Floreana Island - History

History

At Post Office Bay, since the 18th century whalers kept a wooden barrel that served as post office so that mail could be picked up and delivered to their destination, mainly Europe and the United States by ships on their way home. Cards and letters are still placed in the barrel without any postage. Visitors sift through the letters and cards in order to deliver them by hand.

Due to its relatively flat surface, supply of fresh water as well as plants and animals, Floreana was a favorite stop for whalers and other visitors to the Galapagos. When still known as Charles Island in 1819, the island was set alight by a sailor from the Nantucket whaling ship the Essex and remained a blackened wasteland for many years; "Wherever the fire raged neither trees, shrubbery, nor grass have since appeared". One year later during the same voyage, the Essex was sunk by a massive bull sperm whale.

In September 1835 the second voyage of HMS Beagle brought Charles Darwin to Charles Island. The ship's crew was greeted by the Acting Governor of Galápagos, Nicolas Lawson, and at the prison colony Darwin was told that tortoises differed in the shape of the shells from island to island, but this was not obvious on the islands he visited and he did not bother with collecting their shells. He industriously collected all the animals, plants, insects and reptiles, and speculated about finding "from future comparison to what district or 'centre of creation' the organized beings of this archipelago must be attached."

In 1929, Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch arrived in Guayaquil from Berlin to settle on Floreana, and sent messages back encouraging others. In 1932 Heinz and Margaret Wittmer arrived with their son Harry, and shortly afterwards their son Rolf was born there, the first citizen of the island to have been born in the Galápagos. Later in 1932, the self-described "Baroness" von Wagner Bosquet arrived with companions, but a series of strange disappearances and deaths left Margaret Wittmer as the sole survivor of the group who had settled there. She set up a hotel which is still managed by her descendants, and wrote an account of her experiences in her book Floreana: A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos.

The demands of these visitors and early settlers devastated much of the local wildlife and both the endemic Floreana Tortoise and the endemic Floreana Mockingbird became extinct on the island.