The "Esperanza" sank, and the pirates and their captives sailed west across the Pacific bound for Macao. After 43 days, the pirates' ship met a storm, lost course, and struck the coral reef surrounding Palmyra Island, breaking the mast. The 90 men aboard were able to pull the ship closer to land, but it was not serviceable. They offloaded the treasure to the island, distributed some, and buried the rest. They repaired part of their boat and most of the crew shipped away, not to be heard from again. The remaining ten men spent most of a year on Palmyra living on dwindling stores and local food. They spent three months building a small escape boat, upon which six men left Palmyra. Of these, four were washed overboard in a storm and the other two were rescued by an American whaler bound for San Francisco. One died en route, and the survivor, James Hines, was put in a hospital, but he died 30 days later. Before Hines died, he wrote letters describing the affair and the location of the treasure, which originally included 1.5 million Spanish gold pesos and an equal value in silver (possibly consisting of precolumbian artworks). Around 1903, over 95 years later, the letters were allegedly deposited for safekeeping with Capt. William R. Foster, the harbormaster of Honolulu, by a sailor who was bound for the Solomon Islands but never returned. After holding the letters for 20 years in an iron chest, Capt. Foster revealed them to a reporter, who published the details. Palmyra landowner Henry E. Cooper was reported to have researched the matter. A conflicting variant of the story was published by Capt. F. D. Walker of Honolulu in 1903 and in 1914. In 1997, William A. Warren filed a federal salvage claim for a ship sunk off the atoll that he claimed had treasure from the "Esperanza", but he abandoned his claim after legal objection from the Fullard-Leos, who owned most of Palmyra. The legend of the "Esperanza" and "Santa Rosa" (a ship rumored to have recovered the "Esperanza" treasure and sailed back to Honolulu) inspired a story written by Jack London called ""The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn"", which was published as part of London's David Grief stories in the "Saturday Evening Post". The "Esperanza" treasure figures in a 2010 work of fiction, "Palmyra – Isle of Death" by Karl Boyd.