In the empty midst of the Pacific Ocean sits
an uninhabited atoll. Known as Clipperton Island, it’s an unprepossessing
place; exactly the sort of anonymous stretch of sand you might fly over enroute to Hawaii
and never think twice about. Rising only 3m out the ocean, and covering
a mere 5 km2, its a place of crabs, coconuts, and little else. At least, it is today. A hundred years ago, though, Clipperton Island
was home to something much more strange and fascinating. It was here that a freak accident of war and
revolution stranded 100 men, women, and children for three long years. And it was from their number that a kingdom
of near unparalleled cruelty rose. Yet while the short-lived Kingdom of Clipperton
Island is both repulsive and fascinating, it’s far from the only story that played
out on this lonely atoll. Over the centuries, Clipperton Island has
been visited by pirates, mighty empires, and guys trying to make a fortune out of bird
poop. They say that every place on Earth - no matter
how small - has a story to tell. Well, buckle up, because tiny Clipperton Island
has enough tales to fill an entire library. (TITLE): The Secret Island If you were to get in a boat and sail 2,090
km southwest from Mexico, you might eventually come across a small, oddly-shaped atoll. Oddly-shaped because, rather than looking
like The Island from Lost, it appears more like a circle drawn across the ocean by some
particularly cack-handed child. See, the interior of Clipperton is taken up
by a large freshwater lagoon, leaving only a tiny strip of sand a handful of meters wide
encircling it. Sandwiched on this strip between the saltwater
and the freshwater exists a sparse dusting of scrub, some wild tobacco plants, a handful
of coconut trees, and not much else. Well, aside from the bazillion or so crabs,
and tens of thousands of seabirds periodically raining poop down onto the island. When it’s not raining poop, it’s raining
actual rain. From May to October, Clipperton is relentlessly
battered by storms. When it’s dry, the whole place stinks of
ammonia. In short, Clipperton Island is less “tropical
paradise”, and more “somewhere to exile Napoleon to when he’s really misbehaving”. But make no mistake. Despite looking like the sort of place featured
on Holidays from Hell, Clipperton Island is far from unwanted. Over the decades, an astonishing number of
people have tried to make this inhospitable place their home. We don’t know who the first person to set
sight on Clipperton was. Some sources say Ferdinand Magellan sailed
this way in 1521. Others, that it was really Álvaro de Saavedra
Cerón. But since most sources seem to be kinda guessing,
we’re just gonna roll with the first dude to definitely set foot there. John Clipperton was an early-18th Century
English pirate operating along the west coast of Central America. In those days, real pirates were often indistinguishable
from privateers working for their governments to hassle foreign vessels. And, boy, did Clipperton get his kicks hassling
foreign vessels. Since his main targets were Spanish ships
around Mexico, he seems to have set up base on Clipperton Island around 1705. Hence it being called, y’know, Clipperton
Island. But Clipperton was only there for the briefest
period before vanishing off to continue his pirating elsewhere - a decision that might
have been helped by the island being knee-deep in guano. Still, Clipperton’s brief sojourn on Birdpoop
Island marked the beginning of human interest in the atoll. Just a couple of years after he left, two
French ships sailed past and decided to call it Ile de la Passion, a name which absolutely
did not stick. But it wouldn’t be thanks to random Frenchmen
that Clipperton Island was suddenly discovered by the wider world. That would fall to one Prussian geographer
who never even set foot there. In 1804, Alexander von Humboldt was in Peru
when he noticed the natives using bird poop as fertilizer. Curious, he took a sample of the stuff back
to Europe to have it analyzed. Back on the old continent, the guano blew
people’s minds. Imagine just accidentally discovering perpetual
motion one day; how that would revolutionize the world. Well, that’s what guano was in the 19th
Century. The crop yields Humboldt’s guano returned
were so impressive, people freaked out that they’d somehow magicked every single harvest
the land was capable of making into being all at once. Just like that, the Age of Guano had arrived. And suddenly, small, literally-crappy islands
like Clipperton were starting to look mighty interesting. (TITLE): The Battle for Bird Poop You can measure the scale of the guano craze
simply by looking at how it affected geopolitics. In 1856, the US passed the Guano Islands Act,
allowing any American to claim any uninhabited island anywhere in the world, provided it
had guano on it. It was the beginning of possibly the grossest
gold rush in history. And it wasn’t long before it reached Clipperton
Island. In 1856, the Oceanic Phosphate Company landed
a small crew of miners on the atoll to start shoveling that sweet, sweet ass-gold. Barely had they started than Mexico was all
like, “Hey! That’s our bird poop!” With guano suddenly big business, Mexico was
super keen on laying claim to nearby islands covered in the stuff. And they wanted the US to know they considered
Clipperton Mexican. But this neighborly spat was about to pull
in a much bigger player. Over 10,000km away, in Paris, Napoleon III
was trying to figure out how to muscle in on the Guano craze. The nephew of Napoleon, Napoleon III had seized
control of France in an 1851 coup, heralding the birth of the Second French Empire. While nowhere near the threat his uncle had
been, Louis-Napoleon was still a guy at the head of a European power that you did not
want to mess with. So when he pulled out a map and declared Clipperton
Island now belonged to France, there wasn’t much Mexico or the USA could do about it. In 1858, the French navy annexed the island,
removing the small contingent of American miners. Clipperton was folded into the overseas department
of Tahiti, and that should’ve been that. But it wasn’t. Come 1870, the Second French Empire went crashing
down in flames, taking Napoleon III with it. Once the smoke had cleared and it was obvious
the new Third French Republic wasn’t capable of defending remote, poop-encrusted islands,
Americans started creeping back to Clipperton. But, once again, they wouldn’t last long. Already, there was another dictator itching
to get his hands on all that gunao. If Napoleon III was the pompous, mustachioed
version of Napoleon, then Porfirio Diaz was the more-pompous, more-mustachioed version
of Napoleon III. A former general in the Mexican Army, Porfirio
Diaz had seized power in 1876, ushering in a reign known as the Porfiriato. Like Napoleon III, he’d overseen a long
period of stability and economic progress. Like Napoleon III, he’d combined that upside
with the downside of trampling everyone’s freedoms. And, like his European counterpart, he was
now desperate to add Clipperton Island to his Porfiriato portfolio. In 1897, Diaz made his move. A small Mexican force was sent to Clipperton,
where they forcibly removed the American miners. That done, they flew the Mexican flag, claiming
the island. Foolishly, though, Diaz didn’t leave anybody
on Clipperton while he tried to notify France and America of his claim through political
channels. So, while everybody was busy fighting diplomatically,
a fourth and final nation decided to get involved. In 1899, the British Navy just went and annexed
Clipperton, other claims be damned. America and France both kicked up a massive
fuss, but since Britain was the world’s naval superpower at this time, there wasn’t
a whole lot they could do. But Porfirio Diaz tried a different tack. Knowing he’d never, ever prise Clipperton
back from the British by force, he decided to just cut a deal with them. The Brits could work Clipperton as they pleased,
and reap the profits. All they had to do in return was recognize
Mexican sovereignty. What else were the Brits gonna do? They said yes. (TITLE) Building the Colony For the first decade of the 20th Century,
Clipperton underwent a mini boom. The British built rock gardens, began growing
vegetables, planted palm trees, and constructed houses. From being a wasteland surrounded by sea,
Clipperton soon became… well, still kind of a wasteland, but at least one where you
wouldn’t quickly succumb to scurvy. The Brits even built a small lighthouse atop
Clipperton’s one high point: a jagged, 21m promontory rising abruptly from a small patch
of shore. It was this small lighthouse that would soon
become the site of Clipperton’s most-gruesome event. But not quite yet. As the decade rumbled on, it became clear
to the Brits that they were wasting their time. While the guano they were mining was of good
quality, the transportation costs were just too high to compete on the market. Add in the fact that Clipperton Island could
never be self-sufficient, and it started to seem like it wasn’t worth the effort. In 1909, the British finally abandoned Clipperton,
leaving behind just one man and his wife to act as a caretakers. But while the Brits were ready to wash their
poopy hands of the atoll, Porfirio Diaz certainly wasn’t. The next year, Diaz ordered 13 soldiers to
land on Clipperton. The idea wasn’t to simply to garrison the
island, but to colonize it. Each man was allowed to bring his wife, any
children they had, plus a few servants each to keep things civilized. All told, 100 Mexicans eventually landed on
Clipperton in 1910, joining the British caretaker and his wife. Since these are the people we’ll be spending
the rest of the video with, it’s time we met some of them. The most important man on the island was Ramón
Arnaud, the governor. While “governor” may sound prestigious,
it was very much said with sarcastic air quotes. Arnaud was actually an army deserter who’d
been tracked down, captured, and was now being dumped on this remote and smelly island as
part of his punishment. Alongside Arnaud was his wife, Alicia Rovira
Arnaud, perhaps the closest thing Clipperton had to a socialite. There was also the teenage Tirza Randon, who
we’re gonna hear more about later. Finally, there was Victoriano Álvarez, the
guy chosen to man the lighthouse. Extremely tall, strong, and naturally hardy,
Álvarez was in some ways perfectly-suited for island life. But he was also moody, unsociable, and prone
to isolation, often locking himself away in his lighthouse for weeks at a time. So this was the core of the colony established
by Diaz in 1910. One that lived in sturdy, British-built houses,
and was supplied by bi-monthly ships from Acapulco. Unfortunately for the brand new colony, though,
1910 would also be the year that Diaz went the way of Napoleon III. Little did any of the colonists know it, but
the Mexican Revolution was already bearing down on them like a tropical cyclone. When it finally hit, everyone was gonna be
blown away. (TITLE): “Viva La Revolución!” The outbreak of revolution in Mexico is one
of those complicated things we’ve tried to cover in-depth before, most notably for
our Emiliano Zapata video on our sister channel Biographics. But if you don’t have time to go watch that
now, here’s the super-condensed version: In 1908, Porfirio Diaz gave an interview where
he announced Mexico would hold free and fair elections in 1910 to choose his successor. Diaz’s plan was that Mexico’s ordinary
citizens would beg him not to retire, allowing him to enter the race at the last moment and
win handily. What Diaz didn’t realize was that after
34 years everyone in Mexico hated him, and would literally vote for Snidely Whiplash
over another minute of the Porfiriato. When it became clear Diaz was about to lose
the 1910 election, he had his opponent - Francisco Madero - arrested. Mexico responded by detonating like an angry
bomb. Not that the revolution’s outbreak initially
affected Clipperton. Even as Porfirio Diaz was swept from power,
the basic structure of Mexico’s government remained, and the supply ships from Acapulco
kept on coming. While it must’ve been weird for the Clipperton
colonists, getting news of the revolutionary storm every two months, their little outpost
survived the replacement of Diaz with Francisco Madero. They even survived Madero’s assassination
and replacement with wanabee-dictator Victoriano Huerta. It was what came next that would really doom
them. In 1914, the revolution in Mexico finally
span out of control. That April, the United States invaded Veracruz. Just three months later, Huerta fled into
exile just ahead of Pancho Villa’s army. With the whole of Mexico now in freefall,
Clipperton was suddenly forgotten. That same spring, the last supply ship left
the island. When it didn’t return two months later,
governor Ramón Arnaud realized they were cut off. Sadly, though, the knowledge doesn’t seem
to have scared him as much as it should have. We know this because, in late summer, 1914,
a US ship reached Clipperton with a mission to evacuate the British caretaker and his
wife. When Arnaud spoke to the captain, he was told
that not only was Mexico on fire, but World War One had just broken out in Europe. Given the lack of supply ships, the American
captain offered to evacuate Clipperton’s Mexican colonists alongside the two Brits. But Arnaud turned him down. It’s impossible to say what the governor
was thinking. Whether his sense of duty stopped him; or
whether he assumed the Mexican Revolution would soon end and supplies would resume. But if that’s what Arnaud thought, he was
wrong. As 1914 gave way to 1915, the horizon remained
stubbornly free of supply ships. On the narrow sands of Clipperton, the vegetable
gardens planted a decade before by the Brits all died. With nothing left to eat but coconuts and
crabs, the colonists soon started succumbing to scurvy. Caused by a lack of Vitamin C, scurvy is often
associated with sailors having their gums start bleeding and all their teeth fall out. What it’s less commonly associated with
is something it can very much cause: death. Between 1500 and 1800, an estimated two million
sailors died of scurvy, a disease so painful it’s said that “death is mercy”. Now this disease ravaged the colonists, felling
men, women, and children. By the time 1916 dawned, fully three quarters
of the Clipperton colonists were dead. Sadly, they were the lucky ones (TITLE): Rise of a King Come early 1916, Ramón Arnaud was getting
desperate. By now, the governor likely realized he’d
doomed everyone by refusing evacuation. It’s probable the deaths of the other colonists
weighed heavily upon him. All of which may explain what he did next. Just as things were at their absolute lowest,
someone spotted a ship. It was just on the horizon, far too far away
to see them, but that didn’t stop the dying colonists from jumping up and down on the
shore, screaming and shouting. As the ship drew further away, Arnaud seems
to have decided that this was his last chance to put things right. Dragging the small rowboat left with the colonists
down onto the shoreline, he demanded all the men help him chase after the vanishing ship. But Arnaud’s story wasn’t destined to
end with redemption, with the governor catching up to the distant vessel. Instead, the surviving women and children
watched in horror as the men cast off, rowed away from shore… ...and then all went under when the boat capsized. Standing on the narrow strip of sand, Alicia
Rovira Arnaud - the governor’s wife - barely had time to process her grief when the second
shoe dropped. Almost out of nowhere, a titanic storm blew
up, battering the island. Although the remaining women and children
took shelter in the British-built houses, they weren’t enough. The cyclone that hit Clipperton that day was
like a grenade dropped onto a house of cards. Houses disintegrated. All shelters were blown away. By the time the winds eventually died, the
colonists had almost been wiped out. Somehow, Alicia had survived the night, as
had 20-year old Tirza Randon, and another woman, along with a handful of children. But as they emerged blinking into the harsh
sunlight, the women saw that they weren’t the only ones to escape the storm’s clutches. There, standing in the matchstick ruins of
the houses, stood a very tall, very powerful looking man. Locked away in his lighthouse, Victoriano
Álvarez had survived the storm. Survived the malnutrition that had ravaged
the colony. Escaped the fate of those in the rowboat. Now, he was the only man left for tens of
thousands of kilometers. Faced with this small group of women stranded
with him, Álvarez made a terrible choice. He methodically picked through the wreckage
of the homes, pulling out all the weapons. He locked them in his lighthouse, out of reach
of Alicia Arnaud and Tirza Randon. Then he came back and told the women how much
their lives had just changed. From now on, Álvarez told them, he was King
Álvarez, master of this island. The three of them existed only to please him,
to do as he ordered. If anyone tried to fight back… Well. Álvarez would use the confiscated weapons
to so badly mutilate them, they’d never think of crossing him again. It was the beginning of the Kingdom of Clipperton,
one of the most sadistic regimes to have ever existed. Over the coming months, Alicia Arnaud was
subject to nearly-daily beatings. The other women were sexually assaulted over
and over and over again. If the dictators in this video have been getting
steadily more pathetic, from Napoleon III to Porfirio Diaz to Victoriano Huerta, then
King Álvarez was undoubtedly the most pathetic of them all. All through 1916, he played the part of a
TV villain, abducting Tirza Randon for weeks at a time, keeping her locked in his lighthouse
where he sexually abused her. By mid-1917, the women and children on Clipperton
must’ve been traumatized, and certain that rescue would never come. That left only one option. They would have to rescue themselves. Death of a Kingdom One of the curious things about the collapse
of civilization on Clipperton is just how long Álvarez let himself be constrained by
its memory. Although he happily abused Randon and the
other woman, he held back from sexually assaulting Alicia Arnaud. Maybe it was the rank she’d once held, that
of governor’s wife. Maybe Álvarez simply figured no-one back
in Mexico would care what had happened to the lower class women. But for whatever reason, Álvarez didn’t
abuse Arnaud for nearly 18 months. That all finally changed in July, 1917. After several weeks of assaulting Randon,
the self-proclaimed king seems to have grown tired of the headstrong young girl, and dragged
her out of his lighthouse. In the barely-makeshift shelter the survivors
had set up, he threw Randon to the floor, and ordered Arnaud to report to the lighthouse
the next morning. The bloodied Randon waited until Clipperton’s
dictator had left, before whispering “now is the time!” The very next morning, as instructed, Arnaud
went to the lighthouse. At her side, Randon walked, head bowed, silent. When they arrived, it was to an unusual sight. Álvarez was stood outside, cooking a bird
he’d managed to capture. The giant of a man had his shirt off, and
was smiling. Who knows? Perhaps he’d intended freshly caught seabird
to be his romantic meal for Arnaud. But when he caught sight of Randon, Álvarez’s
smile faded. The king started yelling at Arnaud, demanding
to know why she’d brought the younger woman with her. As he bellowed and raged, Randon slipped away,
vanishing inside the open lighthouse. She came back out just moments later, her
hands hidden behind her back. Then she slowly approached Álvarez, trying
not to make a sound. Just as she came up right behind him, Álvarez
seems to have realized something was wrong. He turned from Arnaud… ...but any chance he’d had of surviving
this encounter was already gone. Using both hands, Randon swung the hammer
as hard as she could. It bounced off Álvarez’s skull with a sickening
thud, making the king roar like an animal. Some sources say Álvarez tried to fight back. That he may have even pushed Randon over and
run for an axe. But it was all useless. Randon managed to get three good hits in on
the king’s skull, shattering it. It’s possible Arnaud also managed to get
a knife and stabbed him, but the sources are unclear. What is clear is that, only moments after
Randon initially slipped away, the king of Clipperton was dead, and his kingdom in ruins. In the aftermath of Álvarez’s murder, Arnaud
and Randon went and sat on a remote corner of the island, staring out to sea. It was from here that they first caught sight
of the US gunship Yorktown, patrolling the Pacific for German U-Boats. This time, when the stranded colonists screamed
and jumped and yelled, they were seen. The Clipperton survivors were picked up the
very same day. When the captain of the Yorktown heard the
story of their king and his tawdry reign, he went to investigate the lighthouse. There, he found Álvarez’s bloodied corpse,
clearly the victim of murder. But, knowing what this dead man had done to
these women, the captain declined to put anything in his report except that Álvarez had died
of scurvy. The Yorktown reached the Mexican mainland
on July 22, 1917, officially ending the Clipperton colony. Some seven years before, 100 men, women and
children had set out, determined to establish a Pacific outpost of the Porfiriato. Now, just three women and a handful of children
were still alive. The Porfiriato lay in ruins, Mexico was in
revolution, and the Clipperton colony completely abandoned. It was a twist nobody in 1910 could’ve seen
coming. A mockery of all the grand dreams they’d
had. And there was still one last twist to come. After WWI’s end, Mexico and France both
asked the Vatican to rule on who had the legitimate claim to Clipperton Island. The Holy See hummed and hawed for the best
part of a decade, before finally passing off the decision to King Victor Emmanuel III of
Italy. In 1930 or 1931, the Italian king ruled in
favor of his neighbor, France. After all those arguments and threats… after
the loss of nearly 100 lives… after the horror the colonists had been through… Mexico had to simply stand aside and watch
as France triumphantly reclaimed Clipperton Island. But, by 1930, what use was this pointless
atoll to anyone? The guano boom had finished decades ago, leaving
Clipperton as nothing but an unprepossessing blank; exactly the sort of anonymous stretch
of sand you might fly over enroute to Tahiti and never think twice about. Today, this oddly-shaped atoll is still uninhabited,
still nothing more than a name in a database in some French government department. A faint smudge on a map. Yet it’s also so much more. Clipperton Island’s place in history is
a strange one. It’s past was deeply intertwined with the
Age of Guano, the Second French Empire, the Porfiriato, and the Mexican Revolution. And yet it played no part in any of these,
existing merely as a footnote within a footnote within an essay that no-one would ever read. Even the short-lived “Kingdom of Clipperton”
was nothing but one man’s perverted fantasy, destroyed the moment Randon’s hammer cracked
open his skull. But Clipperton Island is also a place where
three women experienced tremendous suffering. A place as bleak and evil as any number of
better-known torture centers. While few may know of it today, it’s fitting
to think this anonymous island still exists; perhaps as a memorial to what these women
endured, perhaps as a monument to the fear they all overcame, and the courage they found
to face their tormentor. They say that every place on Earth has a story
to tell. In the case of Clipperton Island, we’re
glad to report that that story - and the story of its monstrous king - is finally over.
