Beautiful folder with interesting coins!

The book Desert Islandproposed the highly detailed theory that Daniel Defoe used the Isla del Coco as an accurate model for his descriptions of the island inhabited by the marooned Robinson Crusoe. However Defoe placed Crusoe's island not in the Pacific, but rather off the coast of Venezuela in the Atlantic Ocean

Robinson's neighbouring Terra Firma is shown on the colour map of Joannes Jansson (Amsterdam) depicting the northeastern corner of South America, entitled Terra Firma et Novum Regnum Granatense et Popayan. It belongs to the early group of plates printed by William Blaeu from 1630 onwards. The properly called Terra Firma was the Isthmus of Darien.[Crusoe's two references to Mexico are against a South American island as well.

The Clive Cussler novel The Silent Sea (2010) references mystic Chinese pirate tales but locates the island off the northern Pacific coast of the US.

 The first claims of treasure buried on the island came from a woman named Mary Welsh, who claimed 350 tons of gold (about $16 billion in today's money) raided from Spanish galleons had been buried on the island. She had been a member of a pirate crew led by Captain Bennett Graham, and was transported to an Australian penal colony for her crimes. She possessed a chart showing where Graham's treasure was supposed to be hidden. On her release she returned to the island with an expedition, which had no success in finding anything, with the points of reference in the chart having disappeared.[25]

Another pirate supposed to have buried treasure on the island was the Portuguese Benito Bonito.[26][27] Though Bonito was hunted down and executed, his treasure was never retrieved.[27]

The best known of the treasure legends tied to the island is that of the Treasure of Lima. In 1820, with the army of José de San Martín approaching Lima, Viceroy José de la Serna is supposed to have entrusted treasure from the city to British trader Captain William Thompson for safekeeping until the Spaniards could secure the country. Instead of waiting in the harbor as they were instructed,[28] Thompson and his crew killed the Viceroy's men and sailed to Cocos, where they buried the treasure.[26][27] Shortly afterwards, they were apprehended by a Spanish warship. All of the crew except Thompson and his first mate were executed for piracy. The two said they would show the Spaniards where they had hidden the treasure in return for their lives – but after landing on Cocos, they escaped into the forest.[27]

Hundreds of attempts to find treasure on the island have failed.[27][29] Several early expeditions were mounted on the basis of claims by a man named Keating, who was supposed to have befriended Thompson. On one trip, Keating was said to have retrieved gold and jewels from the treasure.[30][31] Prussian adventurer August Gissler lived on the island for most of the period from 1889 until 1908, hunting the treasure with the small success of finding six gold coins.[27]

Cocos Island (Spanish: Isla del Coco) is an island designated as a National Park off the shore of Costa Rica, that does not allow inhabitants other than Costa Rican Park Rangers. It constitutes the 11th[2] of the 13 districts of Puntarenas Canton of the province of Puntarenas.[3] It is located in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 550 km (342 mi) from the Pacific shore of Costa Rica.[4] With an area of approximately 23.85 km2 (9.21 sq mi), about 8 km × 3 km (5 mi × 2 mi) and a perimeter of around 23.3 km (14.5 mi),[5] this island is more or less rectangular in shape.

Surrounded by deep waters with counter-currents, Cocos Island is admired by scuba divers for its populations of hammerhead sharks, rays, dolphins and other large marine species.[6] The extremely wet climate and oceanic character give Cocos an ecological character that is not shared with either the Galápagos Archipelago or any of the other islands (e.g., Malpelo or Coiba) in this region of the world.[7]

Discovery and early cartography[edit]

Cocos Island

The 16th century historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo informs in his book Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Océano (Seville, 1535) about the discovery of the island due to the Spanish navigator from Avilés Juan de Cabezas (also known as Juan de Grado) in 1526.[24] D. Lievre, Una isla desierta en el Pacífico; la isla del Coco in Los viajes de Cockburn y Lievre por Costa Rica (1962: 134) tells that the first document with the name "Isle de Coques" is a map painted on parchment, called that of Henry II that appeared in 1542 during the reign of Francis I of France. The planisphere of Nicolás Desliens (1556, Dieppe) places this Ysle de Coques about one and half degrees north of the Equator. (See also Mario A. Boza and Rolando Mendoza, Los parques nacionales de Costa Rica, Madrid, 1981.) Blaeu's Grand Atlas, originally published in 1662, has a colour world map on the back of its front cover which shows I. de Cocos right on the Equator. Frederik De Witt's Atlas, 1680 shows it similarly. The Hondius Broadside map of 1590 shows I. de Cocos at the latitude of 2 degrees and 30 minutes northern latitude, while in 1596 Theodore de Bry shows the Galápagos Islands near 6 degrees north of the Equator. Emanuel Bowen, A Complete system of Geography, Volume II (London, 1747: 586) states that the Galápagos stretch 5 degrees north of the Equator.

Administrative history[edit]

The islet Manuelita is a preferred site for diving and observing multiple marine species

The island became part of Costa Rica in 1832 by decree No. 54 of the Constitutional Assembly of the free state of Costa Rica.

Whalers stopped at Cocos Island regularly until the mid-19th century, when inexpensive kerosene started to replace whale oil for lighting.

In October 1863 the ship Adelante dumped 426 Tongan ex-slaves on the island, the captain being too lazy to take them home as promised. When they were saved by the Tumbes, one month later, only 38 had survived, as the rest had perished from smallpox. (See: 'Ata).

In 1897 the Costa Rican government named the German adventurer and treasure hunter August Gissler the first Governor of Cocos Island and allowed him to establish a short-lived colony there.

On May 12, 1970 the insular territory of Cocos Island was incorporated administratively into Central Canton of the Province of Puntarenas by means of Executive Decree No. 27, making it the Eleventh District of Central Canton. The island's 33 residents, the Costa Rican park rangers, were allowed to vote for the first time in Costa Rica's February 5, 2006 election.