A Skull Under a Ren Tree
fearlessRich (Flickr). CC BY 2.0. Picture source
In 1940 settlers clearing land find a human skull, and the British officer in charge finds more bones, a woman's shoe sole, a bottle and a sextant box.
About April to December 1940
The story
By 1940 Gardner Island has settlers. Their officer is Gerald Gallagher, a British administrator known as Irish.
A work party clears bush on the southeast side and finds a human skull. They bury it. Months later Gallagher hears about it and has the area searched. They find more bones, part of a shoe, a Benedictine bottle and an old box made to hold a sextant.
Gallagher thinks the shoe was a woman's. He sees the remains of a fire, turtle bones and dead birds near the body. Someone, he writes, was alive here. He sends a telegram: there is a very slight chance this is Amelia Earhart. His superiors order the matter kept secret.
In this story, this is her last camp. Perhaps she lived here for weeks, catching birds and turtles and cooking over a fire, cut off by thick bush from a grove of coconut trees less than two miles away. The story does not know what became of Noonan.
What the record says
Bones look more than four years old to me but there seems to be very slight chance that this may be remains of Amelia Earhardt.
Gallagher to the Resident Commissioner, telegram of 23 September 1940 (his spelling)
Body had obviously been lying under a "ren" tree and remains of fire, turtle and dead birds appear to indicate life.
Gallagher to the W.P.H.C., confidential telegram of 17 October 1940
All small bones have been removed by giant coconut crabs which have also damaged larger ones.
Gallagher, telegram of 17 October 1940
All of the finds in this chapter come from Gallagher's own telegrams and letters in the British colonial files. The skull was found about six months before his October 1940 telegram. The sextant box was later judged by Harold Gatty, through Sir Harry Luke, to be an English box 'of some age' and not one used in modern trans-Pacific aviation. A shoe-part examination in July 1941 said the pieces seemed to come from shoes of a man and a woman. That the camp was Earhart's is the story's supposition.