Pacific atoll springboard for Englishman’s dynasty

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 32

Pacific atoll springboard for Englishman’s dynasty

By

GARRY ARTHUR

Palmerston Island, one of the most isolated specks in the whole Pacific Ocean, pops into the news only rarely, and usually because it needs help. Last month its name appeared again when the Rev. William Marsters, titular head of the island’s 54 inhabitants, was in Wellington seeking aid to develop a fishing industry.

Palmerston is a coral atoll hardly rippling the surface of the sea half-way between the northern and southern groups of the Cook Islands. Apart from an artificial mound, none of its six sandy islets is more than three metres above sea level, and its total land area is only three square kilometres. But Palmerston has a very

colourful history for all that. An English adventurer, William Marsters, founded a dynasty there which he ruled with a rod of iron, and his numerous descendants have become so renowned for their seamanship that it is said no boat plies that part of the Pacific without a Marsters in the crew.

Marsters’ story was told in 1973 in the book “Sisters in the Sun” by A. S. Helm and W. H. Percival. The "sisters” of the title are Palmerston Island and the equally isolated tiny atoll of Suwarrow, 460 kilometres to the north.

Palmerston, named by Captain Cook after a British politician of his day, is a handful of sandy islets whose number vary according to the whims of the hurricanes which plague the area. The highest spot on the atoll is six metres above sea level, only because it was built up with coral dug out to make a taro garden. The islanders call it “The Mountain,” and retreat to its summit when they look like being washed away.

William Marsters was a Gloucestershire seaman, whaler, shipwright, and gold prospector who jumped ship in the northern Cook Islands in 1850. He married the chief’s daughter on Penrhyn Island. About 1863 he arrived on Palmerston and set about founding a dynasty. He had four wives in all, who produced 17 children, and by the fifth generation there were more than 1000 in the clan, divided into three principal families.

An autocratic patriarch, he controlled the tiny atoll with stem rules. Any inhabitants he considered to be shirkers were banished to Rarotonga or elsewhere. But he provided for his large entourage, planting coconuts as a source of food and drink, and for future income from copra. He permitted marriage only between half-brothers

and sisters, and new blood was introduced by encouraging marriages with islanders from other parts of the Cook group. A skilled carpenter, William Marsters built the only structure on Palmerston which has weathered a hundred years of hurricanes almost unmoved. It is his own house, built from 44cm square ship’s timbers salvaged from ships wrecked on the reef.

He sank the timbers four metres into the coral sand as pole foundations and wall studs, and bolted 30cm by 15cm timbers to them to form the walls. The roof he protected with 25cm by scm sarking With iron nailed on top.

In the big blow of 1926 the entire settlement was swept out to sea — except for William Marsters’ house, which was damaged but unmoved, and the church which had been lifted by the storm and carried 200 yards. Unfortunately, the Marsters family diaries and their complicated genealogical records were all lost in the hurricane. The Cook Island Christian Church is Palmerston’s only other substantial building. It, too, was built from timber salvaged from a shipwreck — that of a French ship, La Dour D’Auvergne. in 1914. Deck timbers form the floor, and cabin doors joined edge to edge form the walls. The steeply slanting ship’s gangway leads to the pulpit. Nearby, one of the ship’s pumps serves the village well. Marsters was described by a minister who visited Palmerston in the 1870 s as a short well-set-up man of about 60, very active but with an “uneasy expression of countenance.”

He said Marsters always carried a loaded revolver with him. In his book "Jottings in the Pacific,” the Rev. William Gill explains: “A few years previously a plot had been laid to kill Marsters while asleep and to

drown his children in the lagoon. The women were engaged in the p10t... This may have accounted for the presence of two large fierce dogs. Marsters’ word is law, and must be implicitly obeyed.”

Marsters laid down laws to establish land rights for the three branches of his family over the 357 acres of Palmerston Island. He also laid down the law on the division of proceeds from the sale of copra. Palmerston Island is such an insignificant speck that it is hardly known, even in New Zealand. For a long time no-one could find it either. Ships making for Palmerston had to beat up and down looking for it, until it was discovered by the New Zealand survey ship H.M.N.Z.S. Lachlan in 1969 that Captain Cook had mistaken its position by about 14 kilometres when he first took a fix on its position in 1774.

The Rev. William Marsters, great-grandson of the founder, has been looking for New Zealand help in developing the island’s fishing potential. Already this year, he says, the island has earned $14,500 from three tonnes of fish taken to Rarotonga in a ship he chartered for the purpose.

Fish have always been Palmerston Island’s only rich natural resource. The lagoon has a very large fish population and. the waters off the reef abound in deep-water species. Smoked fish has been an irregular source of income since the early days of settlement 1 — irregular because of the uncertainity of transport. Pearlshell oysters were introduced to the lagoon in 1957, and in 1970 another commercially valuable shellfish, troqhus, was planted on the reef. Helm and Percival predicted in their book that Palmerston Island could become one of the big game-fishing islands of the Cook group, with keen fishermen based ashore going out each day to tiy their luck. The Marsters have shipped

crayfish to Rarotonga in the past and found a ready market there. But shipping is so uncertain that opportunities have been lost on the whim of a ship’s master. In 1970 the islanders collected 300 large crayfish to take out to an expected ship for sale in Rarotonga, but the vessel by-passed Palmerston and the crayfish stayed on the atoll. Turtles are another potential source of wealth from the sea around the island. “Sisters in the Sea” records that the islanders sometimes catch turtles on fine moonlit nights by chasing them into caves where they sleep, catching them by a flipper and steering them back to the surface. In 1958 green turtles were captured for breeding in captivity and 30 were raised to eating size. The shells were polished and sold in Rarotonga.

Arthur Helm, one of the coauthors of the book about the islands, is a former general manager of the Cook Islands Tourist Corporation. He has maintained his interest in Palmerston and was instrumental in getting the atoll its first motor vehicle — a tractor supplied by the Rotary Club of Levin. He says that the Rev. William Marsters was formerly chief minister of religion in Rarotonga, but gave up his position to return to Palmerston and lead his people.

Foreign Affairs say they had to send Mr Marsters away emptyhanded. They cannot deal directly with the individual islands of the Cook Group, and their aid is channelled through the Cook Islands Ministry of Economic Development. Mr Marsters had said that an ice machine provided by New Zealand in 1981 had been removed two years later by the Cook Islands Government. Foreign Affairs say that once aid has been delivered, priorities in receiving country can change. Mr Marsters was advised to talk to some of the voluntary agencies that assist the Pacific Island countries.