Two young sailors leave a Spanish coastal town in search of a better life. Weeks later, an American merchant ship is found abandoned and burned, its crew believed to have perished at sea. But when the two men return home with an extraordinary story of survival, a much darker truth begins to emerge.
Not Every Mediterranean Mystery Needs a Ghost
I’ve always had a weakness for old ghost stories.
Growing up near Salem, Massachusetts, probably had something to do with that. Every October, our little corner of New England seemed to transform into a world of flickering pumpkins, haunted houses, old cemeteries, and stories nobody could quite explain.
These days, Halloween feels rather different.
Here in Spain, the almond trees aren’t turning brilliant shades of red and gold, and the October afternoons can still be warm enough to sit outside with a glass of wine.
But my fascination with the mysterious hasn’t gone anywhere.
And sometimes, the strangest stories aren’t supernatural at all.
They’re real.
That was certainly the case when I began reading about two sailors from Dénia, a beautiful port town on Spain’s Costa Blanca, not far from our farmhouse in Alcalalí.
The story begins in 1862.
And it involves an American merchant ship named the Reindeer.
Two Young Men Leave Dénia
In the nineteenth century, Dénia was an important Mediterranean port.
Long before its marina filled with pleasure boats and ferries, the town was closely connected to commercial shipping, fishing, and the movement of goods between Spain and other European ports.
Life wasn’t always easy for the families who depended on the sea.
In the spring of 1862, two young men from Dénia decided to look for better opportunities elsewhere.
Their names were Francesc Dolz i Such and Pere Pasqual Joan Vives i Bauzà.
According to historical accounts later researched by the journalist Antoni Reig Pérez, the men travelled to Valencia in search of work aboard a ship.
There, they found an opportunity.
An American merchant vessel called the Reindeer was looking for additional crew.
The ship, reportedly weighing around 800 tons, was preparing to continue its commercial voyage.
Its captain was James William Hewitt.
The plan was to collect salt from the French port of Sète and transport cargo onwards towards Liverpool and New York.
For two young men hoping to escape the economic difficulties of their hometown, it must have seemed like a promising opportunity.
They signed on.
The Reindeer sailed.
And before long, the voyage would take a terrible turn.
A Fortune Hidden Aboard the Reindeer
The captain had been entrusted with a substantial amount of money to pay for the ship’s cargo.
Historical accounts mention approximately 800 gold napoleons, the French coins widely used in international commerce at the time.
After the salt was purchased, some of that money remained aboard the vessel.
Precisely when the two sailors learned about it, and whether they had planned to steal it from the beginning, isn’t certain.
But what happened next was no ordinary theft.
On the night of July 9, 1862, as the Reindeer sailed near the southern coast of Spain, violence erupted aboard the ship.
According to the account reconstructed by Reig Pérez, one of the men approached a crew member who was keeping watch.
He asked for food.
The sailor handed him a knife to cut it.
And that apparently harmless request became the beginning of a brutal attack.
Murder in the Darkness
The details of what followed are disturbing.
The two men attacked members of the crew, including those responsible for navigating the vessel.
The violence took place at sea, away from witnesses on shore.
There were no radios.
No distress signals of the kind modern vessels can transmit.
No coastguard helicopters ready to respond.
Only the ship, its crew, and the darkness of the Mediterranean.
The surviving historical accounts describe multiple killings during the attempted robbery.
The attackers subsequently abandoned the vessel, and the Reindeer was set on fire.
At least, that was the accusation that emerged during the investigation.
The two men would later deny responsibility for starting the fire.
For a while, it seemed that the truth might disappear along with the ship.
But the Mediterranean had not swallowed every witness.
The Survivors Who Changed Everything
When Dolz and Vives returned, they presented themselves as survivors of a terrible maritime disaster.
According to the story they initially told, the ship had been wrecked.
They were among the fortunate few who had escaped.
Imagine hearing such a story in a nineteenth-century coastal town.
Two local sailors had gone abroad in search of work.
Now they were back, claiming to have survived a tragedy at sea.
For a brief period, they were apparently regarded as remarkable survivors.
But there was a problem.
They weren’t the only people who had survived.
Other crew members had escaped the violence and eventually reached Málaga.
And their version of events was very different.
Instead of describing an ordinary shipwreck, they told the authorities about an attack.
A robbery.
And murder.
The supposed heroes were suddenly suspects.
On July 18, 1862, the two men were arrested.
Their remarkable story of survival had lasted barely long enough to become local news.
A Trial and an Unexpected Verdict
The case attracted considerable attention.
A crime aboard an American vessel involving Spanish sailors and a voyage through several European ports presented complicated legal questions.
Eventually, the matter passed into the hands of the Spanish naval authorities.
During the proceedings, the accused admitted involvement in the violence but reportedly claimed that they had suffered mistreatment aboard the ship.
They argued that their actions had been a form of self-defence.
The authorities did not accept that explanation as sufficient to absolve them.
In 1864, the case came before a naval court-martial.
The prosecution sought the death penalty.
But the final punishment was different.
Both men received sentences of life imprisonment.
After that, the historical trail becomes less clear.
And this is where the story takes on its most intriguing final twist.
The Man Who Disappeared From the Records
Nine years after the events aboard the Reindeer, an official in Dénia reportedly stated that the whereabouts of Francesc Dolz were no longer known to him.
It’s a small detail, buried near the end of a much larger historical account.
But I find it fascinating.
What happened to Dolz after his conviction?
Did he remain in prison?
Was he transferred somewhere else?
Did he die without his hometown being informed?
Or did the records simply become lost or disconnected as the years passed?
There is no reliable evidence that he escaped from prison or disappeared into the mountains surrounding Dénia.
And that distinction is important.
An uncertain historical record isn’t proof of a dramatic escape.
But it still leaves a question.
One that, more than 160 years later, isn’t easily answered from the surviving accounts.
For me, that’s the most haunting part of this story.
Not a ghost ship.
Not a hidden treasure.
But a real person whose final fate has become difficult to trace.
The Mountain That Watches Over Dénia
If you’ve ever visited Dénia, you’ll know that the town has one of the most extraordinary natural backdrops on the Costa Blanca.
Behind the harbour rises the enormous limestone mountain known as the Montgó.
At around 753 metres high, its long, distinctive silhouette dominates the landscape.
The mountain is riddled with caves, rocky openings, and secluded places.
Some have been used by people for thousands of years.
Others are connected with local history, religious traditions, and folklore.
From the harbour, particularly towards evening, the Montgó can appear almost impossibly still.
The mountain has watched over generations of sailors departing from the coast.
Some returned wealthy.
Some returned empty-handed.
And some never returned at all.
I sometimes wonder how many forgotten stories belong to the families who lived in those narrow streets beneath Dénia’s castle.
How many departures were celebrated?
How many ships were never seen again?
And how many stories survived only because somebody happened to write them down?
The story of the Reindeer is one of the fortunate ones in that respect.
Not because of what happened, but because researchers have been able to recover so much of its history.
Without that work, the two young sailors might have remained nothing more than names in an old municipal record.
The Difference Between a Ghost Story and a True Mystery
There is something particularly unsettling about real historical mysteries.
With a ghost story, part of us knows that we’re entering the world of imagination.
We enjoy the atmosphere.
We wonder what might be hiding around the corner.
And when the story ends, we can remind ourselves that it was only a legend.
But the Reindeer was a real ship.
The sailors were real people.
And the violence that occurred aboard it had real victims.
The mystery isn’t whether something supernatural happened.
It’s how the story was initially concealed, how the truth emerged, and why the later records leave questions unanswered.
Those are mysteries of a different kind.
And perhaps they’re the ones that stay with us longest.
A Halloween Story From the Costa Blanca
Last night, I found myself thinking about Dénia again.
Sam was finishing some photographs, and I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, reading through another account of the old maritime case.
Outside, the wind was moving through the olive trees.
There was something wonderfully autumnal about the evening, even without the New England maple leaves I remember so well.
I told Sam what I’d discovered.
Two young sailors.
An American ship.
A fortune in gold coins.
An attempted cover-up.
And a final historical question nobody seems to have answered conclusively.
He looked up from his photographs.
“Well,” he said, “that’s considerably more frightening than a ghost.”
I had to agree.
Because the next time we visit Dénia, I’ll probably look at the harbour a little differently.
I’ll imagine the old trading vessels moored along the waterfront, the sailors preparing to depart, and families waving goodbye.
I’ll think of those two young men leaving their hometown in the spring of 1862.
And I’ll remember the Reindeer, somewhere on the Mediterranean, sailing into a night from which its crew would never fully recover.
Not every mystery needs a ghost.
Sometimes history is frightening enough.
Until next time, stay curious.
Isabeau
