Thread by @hungrychipmunk

Time for another Jewish pirate thread!

This time, we’re not headed to the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, but the Pacific Ocean.

It's a tale of a bloodthirsty fraternity, hidden treasures, mysterious scripts, and… potatoes.

Our story begins in 1599, when a Jewish pirate named Subatol Deul joined another two bandits, Henry Drake and Ruhual Dayo.

Together, they formed the “Brotherhood of the Black Flag” off the coast of Chile.

Subatol’s father was Sudel Deul, a travelling physician who was the first to introduce potatoes to Europe.

His partner Henry was the son of Sir Francis Drake, the famed English explorer and privateer.

For the next four decades, the Brotherhood plundered Spanish vessels sailing along the Pacific coast of South America.

Their base was the Bay of Guayacán, where they built a fortress, stored their riches, and operated gold mines.

Eventually, in 1640, the Brotherhood was attacked by a large Spanish fleet. Drake and Dayo were killed, while Deul escaped.

The surviving Jewish pirate then buried scrolls and plates upon which he left clues, in Hebrew, to the location of the crew’s hidden riches.

Centuries later, in 1926, a local named Manuel Castro found these buried clues with inscriptions he could not understand.

He contacted experts, who put him in touch with British-born Richard Edward Latcham, head of Chile’s National Museum of Natural History.

(Latcham c.1910 👇)

When he saw the artefacts Castro had bought him, Latcham travelled to the Bay of Guayacán to discover more.

From the inscriptions on the unearthed scrolls and plaques, he learnt the above-mentioned tale of Subatol Deul and his crew.

In 1936, Latcham published his experiences in “El tesoro de los piratas de Guayacán” (The treasure of the pirates of Guayacán).

The book was a hit, and for decades, people accepted it as historical fact.

(Just google "Subatol Deul" and see the results...)

But when I first came across the saga, I was skeptical.

The name “Subatol Deul” doesn’t sound very… Jewish, and I had never heard of Sudel Deul being the guy who introduced spuds to Europe.

I had already learnt to be wary of Jewish pirate tales, so I decided to dig deeper.

First, I was excited to find Deul in “Los judíos en Chile durante la colonia” (Jews in Chile During the Colonial Era), written in 1948 by Professor Günter Böhm, a historian of Jews in South America.

But then I checked the footnote and saw his source: Latcham’s book. Bummer.

I soon discovered the Spanish-language Wikipedia page on Latcham’s book, and I learned that the work is hardly a reliable historical source.

Some of the problems with the book:

• No footnotes, sources, or bibliography (🚩🚩🚩)

• There could be no Henry Drake, son of Sir Francis Drake — because Sir Francis HAD NO DESCENDANTS.

• It was highly unlikely that a pirate base existed in Guayacán for 40 years, under the noses of the Spanish.

In addition, there are no records of a man named Manuel Castro, nor of Latcham’s official request to carry out an investigation in the Bay of Guayacán.

There is also no contemporary mention of the existence of Subatol Deul, Ruhual Dayo, Sudel Deul, or the 🏴 Brotherhood.

Another researcher claims that in one of the copper plates, an etching of a 19th or 20th century cannon appears, instead of one corresponding to the 17th century. 🤷‍♂️

Finally, the "Hebrew" inscriptions on the scrolls and plaques — which are actually Paleo-Hebrew and some other characters — don’t make much sense (thanks, @bnuyaminim!).

(And how would a 17th-century Jewish pirate know those languages?)

(For a complete list of the book's inaccuracies, see the Wikipedia article — use Google Translate to read it in English.)

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_tesoro…

So unfortunately, it seems that Subatol Deul, the fearsome Jewish pirate of the Pacific, never existed.

Instead, experts say that Latcham wrote the book either as a practical joke or as an impressive work of historical fiction — perhaps even faking props to boost the narrative.

Of course, there are some who still believe that Latcham’s entire work is some sort of coded treasure map.

They claim the name “Subatol” means “Sub Atoll = Under the Island,” and the Hebrew scrolls do indeed hint to the gold — but I’ll leave that to the treasure hunters...

Here's my first thread on Jewish pirates:

https://twitter.com/hungrychipmunk/status/1325514585693097986

And another one:

https://twitter.com/hungrychipmunk/status/1333077133359521792