IN DAYS OF SAIL

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4282, 29 September 1936, Page 7

IN DAYS OF SAIL

STRANGE DOINGS IN SOUTH SEA ISLANDS i Strange men in the South Sea Islands attracted in the days of sail rough men, slavers, pirates, fugitives from justice, fugitives from duty, fugitives from their own consciences. Woe betide the decent young fellow who went out there to make_ his for- ‘ tune pioneering, as George Westbrook did. If he escaped from devils like Bullv Hayes and Black Tom, it was only to face far greater dangers—tempest and hurricane, the lure of the lotus, and the “ curse of the itching foot.” George Westbrook Jives in Samoa, a man of 77. As a boy from school he sailed from England, a midshipman in the Famenoth, full-rigged emigrant ship bound for Auckland. DESERTED SHIP. At 16 the Islands had him. At that age he had already deserted his ship, established his complete failure as a sea cook on two voyages in the Wanderer under Portuguese Joe Silva, and had fallen into the clutches of Black Tom at Arnho, in the Marshall islands. Black Tom had been deported from Samoa for robbery, and now he was operating a trading station at Arnho. He was a giant—at least 6ft 7in in height, muscled like a tiger, and ho weighed more than 19st. Westbrook had shipped as fourth hand in the brig Vision, and at Arnho Black Tom had offered a lucrative position ashore, which Westbrook accepted. Here began a series of adventures as strange and as thrilling as ever held children from play or old men from the chimney corner. The story is set down for the first time, as George Westbrook tells it, by Julian Dana, in ‘ Gods W ho Die.’ Black Tom was a negro born into slavery in the State of Delaware (U.S.A.). He escaped after he had been flogged for insolence and indolence, and in course of time he found himself in Samoa, carrying with him a selection of the most valuable possessions of the officers of the ship from which he had deserted. Soon he settled down to a life of craft and theft under cover of the management of a sailors’ boarding house. He kept fowls, rabbits, and pigs, and though he gave his boarders meat twice a day—thus attracting all the custom from the opposition house, which had meat only twice a week —his stock never dwindled. When a pig began squealing at night Tom’s boarders always glanced at one another in silent approbation; they would be certain of pork chops for breakfast. Black Tom’s honesty was no concern of theirs. “ Misfortune was to catch up with the sticky-fin-gered pig stealer, however,” Mr Dana tells. ‘‘His boarders left him in a solid body when Elisha Hamilton, the pilot, caught him skinning the fine black retriever that Hamilton had just paid a high .price for to a Sydney trader.” X This, then, was the old rogue whose books Westbrook agreed to keep for £5 a month, in addition to board and lodging. “At the end of the first month, when I asked for my wages, lie informed me that I was mistaken,” Westbrook told Dana. “ What he really meant was five dollars a month. Also he called to my astounded attention that I was already overdrawn.”

ESCAPE

Westbrook bided his time to escape from Black Tom, only to tumble into other pitfalls laid by man or by Nature. King Lesuela of Arnho adopted him as a son, and there he first felt the insidious call to “go native” and to abandon a white man’s life for the lotus life of an islander. Often he felt that call later, but every time circumstance helped Ipm to overcome the drag of it. On this first occasion circumstances took shape as Captain Harris, of the Belle Brandon, who sailed him away to Pingalap, where he took temporary charge of a trading station. While he was there he witnessed the conversion of the whole community from paganism to Christianity by the recovery of their king from a severe illness. The ministrations of the “ devil doctors ” had been of no avail, but two young converts administered simple remedies which they had received from the white missionaries and prayed long and earnestly over him, and the king recovered. Christianity was the only religion on Pingalap thenceforward. It must not be gathered from the reminiscence that Westbrook was a champion of missionaries. His book contains some very severe indictments of them, based principally upon the effects of missionary enterprise upon the customs and life of the people of the islands. Incidentally, Westbrook was a strict Methodist, but his misquotations from Sankey’s hymn book -suggest that at the time of telling the story his recollection of hymns had become rather rusty. In general, Westbrook has a kinder word for the notorious Bully Hayes than for the missionaries. “The man has become a legendary rascal of various pleasing accomplishments and sundry hellish tendencies,” Westbrook tells Dana. “It would be better to leave him thus. ... 1 should not have you see his fat face filled with terror" his wheedling voice shrilling up to tropic blue, his brow moist with the sweat of losing battle. I should not let you see Peter Radeck, the Hollander, belaying pin in hand, his usually placid blue eyes flecked with fury, struggling with a shrieking coward on a rolling ship’s deck. I should not let you visualise this scene as Bully Hayes’s last moment. ...” A hurricane robbed Westbrook of his chance of returning to Britain. He lost all his possessions and barely escaped with his life when the ship in which he was returing to Auckland from the islands was wrecked, and vividly he tells the story. He worked his passage to Auckland after ha-had been marooned on an island for months. He hawked medicines, joined a showman’s syndicate to exhibit a faked suit of Ned Kelly’s' armour, and entered into a partnership to exploit a “ burial society.” , A few days after he had left the partnership to return to the islands his partners were arrested and imprisoned for fraud. He narrowly escaped matrimony also on that visit to Auckland. and with a virago, who was incautious enough to display her temper a fortnight too early. ... So he returned to the safety of the hurricanes and the pirates and the cannibals of the islands, and “ the curse of the itching foot.” He still lives in Samoa.