Rumor of a pirate ship wrecked at the mouth of the San Bernard River,
Brazoria County, has persisted for more than a century. Colonel
Hunnington, who is seventy-eight years old, and who has lived near the
mouth of the San Bernard for sixty years, heard of the wrecked
privateer from the McNeill family, which established itself on the
Bernard in 1822. Colonel Hunnington says that the ship was wrecked
about 1816. It had put into the river to escape a great hurricane. The
crew buried their golden pillage, some say ten million dollars, before
the water rose to their destruction. When the storm passed, only one
pirate remained alive. Colonel Hunnington says that the buried money
has never been found, and he believes that it still lies where pirate
hands placed it more than a hundred years ago. Captain William
Sterling, who died a few years ago at the age of eighty, gave me
corroborative evidence concerning the pirate ship. He said that during
his boyhood he knew a solitary fisherman on Matagorda Peninsula who
claimed to be the sole survivor of the wrecked privateer. He often
showed the boy gold coins, which he called Spanish doubloons.
A wild and fascinating legend of the storm-wrecked ship was told me
many years ago by Doctor Sid Williams, who was then a practicing
physician near the mouth of Old Caney in Matagorda County. Mr. Jacob
Smith told the same story. It is ascribed to a chief of the Carancaguas
Indians, who spoke broken English and often visited the white settlers.
He said that his tribe had always lived along the coast—a fact
substantiated by history. A small band, of which he was chief, lived in
the timber a few miles from the San Bernard River, along which clear to
its mouth grew live oak trees and tough salt cedars. One day a great
storm came out of the Gulf; the wind blew with fury that increased as
the darkness came, and the waters rose upon the land. The chief and his
people climbed into the salt cedars, which bent with the wind but did
not break. After two days the storm passed and the tidal waters fell
back. Many of the huge live oaks were destroyed utterly, and the
remainder were so twisted and broken that they soon died. Since that
time there has been no forest along the lowest reaches of the San
Bernard.
As soon as the storm abated, the chief went from his camp to the bank
of the river, where a pale-face lived alone. He found the hermit’s body
tied with a rope to the splintered stump of a tree. There the waves had
overwhelmed him. The chief also saw, partly in the water and partly on
the land, the wreckage of a great ship. As he looked, he heard a faint
voice. He followed the sound to what had been a cabin, and saw the
ghost-like form of a white woman chained to the side. She stood with
difficulty, and presently fainted, perhaps from weariness, perhaps from
fright at seeing an Indian savage, for the chief made a habit of
wearing deer antlers on his head. He broke the chain from the wall and
carried her to the shore and laid her on the sand. He bathed her face
in cold water, and she revived. She told him that her father had been a
great chief away back somewhere, but that he had been misunderstood and
had had to leave his country. Her husband was governor, she said, of a
great state. She had been in a ship on the ocean when pirates destroyed
the ship and killed all aboard it except herself. She was put on the
pirate ship, which, returning to its Gulf headquarters, had been
encountered by the storm and driven inland. There was, she said, a
chest of gold on the wrecked ship, but the Indian could not find it. He
did find the captain and some of the crew lashed to parts of the
wreckage, dead. The chief made every effort to revive the woman, but
she grew steadily weaker. She took from her neck a chain and locket and
gave them to him. She began to sing, very faintly and beautifully. The
Great Spirit spread a white wigwam around her so that the Indian could
not see her. The voice sang on into the night, more and more faintly.
When the morning star rose, the voice was still. At daylight the white
wigwam was gone, and the woman lay dead. The Indian dug a grave with
broken pieces of the wrecked ship, laid her there, and covered the
grave with a broken door from the wreck. No man knows where that grave
lies.
The Indian took the locket and chain to some white men, who read on the
locket the word Theodosia and found within pictures of a fine-looking
man and a little boy. Long afterward coast dwellers told this story in
explanation of the mysterious fate of Theodosia Burr Allston. [117]