LAWLESS DAYS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 27

LAWLESS DAYS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

Three white men, bound hand-and-foot and weighted with pieces of coral tied to their necks, are thrown to drown in the lagoon at Suwarrow Island, in the South Seas. Urged on by a woman, natives of Manihiki Island have murdered them for a hoard of gold dollars. Her Majesty's Consul at Papeete inquires into it (11 years later, in 1869). His report enriches the hoard of raw material (received by the Mitchell Library a few days ago from Tahiti), which awaits historians of an earlier Australia and the picturesque South Pacific, says the "Sydney Morning Herald." The three adventurers who died together in the lagoon foregathered on Suwarrow by perilous ways. They were French Joe, Joseph Bird, and Thomas Charlton. After many wanderings in the South Seas, the Frenchman was left, for an unknown reason, by the Tickler, an American ship, on Suwarrow Island. Charlton, who came from Philadelphia, was mate of the schooner Rob Roy, of Tahiti. He was wrecked in 1856 on Manihiki Island, and, while attempting a passage to Raka Anga, in a canoe with 11 natives, was driven on to Suwarrow. Bird, an Irishman (who described himself as an American citizen), was on the brig Chatham, Captain Lamont, when she was wrecked, in 1852, on Penrhyn Island. Bird was given a wife by the islanders, but after much other bad behaviour he shot her in the leg, and he was placed on the vessel Caroline Hort to be taken to the Navigator Islands. Making his way back to Penrhyn, he was engaged by Captain Sustenance, of the Staghorn, with forty natives to gather pearl shell at Suwarrow. When the Staghorn next called at the island, the master was told by the Penrhyn and Manihiki people that the

three white men had left in one of their boats. Later, however, the Consul writes, "Captain Sustenance was, it is said, informed that the story about the three white men having left Suwarrow together in a boat was a fabrication, the islanders having in reality killed all three of them and invented the tale of their departure." The real story was chat "Bird had quarrelled with one of the natives about a woman, and had fired upon the native, whereupon the Islanders proceeded to seize Bird and bind him. Charlton, having interfered in defence of Bird, was also bound, as was afterwards the third white man, the Frenchman Joe; and all three of them, bound hand and foot, were then thrown into the lagoon of the island and drowned." Pieces of coral were tied to their The Consul adds that Captain Sustenance, about 1858, took two or three natives, thought to have had a part in the killing, to Sydney, where he reported the affair to the authorities. But the natives seem to have been allowed to return to their island. Captain H. B. Sterndale, writing to the Consul from Raka Anga in December, 1868, offered to point out several natives, then living there, as survivors of those who had killed the white men. A woman, the widow of a Manihiki man, told him that she had encouraged the Manihiki natives to kill the whites for their money—several thousand dollars in gold—and had herself got the largest share of it. "The malefactors are looked upon as clever and successful people," he remarks. j The Consul adds: "It would be difficult to suggest to the British Government to take any action in the matter, especially as the violent character and repeated outrageous acts of the only British subject among the victims appears to be notoriously remembered up to the present day."