FIFTY YEARS IN PACIFIC.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 30 April 1926, Page 2

FIFTY YEARS IN PACIFIC.

TRADER'S REMINISCENCES. ' . WILD LIFE IN THE ISLANDS. V During his half-century in ihe Da-1 cific Mr G. E. L. Westbrook has hobnobbed -with,royalty, met most (of the people who have gained Sou\lh Sea fame, and, if he did not knov Bully Hayes, tlie last of the pirates* he knew Ihe niaii .who pushed :lijnn Qver the side of the Lotus and. fed \ him to the sharks (says the Auckland “Star”). Mr Westbrook has a most amazing store of Island memories of people and places, and the ■ fact that he links up with people who have long ago found the Happy Isles, or gone in the other direction, is accounted for by the early start lie made in his rovings. Fortyeight years ago he arrived, in Auckland as an apprentice of the wellknown barque Famerioth, “hopped ; it/’ and after about six months in New Zealand, sailed away to the

South Seas, where, he has wandered 1 ever since. There are few groups he [ does not know, and when he first J struck most of them it was before the-days-of missionaries and Governments; when a man had to depend on his own wit and his owu right arm if he -wanted to keep his head on his shoulders. Air Westbrook iirst went down to the Islands in the brig, Vision, a very well-known trader -in the seventies. with Mr George Cozens, who is still living in Auckland, and at the great age of eighty-six. is about the last ot. the old-time South Sea traders. Air Westbrook was at one tiriie one of Henderson and Al’Failane’s traders on different islands, and, like-St. Paul, he was often in shipwreck; and perils of the,, deep. On one occasion.he was the only Englishman on a German schooner which was deliberately cast away on one of the Ellis Group, away back in 1880, and' he was marooned lor four and a-half months, before being taken off by the, old Ika/Vuka. a noted Auckland trader of those days. The skipper of the German boat went mad, the mate started shooting, and altogether the solitary Englishman had a rough time of it, ns they suspected! he intended to give the, show away when he got back to civilization. Some Thrilling Stories.He has some thrilling stories of experiences in hurricanes, including that famous one which wrecked so many men-o’-war at Apia, and from which the Calliope was tlie only one to escape. Air Westbrook was then on Wallis Island, where they had .wind .and sea, whereas at Samoa the mountainous sea seems to have been- the most outstanding feature to do most of the damage.' On Wallis Island!,the devastation was so complete that the natives had to be fed -for two veara afterwards. When Air Westbrook first knew tlie Islands communication was by means of the sailing vessels and lie recalls such .well-known names as those of,, tlie. brig Vision, the brigantine Rvno, the schooner Belle Brandon, the-barque India the schooner Three Cheers, tlie little Ada C. Owens, and the green-painted! schooner Alazeppn, with her black West Indian "skipper, who used to make remarkable passages. A Famous Autocrat, In the old days the “big Chief” in the Islands was a sort of sole proprietor. and ruled thousands, as simply as a sergeant-major handles a batch of recruits. One of the most famous of these old! autocrats was the old king of Apemama, one-.of the Gilbert Islands, who figures in Stevenson’s now little-read “In -the South Seas.’ The old king weighed about half a ton, ran tlie whole, show single-handed, had only about three men at “court,” all tlie, rest of the functionaries being women; had a gentle habit of calling for his Winchester, when anyone displeased l must have been a-second-hand dealer, for his hobby was collecting the weirdest assortment of bric-a-brac that was ever boused in -a—palace, ranging from patent rat traps to j kitchen stoves—which are nevdr used in such places. His Alnjesty liked dressing up,-sometimes in . women's clothes and! sometimes in an astoun-ding-uniform of liis own . dev’sing. He was so big that the largest European bat that ever drifted, to the Pacific sat on his great bullet head like a thimble on a pumpkin. ' He knew well the mate. of-Bully Hayes’s schooner, the Lotus, a

Dutchman, and heard the story of the end of that notorious hlackhlrder They had a row one day and the Dutchman push-d Hayes overboard among the .sharks. Two Marshall Islandc’-? who were in the crew, wanted to avenge Bully, hut a Samoan who was at the wheel persuaded them that the white men’s quarrel was none of their business, and that is how Bully Hayes went to his account. . Air "Westbrook has been living in Samoa for the past thirty-two va's, ami is low el .wed member of tin Cepiskithc Council. For the Ih-sl time in seventeen, years he has just been on a visit to the land- of his birth, and is now in Auckland on his way hack to Samoa. He experienced much pleasure in seeing London after an absence of forty-eight years, and on this trip he met many interesting people, including old Samoan friends. He met Colonel Logan. first New Zealand Administrator uder the mandate, who is now living in Devonshire; Sir Thomas CussockSmilh,- ormcrly British Consul when the three-Powers held-sway; and in IVndmrg some of the Germans who were deporled durbig the war. He met among other Germans, the former manager of D.HP.G., the big German company. Wherever he went in Germany he met vifq the g tea lest courLcsy and kindness.