This video tells the basic Nells Jacobsen story, about finding a long, low, ship on his property in the early 1900's. According to the story, he found a box of jewels on the ship with rubies, emeralds, diamonds, topaz, and several types of gems. But no one can find the ship now, or produce the artifacts that many people claim to have actually seen in the early 1900's.
A guy walks into a bar with a Viking shield...
It sounds like the beginning of one of your dad's, or maybe grandpa's jokes. But the story is real. Like any good tale, there are different versions of it. There are also several different "Lost Ship of the Mojave Desert" stories. The best known story is of a guy who was out in the desert prospecting for gold, and was getting low on supplies, and running out of water. Off in the distance, he saw what appeared to be a large sailing ship (think Christopher Columbus' ships or Spanish Galleon types) sitting out in the desert. But it was a day or two away, and he was lost. So he headed back to a town, told his story, and put together three expeditions to find that lost treasure ship. But they never found the ship. That's one series of the "Lost Ship of the Desert" stories. Some later people think he just made up the story in order to finance trips to search for the ship, but he was searching for gold, instead. He didn't find either. So the whole idea sounds like a bunch of crap.
I first heard of this tale in a small book I stumbled across in the Huntington Beach library, in the 1990's, I think. It was a small book of weird and odd news stories, from newspapers across Californiagoing back 80 years or more. In that book, there was an article from a San Diego area newspaper, I think from the 1940's or 1950's. The article said that a guy walked into a San Diego bar one night with a metal Viking shield. When the bar patrons asked where he got it, he said, "There's a Viking ship out in the desert, sticking out of the side of a hill. They guy said there were Viking shields, metal ones, like the one he had, along the sides of the ship. I think that article talked about some jewels as well. He bought drinks, everyone drank hard, and they had a good time that night. The prospector wandered back off into the mountains.
Another part of the story is that a woman named Myrtle Botts, out hiking around 1933, east of the Salton Sea. She saw an old prospector, and he told her about a Viking ship, sticking out of the side of a hill, and she hiked out to the area, and saw the ship, what appeared to be a Viking ship, sticking out of the side of a hill, according to the story I first read (in th elibrary book). She went back a few weeks later with her husband, to the exact location. But a landslide had brought that whole hillside down, covering the ship. There had been an good sized earthquake in between, and they believed the earthquake had caused the landslide. The ship was lost. The site of that ship was said to be Canebrake Canyon, which is deep in the Anza Borrego State Park these days, about halfway between route 78 and route 8, south of Ocotillo Wells. Canebrake Canyon shows up on Google maps, but it's about 24 miles from the bottom end of the Salton Sea, and it's in the middle of nowhere, even today.
This ship in the desert story could just be an old treasure tale that's been embellished over time... if it wasn't for Nels Jacobsen. He was an actual farmer in the Imperial Valley area. He had a farm in the early 1900's in the hills, east of the city of Imperial, southwest of the Salton Sea. Most people aren't to familiar with the Imperial Valley and Salton Sea these days, but you've heard of Coachella, where the huge music festival takes place. Everyone knows Coachella these days. This story happened about 75 miles south-southeast of Coachella, near the city of Imperial.
Nels Jacobson, a Norwegian farmer from Highland, California, bought land west of Imperial, to raise hogs, alfalfa, and barley. In 1906 (about) and he went into a pool hall near his home, and asked a 17-year-old drifter (hobo, traveling looking for work) named Elmer Carver, if he would work for him for a few days. Elmer traveled with him to the farm, east of Imperial. Nels, who spoke in a thick Norwegian accent, showed him how to care for the hogs, and do whatever else needed done. Nels was going to L.A. to sell a bunch of jewels he found on a ship, which was mostly buried in a sand dune, about 200 feet behind his house. A windstorm had partially uncovered the ship, and Nels dug it out, and found a chest full of gemstones. When he picked up the chest, it disintegrated. So Nels and his young wife sifted through the sand, and found many gemstones. Nels also used some of the extra long planks from the ship for the hog pen. Nels headed off to L.A. to sell most of the gemstones, and Elmer and Mrs. Jacobson stayed at the farm for a few days, with Elmer taking care of the hogs, and doing the other farm work needed.
Elmer asked Mrs. Jacobson about the ship, and she told him of the jewels, and went to the bedroom, and came back with a tiny box with several different jewels. They were the jewels left over, after Nels too many of the jewels to sell. A huge ruby was one of those left, and there was also a crucifix with blue gemstones, believed to be topaz. She told Elmer the ship was about 200 feet behind the house. The next day, Elmer went out back, and sure enough, he saw the ship, still partially buried. Elmer Carver retold this story in 1964, and claimed he still knew then exactly where the ship was. You can read the full story here.
So between the Myrtle Botts story from 1933, and Elmer Carver's story of Nels Jacobson back in 1906, we have two, different, "Viking style" ships, out in desert of Southern California. I looked both of these locations up on Google Maps, and while they are in the same region, west and southwest of the Salton Sea, they're at least 20 to 25 miles away from each other. So we have two ships, that shouldn't be there, out in the freakin' desert.
But the stories say they are, or at least were, out there. That's the mystery. Two mysteries, actually. And at least one of them had real treasure on it. Both ships were still partially buried when seen. If either one actually exists, there could definitely be more treasure out there. For the Nels Jacobson ship, it could be a Viking style ship. Maybe. But the crucifix in the treasure sounds like Spanish treasure from the west coast of Mexico, Central America, or South America, from the Spanish conquest days of the 1500's to maybe the early 1700's. Vikings were pagans, to start with, and if somehow they did get to Southern California (technically possible but highly unlikely), they would have predated Christians in the Americas by several hundred years. So it sounds like a ship that looked something like a Viking ship.
For the Myrtle Botts ship, the prospector said it was a Viking ship, with round shields along the sides of it. Stuck in a rock, way out in the desert. If there was a ship out there, it's an even bigger mystery.
First of all, while we know now that the Vikings did land in North America, in eastern Canada. There's arguable evidence, like the Kensington runestone, that they may have made it into the Great Lakes. But there's no evidence so far that they made it to the west coast of the U.S.. To make it to the west coast, they would have had to either cross the Arctic ocean, and come around Alaska, or make an overland trip (Like Lewis and Clark), and then make some new ships when they hit the Pacific. There's no evidence of that. But then, there was no evidence that the Vikings made it to North America when I was a kid, and now evidence has been found, and well documented. They were Vikings, after all.
Second, while the Salton Sea, the biggest lake in California, is near where the ships were reported, it was accidentally formed in 1905-07, when water from the Colorado River broke through a canal, and flooded the low lying desert, forming the current (and now highly polluted and receding) Salton Sea. That area was dry before that.
The second big issue is that the reported ships was long and low, like Viking ships, not a Spanish Galleons or other three masted type sailing ship we think of when thinking of treasure. So if there's any truth to this story, we have one, maybe two Viking ships that should never have been within 3,000 miles of Southern California. And we have that Myrtle Botts ship, up on a hill, above and miles away from a huge lake that was formed in 1905, and dry before that. So this must all be bullshit, right?
Maybe not. This is why I love this story. And I'm not the only one. The late novelist Clive Cussler wove the lost ship of the desert tale into one of his novels, the book Inca Gold. I read it may years ago, and it's a good read. In his novel, he ties a weird South American tribe, the Chachapoyas, to the lost ship of the desert tale, and creates his own idea of how a ship may have wound up in the desert. the Chachapoyas were actually described as looking kind of like Vikings. Seriously. Cussler wasn't just a novelist, he was a seasoned SCUBA diver and shipwreck hunter. He and his team found the Civil War submarine the Hunley, and other shipwrecks in real life. So while he told a lot of fictional tales based on real events or legends, he put a lot of thought, and some truth into his stories.
Back to Nels Jacobsen's ship near the Salton Sea. While the current Salton Sea formed in 1905-07. To a geologist, that low lying area is known as Lake Cahuilla. The current Salton Sea is 236 feet below sea level. But that area, Lake Cahuilla, has filled and emptied many times over the last 40,000 or more years. At times, the water level has been as much as 337 feet to 407 feet higher than it is now, which means Lake Cahuilla was much, much bigger than the current Salton Sea. Those higher lake levels would put the shoreline high above Nels Jacobsen's property. But before about 1580, there was water in Lake Cahuilla, and probably a higher level than the current Salton Sea. But the really high water levels were thousands of years ago. So it is possible, although unlikely, that Vikings, if they made it to the west coast, could have sailed on Lake Cahuilla 1,000 or so years ago. But it should have been dry for much of the Conquistador era, from 1580 to the early 1700's.
Now, about that long, low, "Viking" ship that Nells Jacobsen reported finding. What if it wasn't an actual Viking ship, but a similar type of ship that looked (to a Norwegian) like a Viking ship. If there was a ship, it's possible it belonged to some Native American tribe. But I have another crazy idea. What if it was a Polynesian voyaging ship. They are also long and low, and made of long planks of wood, though usually in a catamaran, or maybe outrigger style. And the Polynesians DID sail from the Australian/New Zealand area to islands all over the Pacific. And there is increasing evidence that they may very well have reached both the South and North American west coasts. In fact, the Chumash Indian tribe, who lived in the Malibu area, have a traditional connection to the Polynesians. The Chumash canoes were made almost identical to Polynesian canoes. Their tradition says they learned the technique from people who came form over the ocean. The middle of this America Unearthed show (23:38) gets into that connection. I'm not saying that either of these ships, if they actually exist(ed), are Polynesian, I'm just saying that is a remote possibility, and they could be mistaken for a Viking ship, when half buried, and could have navigated Lake Cahuilla like an actual Viking ship could have. But that doesn't account for the metal shields on the Myrtle Botts ship.
Or, perhaps, the ship that Nels Jacobsen claimed to have found, and that the prospector told Myrtle Botts about, belonged to an even earlier group of sea faring people, a group still unknown to us. There's mounting evidence that there were very smart people many places in the world, before the Ice Age ended, about 12,000 years ago. We have two stories of ships in places they should not be, one with actual treasure found, here in Southern California. Both are mysteries no one has solved.
In any of these cases, the ship itself would probably be the great treasure, providing physical proof to a part of human history lost to us, whether 600 years ago, 1,000 years ago, or many thousands of years ago. But there might still be jewels, maybe gold, and other treasure still on that ship as well. Did I draw you in yet? Because I definitely want to dig farther into this story myself. There are two mysteries out there to solve...
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