Inagua Man Finds Rare Ambergris Paid Peanuts Told He Was Born 100 Years Too Late 1955

Imagine you are living on an island in The Bahamas. Not the built up, business capital, New Providence, but one although idyllic, is much less populated, with fewer industries and jobs. Then, just by chance, on a random uneventful day, as you are walking along a sandy beach, one of the rarest objects in the whole world suddenly appears before your very eyes.

Gleaming under a hot Caribbean sun, as a stilted warm wind barely moves the limbs of overhanging casuarina trees, two hundred pounds of invaluable whale ambergris, waits to be discovered—-by you! Unbeknownst to most there at that unbelievable moment, one of the largest single finds of whale ambergris, ever.

Of course, at first, you don’t really know what it is, and neither does anyone else on the little island. Nevertheless, news of whatever it is, travels with amazing speed, around the islands, soon reaching Nassau. Those who well knew how invaluable ambergris really was, quickly devise a plan. Soon, seasoned local treasure hunters made their way to your modest home, on the far flung southerly island of Inagua.

God has blessed you!

Lady Luck has finally found you!

You are going to be rich!

Well, maybe not!

When two local treasure hunters arrive, they tell you, as somber as undertakers, that the ambergris, though as rare as a rock from Mars, is somehow, in the present day of 1955, worth next to nothing.

They go on to remorsefully claim that, if somehow you could have been born, say one hundred years or so earlier, around the time of Abraham Lincoln, you might have been lucky. You might have found something of real value, but as it was 1955, it wasn’t worth much anymore.

For your troubles, they agree to give you something. You know, a few dollars to buy the wife something nice and maybe buy your children some shoes.

Reluctantly and desperate for money, only two weeks later, you sell your incredible, once in a lifetime, rare upon rare, never to be seen again, not in ten lifetimes find of sea gold, for a paltry £500 or $1,400.

That is the story of one Samuel Nixon of Inagua, who, in 1955, had a fleeting but losing encounter with fortune, after finding two hundred pounds of rare whale ambergris, but was paid a mere $1,400 by two Nassau treasure hunters.

Why did Nassau newspaper report the ambergris was worth just $16,000 but US news reported it was worth $160,000?

Two Nassau dealers, Roscoe Thompson and Wilfred Smith bought Samuel Nixon’s two hundred pounds of whale ambergris for just $1,400. Curiously, however, the valuation given in local Nassau newspapers of just $16,000 is nowhere near the whopping $160,000 valuation given in the American papers of 1955.

Who was correct? Well, let’s do simple math. There are 16 ounces to a pound. Samuel Nixon found 200 pounds of whale ambergris. At an estimated reported value of $50 an ounce, the value of Samuel Nixon’s ambergris was worth $160,000 and not $16,000.

Why did the Nassau newspaper undervalue the estimated value of the ambergris in their article of 1955? Was it deliberate?

Could a negro Samuel Nixon in 1855 on Inagua really have been able to capitalise on finding 200 pounds of ambergris treasure?

Scientists estimate that only 1% of sperm whales are actually capable of secreting ambergris. And less than 1% of this 1%, is found, which makes whale ambergris extremely rare and so valuable.

Such complexities involving rare natural phenomena, only adds to the disingenuous nature regarding Samuel Nixon’s ambergris find. Nixon was told, that the reason why he received so little for his treasure, was in 1955, it wasn’t worth much, or not as much as it was 100 years earlier.

However, it must be asked, could a negro Samuel Nixon, in 1855, in Inagua of all places, could have even hoped to capitalise on what he had found? Unquestionably, the answer is, absolutely not.

Had Samuel Nixon, been around in 1855, as a poor, uneducated black man on Inagua, having found what he had, he would have surely met with a pathetic end for it. There is absolutely no question of that.

To have suggested that if Nixon had lived back in 1855, just twenty years after slave emancipation, that somehow his fortune could have been made, was simply an attempt to placate the Bahamian negro masses, who undoubtedly questioned how little Samuel Nixon was paid.

Especially grievous to it all was that Samuel Nixon’s photo, the man who actually came across the ambergris, was not published alongside his one in a million find. The photo published was of one of the men who bought it, Roscoe Thompson.

Wilfred Smith and Roscoe Thompson, local treasure hunters who bough Samuel Nixon’s once in ten lifetimes ambergris find for just $1,400 in 1955

Roscoe Thompson