Word: isabela
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Waving pistols, 21 ragged, filthy men piled over the rail. Wakened by shouts, Hervey's wife Mildred rushed on deck, was held at gunpoint. The four-man crew was rounded up. Then the raiders, fugitives from the Galápagos penal colony on Isabela Island, demanded to be taken to the mainland...
...Isabela because of overcrowding in mainland prisons. The day before they boarded Valinda, the prisoners mutinied. They raided the arsenal, disarmed the few remaining guards, then pillaged Villamil (pop. about 200), the island's administrative settlement. Loading their loot into a pair of stolen boats, 21 of them set course for the mainland, hoping for a chance to seize a more seaworthy craft en route; Valinda became their prize...
...Hervey s, the trip to the mainland was a 63-hour nightmare. The convicts, brutalized by life on Isabela, tore through the yacht with savage greed. They gorged themselves, fouled the cabins, stole everything they could find from cash to toothbrushes. Only after one of the wild-eyed escapees broke into the Herveys' cabin was a semblance of order restored. A young convict called a ship's meeting, delivered a ringing oration pledging that he and his comrades would mend their ways if their escape succeeded. He got his fellow convicts to sing Ecuador's national anthem...
...Punta Galera, 100 miles from the Colombia border, the young convict embraced the Herveys, kissed their hands in gratitude, then rode ashore with his friends and their loot in Valinda's launch. When they were gone, the yacht headed north to Panama. By week's end, Isabela's commandant reported that order had been restored. And, on the Ecuadorian mainland, ten of the Valinda's fugitive passengers were rounded...