El Graduado
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I love to run across one-line mentions of obscure individuals who had some kind of tangential relationship with Cozumel in the distant past. They always draw me in. I can’t help but dig deeper in the archives to find more about these shadowy people, other than the meager mentions most Cozumel history books give them. A good example is George Fisher, aka Djordje Shajic. Most history books on Cozumel just say he purchased land in Cozumel in 1842. You have to dig deep to find out that:
1. He was a Hungarian who fought in the Serbian army in the first Serbian Revolution against the Turks.
2. He worked his way across Europe and then stowed away on a ship to Philadelphia in 1814.
3. In 1817, he moved to Mississippi and married, becoming an American citizen.
4. He moved to Mexico in 1829 and became a Mexican citizen, befriending Joel Roberts Poinsett, the US minister to Mexico and with whom he founded the first York Rite Masonic Lodge in Mexico.
5. He moved to the Mexican province Texas and became a Mexican Customs agent.
6. He was a Lt. Colonel in the Texan invasion of Tampico in 1835.
7. He joined Stephen F. Austin’s Texan government and the subsequent Republic of Texas government, becoming a citizen of the Republic of Texas in 1836.
8. Schemed with Sam Houston to buy all of Cozumel from Yucatan in 1841 and met with Stephens and Catherwood in Merida in 1842, when he was returning to Texas after surveying his property on Cozumel.
9. Became a Justice of the Peace in Houston, Texas in 1845.
10. Moved to California, became a judge, and then was appointed by the King of Greece as the Greek Consul in San Francisco.
You can read more about this amazing world adventurer in my book, The True History of Cozumel, available on Amazon Books.
But back to the sponge story…
Several foreign sponge companies tried to make a go of sponge fishing in Cozumel in the late 1800s, but no one was very successful. In 1908, the US Bureau of Fisheries published a report stating: “The sponge beds of Mexico lie on the north and east coast of Yucatan, on Campeche Banks and about Cozumel Island. The beds which have been exploited lie in very shallow water and the sponges are very inferior, but it is said that there are better grades in the deeper water toward the southern end of the east coast. The exportation from Mexico is very small, in 1906 amounting to but $218 on shipments to the United States and $250 on shipments to France. During the five years from 1903 to 1907, inclusive, the total exports to the United States were valued at but $1,214. A very few American vessels have sponged off the Mexican coast in recent years, but the value of their catch is not definitely known. Several years ago a vessel with two diving boats operated for three seasons off Cozumel. Large yellow sponges were found in abundance, but the few sheepswool sponges taken were so much inferior to those of Florida that the venture never paid.” This “vessel with two diving boats” left behind a couple of Greek hard hat divers in Cozumel who continued to scratch out a meager living before throwing in the towel.
Another of these sponge diving companies in Cozumel was owned by Harry J. Earle. Harry was an adventurer, wheeler-dealer, and soldier of fortune. He was the son of an English Army officer and was ex-English Army himself. He later spent ten or fifteen years serving in various Central American armies, as well as serving as a war correspondent in Cuba during the rebellion there prior to the Spanish American War, where he was befriended by the adventure-writer Richard Harding Davis. Davis later used Harry as a model for characters in several of his very popular adventure novels. Harry’s last commission was Colonel in the Costa Rican Army.
In 1897, he served as an expert witness for three days before a subcommittee of the US Committee on Foreign Relations regarding conditions in Cuba, for three dollars a day plus travel expenses from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had been collecting funds “to help the Cuban Poor”. He should have been a typist; the US government paid the woman who typed up his testimony ten dollars.
Using his war correspondent creds, Harry and his wife launched the fundraising tour, traveling through the American Midwest, giving speeches at small towns and soliciting donations for the Cuban poor. This tour was funded by the local governments and small local charities, but when one of the small town’s officials contacted another town’s sponsor, they discovered that the tour was a sham and that most, if not all, of the funds collected went directly to the Earle’s.
Harry and his wife moved to New Orleans to escape the heat, and before long he was back to his adventures in Latin America. In 1905, Harry founded the American Yucatan Development Company, after schmoozing Olegario Molina Solís. This aptly-named governor of Yucatan was a member of the powerful Yucatan oligarchy supported by Mexican President Porfirio Díaz. By pulling a few strings, Molina arranged for Harry’s new company to be awarded a 10-year contract to develop 13,401 hectares of federal land on the east side of Cozumel for an agricultural endeavor, all for only 1,500 pesos per year.
As soon as Harry was awarded the Cozumel concession, he sailed to the island to inspect the land first hand. He arrived in Cozumel aboard the steamship Joseph Vaccaro, the ship that brought ice from New Orleans to the coast of Yucatan and Honduras. Harry got off on the wrong foot at the start, after picking a fight with the ship’s captain. Then, beginning with his first steps on Cozumel, he had a similar run-in with the island’s customs agent over the contents of his baggage. Harry’s attitude would keep getting him in these types of head-butting contests. After hiring a gang of Cozumeleños to clear brush to make roads into his newly-awarded lands on the east side of the island, an unnamed businessman in Cozumel (whom Harry had affronted in some manner) convinced Harry’s workers to go on strike. It took a doubling of their salaries to get them back to work.
Harry’s plan for the land concession was to turn it into a henequen plantation. Henequen was fetching a high price at the time, and Yucatan was where all of it was cultivated. Unfortunately for Harry, the east side of Cozumel was not capable of producing much of the fibrous plant, and the plantation came to naught.
Six months later, Harry traveled to Merida to meet with Molina again, who had by then been appointed by President Díaz to be Mexico’s Minister of Development. When Harry sailed back to Cozumel, he was surprised to find one of his financial backers, Brant V. B. Dixon, already there and waiting for him. Dixon was the president of Tulane University and had also partnered with the fast-talking Harry in a scheme to install a drainage system in New Orleans. Harry had managed to get them the contract to install the system, but after Dixon contracted pneumonia traveling from Cozumel to Mexico City, the contract was annulled since Harry was relying on Dixon to get the work done on the system and Dixon was too sick to see it through.
Harry’s contract to develop his thirteen thousand plus hectares of Cozumel was canceled in June 1907, due to non-payment of his 1,500 yearly lease payments. Not to be stopped so easily, Harry leaned on this relationship with Molina and got a second concession in July of the same year for the exclusive right to harvest shrimp, lobster, octopus, sea turtles, shark, sponges and all types of fish in the waters off the west coast of Yucatan, from Rio Lagartos to Punta Flor and including Chinchorro Reef. The contract specifically exclude the harvesting of Conch pearls by means of hard-hat diving.
Ever the one to play the angles, Harry formed the Gulf Phosphate Company in Yucatan with another partner, Frank J. Brown of New Orleans. In September, 1907, Molina granted this new company of Harry’s the right to harvest guano on all the islands of Yucatan and Quintana Roo, including Contoy, Cancun, Cayo Arenas, Chinchorro and Alacranes.
However, it was the sponge business that caused Harry to meet his end. While being rowed out to meet a freighter on November 19, 1908, the small boat he was riding in overturned. The crew of two Cozumeleños and his new partner, Frank Brown, all managed to swim to shore, but Harry was “overtaken by a shark, biting his body squarely in two” according to Brown.
The Cozumel museum has in its collection an air pump and a couple of old diving helmets. Did any of them belong to Harry? Perhaps, but it is more likely that they were purchased from antique stores in Miami in the mid-1980s. Museum records don’t give their origin.
1. He was a Hungarian who fought in the Serbian army in the first Serbian Revolution against the Turks.
2. He worked his way across Europe and then stowed away on a ship to Philadelphia in 1814.
3. In 1817, he moved to Mississippi and married, becoming an American citizen.
4. He moved to Mexico in 1829 and became a Mexican citizen, befriending Joel Roberts Poinsett, the US minister to Mexico and with whom he founded the first York Rite Masonic Lodge in Mexico.
5. He moved to the Mexican province Texas and became a Mexican Customs agent.
6. He was a Lt. Colonel in the Texan invasion of Tampico in 1835.
7. He joined Stephen F. Austin’s Texan government and the subsequent Republic of Texas government, becoming a citizen of the Republic of Texas in 1836.
8. Schemed with Sam Houston to buy all of Cozumel from Yucatan in 1841 and met with Stephens and Catherwood in Merida in 1842, when he was returning to Texas after surveying his property on Cozumel.
9. Became a Justice of the Peace in Houston, Texas in 1845.
10. Moved to California, became a judge, and then was appointed by the King of Greece as the Greek Consul in San Francisco.
You can read more about this amazing world adventurer in my book, The True History of Cozumel, available on Amazon Books.
But back to the sponge story…
Several foreign sponge companies tried to make a go of sponge fishing in Cozumel in the late 1800s, but no one was very successful. In 1908, the US Bureau of Fisheries published a report stating: “The sponge beds of Mexico lie on the north and east coast of Yucatan, on Campeche Banks and about Cozumel Island. The beds which have been exploited lie in very shallow water and the sponges are very inferior, but it is said that there are better grades in the deeper water toward the southern end of the east coast. The exportation from Mexico is very small, in 1906 amounting to but $218 on shipments to the United States and $250 on shipments to France. During the five years from 1903 to 1907, inclusive, the total exports to the United States were valued at but $1,214. A very few American vessels have sponged off the Mexican coast in recent years, but the value of their catch is not definitely known. Several years ago a vessel with two diving boats operated for three seasons off Cozumel. Large yellow sponges were found in abundance, but the few sheepswool sponges taken were so much inferior to those of Florida that the venture never paid.” This “vessel with two diving boats” left behind a couple of Greek hard hat divers in Cozumel who continued to scratch out a meager living before throwing in the towel.
Another of these sponge diving companies in Cozumel was owned by Harry J. Earle. Harry was an adventurer, wheeler-dealer, and soldier of fortune. He was the son of an English Army officer and was ex-English Army himself. He later spent ten or fifteen years serving in various Central American armies, as well as serving as a war correspondent in Cuba during the rebellion there prior to the Spanish American War, where he was befriended by the adventure-writer Richard Harding Davis. Davis later used Harry as a model for characters in several of his very popular adventure novels. Harry’s last commission was Colonel in the Costa Rican Army.
In 1897, he served as an expert witness for three days before a subcommittee of the US Committee on Foreign Relations regarding conditions in Cuba, for three dollars a day plus travel expenses from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had been collecting funds “to help the Cuban Poor”. He should have been a typist; the US government paid the woman who typed up his testimony ten dollars.
Using his war correspondent creds, Harry and his wife launched the fundraising tour, traveling through the American Midwest, giving speeches at small towns and soliciting donations for the Cuban poor. This tour was funded by the local governments and small local charities, but when one of the small town’s officials contacted another town’s sponsor, they discovered that the tour was a sham and that most, if not all, of the funds collected went directly to the Earle’s.
Harry and his wife moved to New Orleans to escape the heat, and before long he was back to his adventures in Latin America. In 1905, Harry founded the American Yucatan Development Company, after schmoozing Olegario Molina Solís. This aptly-named governor of Yucatan was a member of the powerful Yucatan oligarchy supported by Mexican President Porfirio Díaz. By pulling a few strings, Molina arranged for Harry’s new company to be awarded a 10-year contract to develop 13,401 hectares of federal land on the east side of Cozumel for an agricultural endeavor, all for only 1,500 pesos per year.
As soon as Harry was awarded the Cozumel concession, he sailed to the island to inspect the land first hand. He arrived in Cozumel aboard the steamship Joseph Vaccaro, the ship that brought ice from New Orleans to the coast of Yucatan and Honduras. Harry got off on the wrong foot at the start, after picking a fight with the ship’s captain. Then, beginning with his first steps on Cozumel, he had a similar run-in with the island’s customs agent over the contents of his baggage. Harry’s attitude would keep getting him in these types of head-butting contests. After hiring a gang of Cozumeleños to clear brush to make roads into his newly-awarded lands on the east side of the island, an unnamed businessman in Cozumel (whom Harry had affronted in some manner) convinced Harry’s workers to go on strike. It took a doubling of their salaries to get them back to work.
Harry’s plan for the land concession was to turn it into a henequen plantation. Henequen was fetching a high price at the time, and Yucatan was where all of it was cultivated. Unfortunately for Harry, the east side of Cozumel was not capable of producing much of the fibrous plant, and the plantation came to naught.
Six months later, Harry traveled to Merida to meet with Molina again, who had by then been appointed by President Díaz to be Mexico’s Minister of Development. When Harry sailed back to Cozumel, he was surprised to find one of his financial backers, Brant V. B. Dixon, already there and waiting for him. Dixon was the president of Tulane University and had also partnered with the fast-talking Harry in a scheme to install a drainage system in New Orleans. Harry had managed to get them the contract to install the system, but after Dixon contracted pneumonia traveling from Cozumel to Mexico City, the contract was annulled since Harry was relying on Dixon to get the work done on the system and Dixon was too sick to see it through.
Harry’s contract to develop his thirteen thousand plus hectares of Cozumel was canceled in June 1907, due to non-payment of his 1,500 yearly lease payments. Not to be stopped so easily, Harry leaned on this relationship with Molina and got a second concession in July of the same year for the exclusive right to harvest shrimp, lobster, octopus, sea turtles, shark, sponges and all types of fish in the waters off the west coast of Yucatan, from Rio Lagartos to Punta Flor and including Chinchorro Reef. The contract specifically exclude the harvesting of Conch pearls by means of hard-hat diving.
Ever the one to play the angles, Harry formed the Gulf Phosphate Company in Yucatan with another partner, Frank J. Brown of New Orleans. In September, 1907, Molina granted this new company of Harry’s the right to harvest guano on all the islands of Yucatan and Quintana Roo, including Contoy, Cancun, Cayo Arenas, Chinchorro and Alacranes.
However, it was the sponge business that caused Harry to meet his end. While being rowed out to meet a freighter on November 19, 1908, the small boat he was riding in overturned. The crew of two Cozumeleños and his new partner, Frank Brown, all managed to swim to shore, but Harry was “overtaken by a shark, biting his body squarely in two” according to Brown.
The Cozumel museum has in its collection an air pump and a couple of old diving helmets. Did any of them belong to Harry? Perhaps, but it is more likely that they were purchased from antique stores in Miami in the mid-1980s. Museum records don’t give their origin.
