THE SANDALWOODERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17523, 5 July 1917, Page 8

THE SANDALWOODERS.

ADVENTURERS OF THE SOUTH SEAS.

AN ANCIENT MARINER'S MEMORIES.

(By JAMES COWAN). ... An old mim'e past's a strange thing, for it Dover loaves his mind, And I wm> in ckoains, awhilcs, tho sun's disc dipping rod, And Iho tall ship, under topsails, swaying in past XiTger Head. —John M&aefio'.d (" Spanish "Wafers. ) On a. quiet little farm that lies.with a gentle tilt northward in the South Auckland Country, lives a wonderfully halo old gentleman nennng his nineties, who is, to the best of my belief, tho very last of the Pacific sandalwoodcrs in these islands. He is a man of amazing memories of the sea; he can speak from personal experience of phases ot sailoring life that are now utterly extinct. Ho has served in an oldfashioned East Indiaman ; he has loaded his carronades for defence .against Chinese, wrote*; he has traded for sandalwood in the Black Islands of Melanesia with a pistol in his belt and a cutlass bv his side; he has commanded a frifcate-built Blnckwall liner of the stu'n'-sail-boom era, carrying passengers and gold from the \ ictonan d:ggings, and has raced China tea-cuppers. Wise beyond most men in the wisdom of the sea, he is also an artist of ships and tho sea, and his brush is still busy —or at any rate was a few weeks ago—on canvases of nautical subjects. This grand old man of the sea-life of nearly three fenerations ago is Captain Matthew Clavton, of Mnnurewa, one timo Surveyor for Lloyd's and Examiner of Musters and Mates at_ Auckland. A sailor'of many and varied adventures, the most adventurous times of his life were tho days when ho. went trading among tho "savages of the Western Pacific, when the islands of the Great South 'Sea were still No Man's Land, when piracy was not extinct about the Spanish-American coast, _ and when every sailor had on occasions to bo a fighting man. That was a very long time ago, long before steam had invaded this quarter of the globe. Matthew Clayton, who came of an old Sussex sailoring family, went to sea when'ho was a youngster of thirteen; that was in 1844. 'He was in tho barque London, a tcak-bu'lt Indiaman. In June, 1847—exactly seventy years'ago —he found himself in Sydney, "where he shipped aboard the barque Statesman for a cruise to the islands of the We.-tern Pacific. The barque was a British vessel—Clayton never sailed under any flag but the "Old Bed Ensign"—of'3l3 tons, commanded by Captain David Dewar. In her ho served nearly three years, and when he loft ho was acting second mate. Tho Statesman was to load sandalwood in the New Hebrides, and on tho coast of Now Caledonia for China.

Copra is hing of the South Seas today. In the 'forties of last century it was sandalwood that took the adventurous trader in bis little schooner or brig or barque from all quarters of the) world to rove the romantic and dangerous Pacific groups, from the Fiji's to Papua. There were piles of money in the fragrant sandalwood, for there was an eve ••-increasing demand for it in China, but it was a risky affair. Hundreds of lives must have been lost in tho business in tho New Hebrides and Now Caledonia alone. Seldom did a vessel return without a tale of fights with tho savage Melanosinns and ox boats' crews cut off and crews eaten. ' Man Solomon" and tho New Hebrides Kanaka were in their primal savagedom then; even to-day thev nave by no means lost their tas-tc for "long pig." The celebrated Captain "Bobby"' Towns, of Sydney, was the Statesman's agent. He was a great man in the South Sea trade: ho had vessels out all over tho Pacific, chiefly collecting sandalwood. Another prominent man in the trade wjis Mr Paddon, who had a station at Aneityum, in the New Hebrides. Some 'of tho sandalwoodgatherers of that wild epoch had an unhandsome fashion of firing indiscriminately at. natives on the coast, in order to spoil the trade of rivals, hence many " outrages" in retaliation. Towns and Paddon, and their agents and captains, however, had the. reputation of treating tho natives fairly rnd well, as trade went m those days, giving for the coveted wood, blankets and cotton cloth, tobacco and other o;oods. But there were somo who, as Captain Er?kine, of 11.M.5. Havannah, wrote in 1819, conducted the trade & a fashion "in no way creditable to the British flag." Erskine was cruising in iho Pacific in Clayton's tinie, and he has left a record which gives tho names and curious histories of many of the sandalwood ships. Sonicof these trading craft bore names that seem to have fitted their businesses rather well. There was a brig called tho Brigand, which had been engaged in the opium trade in the China Seas, she had seventeen of her crew killed in a little affair at Mare, Loyalty Islands, in the ea.dy 'forties. A Hobart Town sandalwooder of those days wa9 tho barque Spy, another was the cutter Will o' tho Wisp; and there were a colonial brigantiino called the Rover's Bride, a schooner called the Terror, and tho -cutter Phantom. >n .1847—*thc year that Clayton sailed fiom Sydney for the Black Islands—the schooner Vanguard lost her captain and seven men, slaughtered on the

beach whero the French town oi Noumea now stands. At Vate Island. New Hebrides, in the same year, tho crew of the wrecked barque Sovereign wore killed and eaten by tho natives; only one man escaped. Clayton's first port of call in tho sandalwooder was Aneityum,; in the New Hebrides, where a cargo was loaded for 'China. The bartfae sailed for Hongkong, where slio discharged her timber into Jardmo and Matheson's clippors, which took it along tho China coast and distributed it to the various towns. Tho Chinese used it for making coffins for rich men, for incenso making, for ornaments and boxes, and a variety of purposes. The best sandalwood fetched over £4O a ton. Some of the vessels m tho business made big profits; the Sydney brig Julia Percy, for instance, on on© collecting cru'iso bought sixty-five tons of cleaned wood for three kegs of tobacco and three cases of pipes. On one cargo of 183 tons it was reckoned there would be a clear profit of over £llOO. TRADING IN THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS.

Back to Sydney, and tho Statesman was fitted out for a long South Sea, trading cruise. Her trade-room was filled with barter goods—old iron tomahawks, blue beads, common calico of all colours, fishdiooks, tobacco and pipes, cheap knives, and a few old "gaspipe" muskets. Th© crew were all white men, and the ship was Well armed for defence. Muskets, pistols and cutlasses were supplied, with plenty of powder and ball. Tho barquo carried five boats; one was a little sailing yacht about tho size of a ship's long boat; this was for coast-trading Tho Statesman was to pick _ -dp a barquo called tho Elizabeth in the New Hebrides and take her cargo of sandalwood to China, but she searched inside the reefs. Clayton was Mio oldesv. apprentice. island after island without sighting her. At last, on the island of Eromanga, at Dillon's Bay, she found tho Elizabeth's anchors and chain and saw. some canvas in clefts of the reefs; the barquo had been lost in a hurricane with all hands. -j

From tropic island to island tho barque worked her way, among uncharted reefs and through, intricate and perilous passages, tho crew always surrounded by danger afloat or ashore. Indeed, at some islands the boats could not land. At Dillon's Bay the natives were savage beyond description, naked wild fellows armed with clubs and spears and bows and arrows. At Tanna, the most dangerous of all the cannibal islands, the barque got' two or three boat-loads of yams. Clayton and his comrades pulled in as closely to the beach as they deemed safe—dropped th e grapnel, and then backed the boat in. and made th e excited natives swim off with their yams. The " darkies " got on c bhie bead for each yam. At Sandwich Island the barquo sailed into the splendid landlocked harbour called after H.M.S. Havannah. There they witnessed a native battle on the beach; the Kanakas were skirmishing along the waterfront with spears, and firing showers of arrows '.at each other. Next day they began to turn their savage attention towards the ship, and as they were manning their big double canoes and apparently threatening fight, Captain Dewar concluded that there was' not much hope of obtaining sandalwood there. So up came the anchor, and the Statesman, under all sail to royals, soon left the cannibal canoe crews far astern.

COAST-TRADING IN NEW CALEDONIA.

Captain Dewar now set hi 3 course for tho big island of New Caledonia. Not a single white man had settled on tho mainland of tho island in those davs (1S48). Tho only trace of civilisation was on tho Isle of Pines, where a few Roman Catholic missionaries had s-'t up a station iu a savage land. New Caledonia was scarcely known even to tho South Sea sandalwoodcrs. When tho barquo reached the northern coast tho little sailing yacht was hoisted out and rigged for a cruise inside the fringing reefs to the south-east, while the Statesman beat down outside. Clayton was ono of tho boat's crew, with Mr Todd, tho trading master, in charge; all hands wcro armed with muskets, pistols and cutlasses. It was a lively cruiseOnce there was a capsize, and Clayton was picked up just as ho was sinking for the last time. Later, when the ship came inside the reef, there were exciting meetings with the natives, though never a shot was fired. At one place, the gentle New Caledonians brought off a basket of human flesh as a present to the skipper, and were astonished at his refusal of their wellmeant hospitality. Trading for sandalwood was an awkward business in this now field. A na tive whom the barque had picked up as an interpreter was not much use, for there seemed to be a new dinlcei. every twenty or thirty miles. " We"used to show tho natives a piece of sandalwood," says Captain Clayton, "and make them smell it, and get them "o show us where wo could get more like

At the mouth of the Knne River the Statesman camo to an anchor and remained there for some months, for she had hit upon virgin ground for sandalwooding. The captain made the acquaintance of a Kanaka chief named Mango, who proved a capital fellow, friendly and reliable. " Good old Mango." Bays Clayton, " treated us well and kept his word, and ho saved all our lives one day." By arrangement with Mango, mado chiefly by moans of siccus. Captain Dewar had. the sandalwood timber, which grew plentifully inland, brought to a clear level spot on the banks of the river, six miles up-stream. The barque's boat crews pulled up there each morning, calling at a little island on tho way to cook breakfast. On their first trip to the appointed spot, they found little heaps of sandalwood piled along tho bank of tho river, witli the dark owners standing by each heap. A long barbed f.pear was stuck in tho ground, with a piece of tapa—the native cloth mado from the bark of a tree —floating from it as a sign of peace. Tho Statesman's beats' crews wero always on the alert in such a ,lonely spot, where the Natives could _ readily have cut them off from thoir ship. Captain Clayton described to me the methods of those sandalwooding days: "Two boats went up in company, v all armed. T was bow-man in one of the. boats; I had a loaded pistol in my belt and a well-ground cutlass on the thwart, and I stood there with the boat-hook in my hand, ready to shove off into the stream at tho first alarm. Two men in each boat remained at the oars ready to pull out, while tho other two stowed tho wood as it was handed to them by the natives from tho bank. Tiin trading master was the only man who went ashore." In this fashion the timhor-hoats were loaded. As soon as they had all thoy could carry they set oft down stream for the ship. After a while the longboat was got out, rigged as a cutter, and used as an intermediary carrier between the wood-boats and the barque and thus expedited matters. Nevertheless it took several months to fill the ship. The wood was cleaned on board, tho sappy parts and bark ro■nf>vod and tho marketable wood stowod below. THE FEAST IN THE BUSH. Had it not been for their good friend Mango the Kanaka chef, Captain Dewnr and some, if not all, of his crow, might have provided the man-eaters of New Caledonia with a feast on the bushmeu's best-loved dish one clay of that sandalwood-gotting. Mango invited tlu* cvotnin to a big tribal feast, to be held back in tho bush five or six miles from the river. As it turned out, the feast nearly u«veloped :nto ono of the kind poetically described in ' ; The King of the Cannibal Islands "

'•One day the I&ng invited most Of all his subjects to a roast, And half of his wives gave up the ghost For the King of the Cannibal Islands." Only in this case, it would have been the white sailormen who'd have gone into the even. Not that it was Mango's fault, howevjr. The captain decided to show Mango that he trusted him and he accepted the invitation. Two boats' crews rowed up the river, and th* captain, after putting the boats in charge of Clayton and another apprentice, marched off into tho dense tropical juncclo with his men, about a dozen of th'Mn, al! arnied with muskets-. They left Clayton and his companion a loaded muske!> apiece, besides tho t'sual boat arms.

Hour after hour passed. The two young sailors waited for. their comrades on the hot banks of the sharkhaunted river, with tho great bxish very silent and mysterious about them. At last, as a precaution in case tho captain and crew should havo been killed, they both got into the one boat and took it and tho other craft out into the middle of the stream and dropped anchor there. It was getting on' towards evening. , All at onco a musket shot set. the forest echoes going, and in a few moments the captain, the trading master and their men camo trudging out from the bush, all well. As the crews rowed down tho river they, told about the big feast in the forest. There were hundreds of savagely noisy natives there, all armed with spears, clubs ■ and bows and arrows. Mango seemed to be thenhead chief, but " as the feast went on the Kanakas got out of hand. Mango had a big house, with a palisade around it, and taking the sailors in there ho <piietly let them ont by a rear gate with a guide, while the warriors wero feasting, after he had addressed them. He bade his white friends hurry to tho ■ river, and they certainly did. Mango only got his pakehas out Oi tho danger zone in time. His people pursued them, but were too late to overtake them. A little tribal war was the result; the white men concluded that Mango became highly unpopular with tho cannibal gentlemen v>hom ho had baulked of their expected lonn:-pig feast. i -. , The fighting in tho bay settled the

sandalwood-getting. However, the Statesman was now almost a full ship. Fresh water # and fruit were taken in; • two or three spars were cut and; shipped, hatches were secured, boats hoisted in, and then up came the anchor, and the topsails were hoisted to the rousing clmnty of *f Whisky is the life of man—

Whisky for Johnny." rnd north away steered the barque for China. Shanghai was her port this time, with her sweet-scented timber. Those sandalwoodiug days are gone for ever, at any rate anywhere east of Papua and the East Indian Seas They were times of incredible sea-toil ard peril; every crew bad to be ready to fight fo<- its own hand. But the old Statesman had exceptional good fortune, as the venerable sailor likes to recall. She never lost a man in all her Cannibal Islands cruisings. never killed a Kanaka, never even had need to fire a hostile shot. Very tow South Sea men of that day could say that of their trading ventures. '

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