Along the Portuguese coast, reefs made famous by tragedies rise from the sea; along our shipping lanes, fortresses of rock burst forth. On the route of three continents, between Europe, Africa and America, we have the barrier of reefs of the Desertas and the Savage Islands.

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The Carvalho Araujo, on a research mission, recently set out for this group of rocks lost in the eternal solitude of the Atlantic.

Between Porto Santo, Madeira and the sixteen islands of the Canary archipelago lie the Desertas and the Savage Islands. The former lie close to Madeira.

The largest is fourteen kilometres long and two wide, with a hill of 480 metres. It is the only one where water is found, though brackish. It has never been inhabited. In the time of Prince Henry the Navigator there was a small chapel there to serve the men who went about the arduous work of hunting and fishing. They are called Deserta Grande, Ilhéu Chão and Bugio.

Further south, separated from the Desertas by an ocean abyss 4,512 metres deep, rises the islet of Selvagem. It lies 250 km from the last of those islands, 280 from Funchal, and 165 km from the nearest of the Canary Islands, Tenerife.

The Savage Islands group as a whole covers some eight miles. It consists of Selvagem Grande, Pitão Grande, Ilhéu Pequeno and a dozen or so further reefs.

Selvagens, the main islet, measures some 7½ kilometres in length by 2 in width. Its greatest height is 150 metres. Pitão Grande measures some two kilometres in length by 1 in width, with a central mass of rocks rising to 140 metres. Ilhéu Pequeno is 1,200 metres long by 400 wide; it is almost flat and made up more of sand than of rock.

Discovered in the time of Prince Henry, and found to be barren, they were taken over by donataries who exploited them for hunting, fishing and the gathering of orchil (a dye lichen), a dye plant highly prized in England and Flanders. Stocked with goats and rabbits on Prince Henry’s orders, they soon yielded a good profit, for the animals bred well.

In the 17th century the islets belonged to the Madeiran entail-holders the Teixeiras Caiados, and from them, through sales, they passed to the Rocha Machado family, also Madeiran, who now own the bulwarks of rock called the Savage Islands, rising on the shipping lane of three continents…

Ever since Prince Henry had goats and rabbits released on the Desertas and the Savage Islands, meat has been plentiful there, despite the lack of water. The animals slake their thirst by chewing a native plant heavily soaked in sap, which is a veritable store of drinkable liquid.

On these rugged rocks, full of shadowy hollows, live thousands of seabirds. If we are to believe an 18th-century writer, it was then impossible to walk on the Savage Islands without treading on nests. Even today, on the ledges of the cliff, among the stems of the tiny creeping plants, birds’ nests abound. The hunting of one species, the shearwater (cagarra), culls some 20,000 birds every year, and it is estimated that there are upwards of 60,000 on the islets.

The Savage Islands have their legend. Through the mists of time, belief grew in a treasure hidden on the largest island. For years the entail-holders of the Savage Islands searched doggedly for the pirates’ fortune concealed on the islet. The ground was dug over entirely, so much so that they later tried to cultivate it, so that the work done would not be wholly lost. But they lost heart at the lack of water and the absence of rain.

From 1847 to 1851, according to documents, seven Englishmen searched the Savage Islands for the treasure. They carried out excavations in four successive years, spending 2,500 pounds. The islands were dug over completely. The belief of this handful of adventurers rested on the confession of a dying man, who had told how he had been one of the crew of a pirate ship that plundered three Mexican vessels laden with gold during the war with the United States, and had then come to bury the treasure on a deserted island near Tenerife.

The treasure of the Savage Islands never appeared. Neither gold nor bread ever came from their bowels. Neither trees nor crops nor human lives seek out the crests of their rocks or the sandy soil of their flats. Only the goats raise their satanic heads against the outline of their peaks, and the birds wheel in their thousands near the nests hidden in their hollows. And, once a year, comes the hunt, the slaughter, of birds, goats, rabbits and fish.

Concerning the legendary report, mentioned above and discussed by several writers, of a ‘treasure’ buried on these islands, the following details, which we found in a Lisbon newspaper, are of some interest.

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They lie in the open Atlantic, away from the shipping lane to South America, between the Canaries and Madeira, and they belong to a member of the Vieira de Castro family.

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Nobody lives there. There is no water. They are bleak, bare rocks of volcanic origin, deeply gullied by the waves. In the season of bird migration the shearwaters (cagarras) alight there, resting for a few days from their Atlantic flight before heading for more pleasant parts.

Only the Spaniards of the Canaries know the Savage Islands, making frequent excursions there with the utmost disregard for our real sovereignty, which has no one to represent it.

The Savage Islands, however, have already aroused the greed of a famous Englishman, the explorer Shackleton, who died at the South Pole some years ago.

It is a curious and mysterious story, one well worth unravelling, for it would make any of us immensely rich. But it is better to tell it and savour it.

One day the owner of the Savage Islands was eating a hurried lunch with an English newspaper in front of him when a news item caught his attention. It said that Shackleton intended to explore those islets on his return from his voyage to the South Pole. Mere scientific curiosity? A base for long-range seaplanes? Geographical sentinels for England, mistress of the seas?

Nothing of the kind! Or rather, something much more and much better. Shackleton was going to the Savage Islands to find a fabulous treasure which a French privateer, wrecked there in the 18th century, had hidden in an unknown spot. The owner of the Savage Islands immediately telegraphed the explorer in London, forbidding him to make any searches on the islets.

And he thought no more about the matter. Months went by. The telegram received no reply. It was, naturally, thought the owner of the Savage Islands, a journalistic fantasy of no great consequence.

But he was mistaken. One day the famous Shackleton arrived in Funchal aboard his ship, fitted out and equipped for the expedition he was about to make to the South Pole.

The owner of the Savage Islands was astounded when the explorer, in that dry, direct language so characteristic of the English, asked his permission to search the islets for the treasure, which would be divided between the two of them. He agreed. On his return from the South Pole, Shackleton told him, he would go to England to fetch drilling machines, since he believed the treasure was buried beneath some rock, rockfalls being frequent there. When our compatriot expressed considerable surprise at the existence of the treasure, all the more so as he had never heard of it, Shackleton informed him that there was a document in the archives of the British Admiralty that proved it: the account of a sailor who had survived the wreck of the French privateer.

Twenty-four hours later Shackleton left for the South Pole, where he died. And with him died the idea of finding the treasure of the Savage Islands, which remains there still, hidden, mysterious and fabulous, guarded by the inscrutable rocks.’