Prospectus for The Electrolytic Marine Salts Firm
On April Idiot’s Day, a repost about not an April Idiot’s Day prank however a hoax and a swindle. In October of 1897, on the peak of the Alaskan Gold Rush, two males, Prescott Ford Jernegan, a Baptist minister, and Charles Fisher, each from Edgartown, Martha’s Winery, arrived in Lubec, Maine to determine a facility to extract gold from seawater.
Klondike: Lubec’s Gold from Sea Water Hoax
The 2 newcomers leased Hiram Comstock’s tidal grist mill positioned at Mill Creek in North Lubec. In accordance with Reverend Jernegan within the prospectus, he ready for potential buyers, “Tens of millions of {dollars} in gold had been flowing via Lubec Narrows each single day.”
Between October of 1897 and February 1898, roughly 100 males had been employed within the conversion of the grist mill to a gold extraction manufacturing unit. A “machine room” and a “laboratory” had been constructed. Beneath them, within the water, had been positioned specifically constructed picket packing containers referred to as accumulators, for amassing the gold content material of the seawater that flowed via them. Extra essential to the top-secret operation was the excessive wooden and barbed wire fence with its “No Admittance” indicators that surrounded the power.
The next account appeared in The Lubec Herald in July 1898: “The inlet to Mill Pond accommodated 240 accumulators of which sixty had been pulled up every week. Thus every field was underwater a month earlier than its flip got here to be examined. Throughout that point the water, chemical substances, and electrical energy had time to work their magic.” Apparently, nothing extra elaborate than a forged iron pot was on the coronary heart of this implausible machine. It was later realized that Charles Fisher, an achieved diver and the brains behind the operation, had in actual fact planted the so-called “magic”- the small portions of gold extracted by the accumulators – in them. At common intervals, simply previous to the accumulators being raised from the water, he would, beneath cowl of darkness, salt every field with the gold. This gold was despatched to New York and proved to be sufficient to persuade buyers {that a} fortune was available.
Hundreds of shares had been offered, primarily to buyers in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. Jernegan and Fisher designed and printed an elaborate prospectus to draw and persuade potential shareholders. Among the many unbelievable claims made on this doc was the next: “One is at a loss to grasp the large wealth floating in answer within the ocean. On the lowest estimate, a cubit mile of seawater accommodates gold to the worth of $65,000,000. It’s most likely nearer the mark to put it at $100,000,000.”
So profitable was the primary plant at Mill Creek that building started on a second, a lot bigger facility on the close by canal in North Lubec that might comprise 5000 accumulators and make use of lots of of males. So many got here searching for work on the new plant that it was troublesome to search out boarding area on the town. Over 700 laborers had been concerned within the building. Many had been Italian immigrants lured from engaged on the railroad in Machias by the promise of upper wages. They lived in two giant camps close to the positioning.
By July of 1898, each Prescott Jernegan and Charles Fisher had disappeared and the scheme collapsed. Jernegan went on to change into a revered faculty trainer within the Philippines the place he authored a historical past of the Islands.
