Cortez the Killer

To people of a certain age, Cortez the Killer was a popular song written by Neil Young and released by his band Crazy Horse in 1975.

To those with a passion for the historical, ‘Cortez the Killer’ refers to Hernan Cortes a conquistador who conquered Mexico with a ruthless tenacity for Spain bringing down the Aztec Empire in the early 16th Century.

However, a third undiscovered Cortez, also a complete bastard and a killer, was discovered in a set of diaries brought at an estate sale in 2017. These diaries dated from the late 1840s. This sale was located in the capital of the Philippines, Manila. How on earth they ended up there is as big a mystery as the story contained between their pages.

The majority of the volumes are complete garbage but somewhere in the second volume an incredible first hand account is told by a transatlantic passenger stuck on board a ship in 1846. The account of the ship is historically valuable as it was a fourteen-day voyage on the SS Montezuma a Goliath of a vessel. A record breaker and one of the first true transatlantic steam ships. All records of this ancient leviathan have been expunged from history and question marks about whether it ever even existed have been raised on countless occasions.

Now the formalities of old diaries are an awful bore. They are written in a language that today seems so antiquated that the accounts are really not compelling to read out loud. So I need you to hand over some license to me and allow my recounting the smallest added spice and flavour. I promise to not exaggerate the tale and will stick simply to the facts. Those of you of a stricter, more puritanical nature can find the authentic translations online.

So here goes.

The author of the journals is a man called Joseph; firstborn son of a wealthy family in Bristol. He had been exploring opportunities in the cocoa trade in the New World. He was returning to the United Kingdom as a passenger on the ship that today only exists as rumour.

The first important part starts on the second evening onboard. During dinner he became fascinated by a passenger, beautiful, female and exotic but clearly travelling in one of the lower classes, so sitting on a less prestigious table within the dining room. She became the centre of the entire ship’s attention. Our author, who has booked the VIP cabin is mystified, he watches her invited up to the captain’s table and the chief stewards and ship’s cook stand around and watch as she eats something not on the menu. The captain himself tries the dish and the room is filled with sounds of appreciation and gasps of delight. The dish is passed around and this appreciation rises. By the time the plate reaches our author there are only crumbs left. Outraged he storms out of the room to his cabin; restless all night his mind races over the mystery.

On the third day he sends his manservant, McGough, to find out everything about the lady; traipsing the decks all day for a chance encounter but to no avail.

McGough informed his master she was a nurse. A native from the America’s; looking after a sick passenger on the lower decks. An extremely wealthy Spaniard, called Cortez; he was trapped in a lesser cabin as his fortune had been spent on securing the entire cargo hold. Not wanting to share the profits with the captain, he paid the tariff in full.

Immediately, he sent McGough back out, insisting she have an invite to dine with him alone tonight.

Joseph waited impatiently at his table. Then the mysterious focal point of last night’s dining room arrived; smartly dressed, demure but with a fancy that carried a stately gravitas. She was beautiful but her introduction was severe and unsettled Joseph. Steeling himself to solving last night’s quandary, he endeavoured to charm her and win her over.

She told Joseph her name was Selene. Joseph refused to believe her. He told her he could tell she was Peruvian from the knowledge he had gained on his travels. She smiled at the attention and explained her name meant princess in her language but was too hard to pronounce in his. Asking why she chose the name Selene, she smiled again, saying her name also meant moon. She learnt that Selene was a goddess of the moon, in some of the strange countries where she about to set foot for the first time.

Joseph pushed her, for her native name but she refused. Just then, last night’s mysterious dish started to arrive at all the tables and glorious sounds filled the dining room. Just as Joseph reached out for his plate. Selene’s arm spun up and knocked the plate from the server’s arm. She apologised profusely, insisting on going to the kitchen herself to get him another portion. Joseph was confused, the more he unwrapped the mystery that was Selene the larger in complexity she grew. She returned swiftly with another portion and quickly Joseph’s attention snapped back into the rocking dining room. He gazed at her and knew he was in love; a new sensation for the serious young man. Trying the replacement dish, his brain literally exploded with sensation and delight. What was it? Selene informed him he was trying chocolate cake.

Now you need to understand the history of chocolate.

Chocolate is made from the cocoa bean. Originally, a bitter drink or an addition to savoury meat dishes in old South American cultures. The Spanish Conquistadors added spices and sugar to create a hot beverage. Then over the last fifty years in Europe, high end, boutique, hot chocolate houses only catering for the wealthy popped up everywhere. It was an extremely elite society with money to burn that frequented these establishments. Edible chocolate was a crazy half-baked experiment that existed almost nowhere. Chocolate cake did not exist.

After eating this incredible dish, Joseph felt his head spin. The flavour in his mouth mimicked this love in his heart. The rest of the evening was a delight. After dinner, they walked the decks under the moonlight. He escorted her beck to her quarters and requested an invite to meet her patient in the morning and the promise of the secret to this wonderful dish of ‘chocolate cake’. That evening Joseph had his second restless night.

The following morning, despite very little sleep he returned to the quarters booked by the elusive patient, Cortez. Selene was surprised to see him and protective of her charge. She informed Joseph that the captain wanted her to assist in the galley with making more cake. She was at a loss because the patient needed attention. Joseph gained access through difficult persuasion. Outraged by what he found; a sick sweating man with no air and rotting into his bed. He insisted that all four members of the Cortez party, the patient, Selene and two rather huge man servants move to the state rooms of his huge suite. Sending Selene off to fulfil the captain’s wishes, he had McGough take care of everything. Joseph took charge of the recovering Cortez.

These sections of the journals are dry and trivial and give little valuable information. So I must be careful not to run away with the story. He does at one point though refer to Cortez’s eyes as the devil’s. He had burns covering sixty per cent of his body and should by all accounts be dead. The secret to his survival was apparently the extraordinary cake and was achieved by the miraculous cooking of Selene. This was apparently how the captain discovered the dish that was currently being enjoyed by the whole ship. That secret was in their cargo. A mysterious powder from South America. Now modern readers, will be thinking of something elicit but you would be wrong. Their cargo was half cocoa powder and half another by product, cocoa butter. The secret to edible chocolate was a combination of the two.

Now remember, this was a time of carefully orchestrated interactions between the sexes so by sharing the suite, Joseph gained an unrivalled access to the beautiful nurse which would not have been possible within other areas of society. These pages are full of detailed notes about producing cocoa powder and cocoa butter. All learnt from Cortez. Mixed with conversations of night time walks along the decks with the captivating Selene. These primarily focused on his need to learn her native name and her continual denial; all formal descriptions of an infantile guessing game. Within Joseph's strict gentlemanly descriptions, the blossoming of his love was hard to contain.

Due to the fame that Selene’s cake had given her on ship they had their meals in the cabin; a chance for her to have some peace. Joseph failed to notice that the ship’s crew and passengers were sick. The captain had ascribed it to faulty fresh water. Due to the resurrection of Cortez. He ordered extra rations of the cake to be made. He also ordered everyone to eat more. Joseph only noticed on the eleventh night when his manservant, McGough, was not able to leave his bed. He had been consumed with writing down Cortez’s account and equally hypnotised by Selene's conversations. Joseph had become deaf to the real world..

Joseph shared his concerns with Selene on their moonlit walk. Selene without saying a word climbed into one of the life rafts. Concerned Joseph followed her in. Selene kissed him. A scandalous action for the time. Breathless and unable to speak he listened as Selene told him how Cortez and his men had ravaged her village in the Amazon, stealing the secrets of edible chocolate. Joseph’s heart broke as she described Cortez’s insane cruelty. The wounds he had sustained happened by accident as he burnt the settlement to the ground.

Selene then removed Joseph’s journals from her bag and handed them to him. She then left, asking him to wait. Alarmed, Joseph felt the boat swing out over the sea. He called to Selene and asked why. She called back that her name was not Selene but her native name was Killa, the goddess of the moon and a princess to her culture. She professed her love for Joseph and released him into the sea.

With so many crew sick there was no one to stop what she did. Joseph drifted out away from the ship and to his shock he watched the ship explode into a fireball and sink below the waves.

Twelve days later Joseph was found alive by a passing ship off the coast of Ireland and that was the end of this unbelievable strange tale.

Any trustworthy historian would tell you the story was fake; no such ship existed, it is fantasy.

Other web based investigators suggest that Joseph was none other than Joseph Storrs Fry II. The inventor in 1850 of the Fry’s Chocolate Cream. The world’s first mass produced chocolate bar. Using a Watt’s Steam Engine and the endless notes found in the journals combining some basic industrialisation, it has a ring of truth.

This Joseph never married, a serious man, maybe because of a love he lost on a ship’s journey but he did go on to be the first Chocolate King.

So what of the SS Montezuma? The ship only mentioned in whispers that never ever existed. Well an incredibly inventive American Billionaire in his deep-sea explorer yacht discovered a wreck exactly where it should be, based on the investigation of the same said journals. He publishes his findings next week.

Stranger truths are always lost and with them our histories forever change.