Frontlines: The Earhart Of The Matter

A vibe-sensitive person passing through Derry might detect a lingering frisson between the McCallions and the Gallaghers.

This can be traced back to the morning of May 21, 1932 when a squad of Gallaghers arrived hot-foot at the McCallion home at Ballyarnet, lured famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart from the fireside and brought her back to their own house for a fry-up and mugs of tea you could trot a mouse on.

Ms. Earhart had crash-landed in a field between the two dwellings. The Irish Independent (May 23, 1932) reported that “within two minutes” she was comfortably ensconced with the McCallions, “who had put their home at her disposal. Almost at the same time Mr Gallagher arrived and persuaded Miss Earhart to accompany him to his home, where Mrs Gallagher had tea already prepared.”

The angst of the McCallions can only be imagined. It isn’t every day a world celebrity in slinky leather and voguish goggles sashays into your kitchen.

Ms. Earhart went on to achieve marvellous feats of aerial derring-do before disappearing from the skies over the western Pacific in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the earth. It was widely speculated that her single-engine Model 10-E Electra had malfunctioned, plummeted into the water and gurgled down 10,000 metres to rest at last on the bottom of the unfathomable sea.

For five days after she vanished, the US Navy picked up distress signals from the tiny, uninhabited island of Nikumaroro – five kilometres by three, half-way between Australia and Hawaii, close to her intended flightpath. But when, eventually, a rescue mission reached the island, all they found was a bunch of bones, shards of glass from a compact mirror and tiny traces of rouge.

The bones and shards appear to have been discarded as of no significance before the mission headed home. Nevertheless, it was clear there had been a woman there who was not there now.

It was this which raised the possibility that Ms. Earhart had been eaten by hermits.

The hermit crab is a remarkable creature. The Nikumaroro colony comprises hundreds of thousands of “coconut” hermits. The name derives from their ability to crack open coconuts with their claws. The claws can exert 3,300 newtons of force. Tigers are relatively slack-jawed in comparison, producing a 1,500-newton bite.

The most basic thing you need to know about hermit crabs is they are not hermits. In fact, they are among the most clubbable of crustaceans, sometimes sleeping in the manner of festival fans in the lush days of Lisdoonvarna, on top of one another in huge, heaving huddles.

Hermits can grow to a metre across and live for a hundred years.

The viability of the theory that Ms. Earhart had made it onto Nikumaroro and been crunched to bits by hermit crabs was put to the test in 2007, when researchers tossed a dead piglet onto the atoll: a horde of hungry hermits quickly converged on the carcass and nipped and nibbled and gnawed it to nothingness.

Is this what befell the inspirational Amelia? It’s possible we’ll soon find out.

Last summer, Robert Ballard, the man who located the Titanic on the Atlantic floor, joined the search, funded by National Geographic magazine, to lead an expedition to Nikumaroro. The magazine announced with a touch of self-satisfaction that his vessel, the Nautilus, is “equipped with a multi-beam sonar on the hull, two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) with high definition cameras, an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), and multiple drones.”

Sometime later this year, Ballard will publish what, if anything, he has found. Perhaps we will learn at last the final fate of the woman who sat at the Gallaghers’ hob while the McCallions scanted outside in raging exasperation.

Of course, it’s all eased over the years. The Gallaghers and McCallions that I know are all now best of friends. There’s even talk of intermarriage.

Meanwhile, the coconut crab faces a fight for its life. Katherine Rundell is one of its most persuasive champions. She’s a distinguished academic, a bestselling author of children’s books and a roof-jumper – whiles away many an afternoon leaping with balletic grace from parapet to balcony and back in turreted parts of town. In a recent, richly-written piece in the London Review Of Books, she described the hermit in all its gorgeous glory.

“They’re off-kilter beautiful: the jewelled anemone crab has shocking emerald eyes on stalks that are striped like a barber’s pole in red and white. They can be sea-grey or royal purple; the giant spotted hermit crab is orange with white dots edged in black; the hairy yellow is striped yellow and cream, with opulent hairs on its legs and eyes on blue stalks. Up close, even the coconut crabs are beautiful: some are aquamarine at the hinges, some rich brown with a burnt orange back.”

I have been nibbled by worse.