While digging down to prepare the foundations for the new building the workmen stopped and stared in disbelief.  There were several human skeletons lying in disarray and many were in grotesque and strange positions.  I picked up a human skull and like most others, there was evidence of a blow or a gash.  Some limbs and bones were separated from their skeletons.  Mystery surrounded this ghastly discovery.  Secrecy followed.  Police were at a loss to identify who these people were.  A total of seven skeletons were unearthed.  The Government pathologist and other scientists, through chemical and other analyses, determined the ages of the skeletons, who all died at approximately the same time, when pirates roamed the Caribbean seas.  The skeletons were all male and were of men ranging from 18 to 30 years of age.  They all died violently.

A Mr. Potter, a Trinidad historian, carefully pieced the components of this mystery together and arrived at the following conclusion.

  Where No. 30 Richmond Street was located was on land reclaimed from the sea in the Gulf of Paria and only 15 miles from Venezuela.  Trinidad was the ideal place for Spanish and English pirates to confront each other also providing safe harbour and hideouts when required.  At the water’s edge (at 30 Richmond Street) certain pirates formed a club and erected a building for their clubhouse.  A place for celebration, debauchery and drunken sprees which generally ended in fights and sudden death.  The resultant corpses were thrown outside the clubhouse and floated away with the falling tide. Until one night, a very large fish entered the narrow channel to partake of drunken corpses when it must have become stuck and could not get back to the open sea.

The grampus of a fish died and blocked the exit of the deceased pirates from entering Davy Jones’ locker. The stench became unbearable and the surviving pirates deserted the place, which was abandoned.  In the course of time, all skeletons were covered until they were discovered that morning in January 1938. 

Question:  Why did the Spanish gentleman, Mr. Santelli, decide to build that beautiful Spanish-style house on that particular piece of land?  (Incidentally, the skeleton of a large fish was uncovered at a spot which could have been the channel entrance).  Could it be that there was buried treasure and that this area was pinpointed on a map which originated in Spain, whence Mr. Santelli came?

 Romantic Trinidad!  Always the lure of pirates.  As children playing under our house, we dug and found the odd bone and other oddments but we heard rumours even then of pirates’ treasure, but never paid serious attention thereto.  Strangely, the human skeletons referred to were found in 12 to 18 inches of earth.

  Several other theories were given, including military skirmishes between English, French and Spanish soldiers, victims of the cholera plague, all of which were strong possibilities excepting for one fact.  The times of death as shown by pathological tests through chemistry pointed to the time in Trinidad’s historic past when Spanish pirates frequented and fought in our waters and buried their stolen treasures on land.  We have never heard if the new owners of 30 Richmond Street found anything else besides bones.

This story was covered in a full page of the Trinidad Guardian newspaper of the day, and was the subject of a local calypso entitled “The Richmond Street Skeletons”.