Tales from the Quarterdeck

Category: South Pacific Islands

  • Betrayal in Paradise: The Phoebe’s Final Voyage

    In August 1828, the then Governor of NSW, Ralph Darling, received a tersely worded letter from the paramount chief of Huahine in the Society Islands, present-day French Polynesia. In it, Queen Maihara, through missionary intermediaries, implored him to send a ship and “fetch these thieves and take them back again to Botany Bay.”1

    The thieves she referred to were escaped convicts who had fled New South Wales on the 24-ton cutter Phoebe. And they were quite likely the first escaped convicts to reach any of the Pacific Islands.

    Early on the morning of 15 December 1827, fifteen convicts boarded the small cutter moored in the Shoalhaven River and forced the three-man crew to sail her out the heads into open water. The crew were then ordered into a dinghy and returned to shore.  

    The runaway’s leader was a prisoner named Frederick Hunter, who had been sent to New South Wales for housebreaking. A former seaman, he assured his comrades they could cross the Pacific Ocean and reach North America, 12,000 km away, in as little as 15 days. Then, relying on just a hand compass and a small-scale nautical chart covering the entire Pacific Ocean, they set out to sea.

    First, they bore due east, bound for New Zealand. There they stopped briefly to add several pigs and a quantity of potatoes to their supplies before setting off on a north-easterly course to cross the Pacific.

    There is no record of their voyage from New Zealand to the Society Islands (French Polynesia).   However, it was likely slow and arduous for it seems most, if not all, with the exception of Hunter himself, had any sailing experience. By the time they reached the Leeward Islands, 4,000 km away, provisions were running low. To extend their remaining rations, Hunter forced six of the runaways ashore. One of those was John Smith, who later said he was thrown overboard near the island of Rioteri, (most likely Raiatea).

    At Maupiti Island, Hunter and his eight remaining men traded the cutter’s cargo of cedar logs for food. But rather than continue on their way to North America, they appear to have remained among the islands of French Polynesia. Their voyage finally ended off Mai’ao Island when the cutter crashed onto a reef and had to be abandoned.   From there, the runaways broke into smaller groups and dispersed themselves across several neighbouring islands.2

    Four of them, possibly including Hunter, made it to Huahine Island where they were made welcome by the Islanders, many of whom were recent converts to Christianity.   But that hospitality ended around July or August 1828 after the convicts ransacked the paramount chief’s home and stole everything of value, including several muskets, a cask of gunpowder and lead shot. They fled the island with their haul in a whaleboat belonging to Reverend Barff, the island’s missionary. A canoe carrying over a dozen men was dispatched to chase down the thieves. But when they caught up to the whaleboat and demanded the return of the stolen property, the runaways opened fire, killing two and wounding six others.3

    HMS Satellite. Courtesy: Royal Museums Greenwich.

    Queen Maihara had had enough.   She wrote to Governor Darling, calling on him to apprehend the escaped convicts terrorising her people.    In December, Darling dispatched Commander John Laws and HMS Satellite to the South Pacific to round up the troublemakers.      The Satellite found six of the runaways and took them into custody.   As for the men who ransacked Queen Maihara’s house, killed two of her people and wounded six others, they were reported to have made for Tongatabu, present-day Tonga, some 2,000 kilometres away.   However, when the Satellite pulled in there, Captain Law learned that a boat and men matching their description had landed in “great distress” on one of the Navigator Islands, present-day Samoa.   He was also told that two of the men he was looking for had already been killed and there was little likelihood that the other two would have left the island alive.    With his mission complete, Commander Law returned to Sydney with his six prisoners in chains to stand trial.4

    As the trial date approached, the Attorney General decided not to charge the prisoners with the capital crime of piracy as they had not seized the Phoebe “on the high seas,” but in the sheltered waters of the Shoalhaven River.    He felt there was a chance the prosecution would not get a conviction based on that technicality. So, instead, the authorities charged them with the lesser crime of stealing the cutter and its cargo of 8,000 feet of cedar logs. Found guilty, five were sentenced to seven years’ transportation. The sixth prisoner, John Smith, who claimed to have been forced to join the bolters, was released after testifying against the others.

    SOURCES

    1.    Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.

    2.   Evidence provided by John Smith during the trial of other runaways. Sydney Monitor, 8 Jun 1829, p. 8.

    3.   Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.

    4.   Letter from Commander Laws HMS Satellite to Secretary Croker dated 11 Mar 1829, 1/14 HRA, p. 741.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • Tales from the Quarterdeck

    Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past

    The melancholy loss of H.M.S Sirius off Norfolk Island by George. Raper. Source National Library of Australia 136507434-1

    I have just launched a new book titled Tales from the Quarterdeck: Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past. Sixty of the most popular posts have been reedited. In some cases, I’ve rewritten a couple and updated a few where new information has come to light since first writing them.

    For those who would value ready access to the stories in their bookcase, Tales from the Quarterdeck is available in Kindle ebook and paperback formats through Amazon.

    The stories are organised in chronological order, starting with the Tryall shipwreck off the Western Australian coast in 1622, and finishing with the Second World War exploits of the Krait. See below for a full list of the stories covered in the book.

    Sydney Gazette 22 May 1808, p. 2.

    1622 – The Tryall: Australia’s earliest shipwreck

    1629 – The Batavia Tragedy

    1688 – William Dampier: Navigator, naturalist, writer, pirate

    1770  – The Endeavour’s Crappy Repair

    1788 – Loss of La Astrolabe and La Boussole, a 40-Year Mystery                        

    1789 – Bligh’s Epic Voyage to Timor

    1789 – HMS Guardian: All Hands to the Pumps

    1790 – The Loss of HMS Sirius

    1790 – Sydney’s First Desperate Escape

    1791 – HMS Pandora: Queensland’s earliest recorded Shipwreck

    1791 – William Bryant’s Great Escape

    1797 – The Loss of the Sydney Cove

    1803 – Loss of HMS Porpoise

    1808 – Robert Stewart and the Seizure of the Harrington

    1814 – Wreck of the Morning Star

    1816 – The Life and Loss of HMSC Mermaid

    1824 – The Brig Amity’s Amazing Career

    1829 – The Cyprus mutiny 

    1831 – The Caledonia’s perilous last voyage

    1833 – The Badger’s Textbook Escape

    1835 – The Loss of the Convict Ship Neva

    1835 – The Post Office in the middle of nowhere

    1835 – The Tragic Loss of George III

    1845 – The Cataraqui: Australia’s worst shipwreck

    1846 – The Peruvian’s Lone Survivor

    1847 – The Foundering of the Sovereign

    1850 – The Loss of the Enchantress: A first-hand account

    1851 – The Countess of Minto’s brush with Disaster

    1852 – The Bourneuf’s Tragic Last Voyage

    1852 – The Nelson Gold Heist

    Woodbury, Walter B. (Walter Bentley), 1834-1885. Hamlet’s Ghost, Sourabaya [Surabaya], Java [Boat with Passengers and Crew], ca. 1865. Walter B. Woodbury Photograph Collection (PH 003). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

    1854 – Bato to the Rescue 

    1854 – HMS Torch and the rescue of the Ningpo

    1856 – The Loss of the Duroc and the Rise of La Deliverance

    1858 – The Loss of the Saint Paul and its Horrific Aftermath

    1858 – Narcisse Pelletier, An Extraordinary Tale of Survival

    1859 – The Indian Queen’s Icy Encounter

    1859 – The Sapphire and Marina

    1863 – The loss of the Grafton: Marooned for twenty months

    1864 – The Invercauld shipwreck

    1865 – The CSS Shenandoah: Victoria’s link to the American Civil War

    1866 – The Loss of the SS Cawarra: Bad luck or an avoidable tragedy?

    1868 – The Bogus Count and Hamlet’s Ghost

    1871 – The Mystery of the Peri

    1872 – The Loss of the Maria, A Cautionary Tale

    1875 – The Tragedy behind the Gothenburg Medals

    1876 – The Catalpa rescue

    1876 – The Banshee’s Terrible Loss

    1878 – The Loch Ard Tragedy

    1884 – The Macabre case of the Mignonette

    1885 – The Douro and its Piratical Captain

    1889 – The Windjammer Grace Harwar

    1891 – The Spanish Silver of Torres Strait

    1893 – The Foundering of the SS Alert

    1895 – The Norna and the Conman Commodore

    1899 – Cyclone Mahina

    1911 – The Loss of the Mandalay

    1918 – The Orete’s Robinson Crusoe-like Castaway

    1935 – The Life and Loss of  the SS Maheno

    1943 – Surviving the Centaur Sinking

    1943 – The Amazing Krait

  • The Loss of the Duroc and the rise of la Deliverance

    The French steamer Duroc wrecked on Mellish Reef. Source: Wikicommons.

       On the night of 12-13 August 1856, the French Naval steam corvette Duroc was wrecked on Mellish Reef about 800 km off the Queensland coast. After the ship ran aground, her passengers and crew, numbering 70 people, made it onto a small sand cay where they were safe for the time being. However, they were stranded far from regular shipping channels, and the chance of their being rescued was remote. Captain Vissiere thought their only chance of getting off the islet was to build a new boat from the wreckage of the old.

       The Duroc had set off from Port de France (Noumea), New Caledonia, five days earlier, but on that night she ran aground on a submerged coral reef and could not get off. Each passing swell pounded the hull onto the reef, and she began taking on water. Fearing the ship might break apart during the night, Captain Vissiere ordered the crew to start bringing all stores, provisions, and water casks up on deck. He also had the four lifeboats prepared in case they had to abandon ship during the night. Then Vissiere had an anxious wait until morning, when he could better assess their situation.   

    Daylight revealed the ship was well and truly lodged on the reef, and they were surrounded by breaking seas. But about four kilometres away, there was a small, low-lying sandy islet which seemed to offer a place of refuge. So began the laborious task of ferrying all the ship’s stores and personnel to dry land. Over the next 10 days, they stripped the Duroc of its masts, bowsprit, sails, spars, blacksmith’s forge, a water distillation plant and the cook’s oven. By 23 August, they had emptied the stranded vessel of anything useful and established a comfortable camp on the tiny cay. Captain Vissiere was satisfied that their immediate survival was assured, but they were stranded nearly 800 km from the nearest land, and rescue seemed unlikely.

    Survivors of the wrecked Duroc on Mellish Reef building the La Deliverance. Source: Wikicommons.

       Vissiere prided himself on being a competent master mariner, and he could not account for how his ship had run aground. He took several unhurried astrological observations on the island and would later claim that the reef he had struck was, in fact, some distance from where it was laid down on his chart. Feeling vindicated, the captain then turned his mind to finding a way back to civilisation, for not only was he responsible for his crew, but his wife and baby daughter accompanied him.

       Captain Vissiere felt that his best course of action would be to make for Australia’s east coast, where he could expect to find help from a passing ship. However, the lifeboats could carry only a fraction of those stranded on the small island. So, Captain Vissiere opted to send his First Mate, Lieutenant Vaisseau, off with the three largest boats and about half the crew. He would remain on the island with his wife, daughter, and about 30 others. They would construct a new vessel from the timber they had salvaged from the Duroc and make their escape if no one had come for them in the interim.   

    The three boats set off on 25 August with instructions to make for Cape Tribulation, where, with any luck, they would meet a British ship sailing the Great Barrier Reef’s inner passage. Cape Tribulation was probably chosen because it was easily recognisable and it was where the reef pinched in close to the coast, funnelling any passing ships close to land.

    Mellish Reef. Courtesy Google Maps

       After setting off from Mellish Reef, the three boats encountered rough weather, which threatened to capsize the heavily overloaded craft. Lt Vaisseau tried tethering the three boats together so they would not become separated, but in the rough seas, this proved dangerous, and the lines were cut. After weathering the conditions for two days, Vaisseau decided they should jettison everything non-essential to lighten the load and raise their freeboard.

       Then, one day, while Lt Vaisseau was taking his noon observation, his boat was struck by a rogue wave, tossing him into the sea. Unable to swim against the current to make it back on board his lifeboat, he would have drowned had another boat trailing astern not been able to come close enough to rescue him. Vaisseau had a lucky escape, for he was only plucked from the water as his strength was beginning to fail him.

       After five days at sea, on the evening of 30 August, they crossed through the Great Barrier Reef near Cape Tribulation and anchored in calm waters for the night. The men thought the worst of the ordeal was behind them, and they would soon fall in with a passing ship. Lt Vaisseau noted they still had 72 kgs of sea biscuits, 20 litres of brandy and 60 litres of wine when they reached the Australian coast. However, shared among 36 hungry men, that would last them only another few days.

       The next day, they made land, filled their water casks, and then bore north, hugging the shore, pushed along by the prevailing southerly winds. They stopped each night in the lee of islands, foraged for roots, greens and shellfish, and cast out lines hoping to catch fish. They only delved into the supply of sea biscuits when their efforts failed to find enough food.

       By 9 September, they had reached Albany Island in the Torres Strait. They continued sailing past Booby Island, unaware that there was an emergency store of food and water there to aid shipwrecked sailors. Having sighted not a single ship while off the Australian coast, they ventured out into the Arafura Sea. Lt Vaisseau decided they should head for the Dutch settlement of Kupang on Timor Island. The three boats finally arrived on the evening of 22 September, and not a moment too soon, for their food had run out several days earlier.

    Construction of a new vessel La Deliverance from the wreckage of the Duroc on Mellish Reef. Source: Wikicommons.

        Meanwhile, Captain Vissiere and the remaining men had been kept busy constructing the new vessel, which they named La Deliverance. Under the directions from the ship’s master carpenter, they sawed the Duroc’s lower masts into planks and fixed them to a frame. The new craft measured 14 metres in length and was completed around the time Lt Vaisseau and his party reached Timor Island.

       On 2 October, La Deliverance was launched, and they sailed away from the island they had called home for the past six weeks. Captain Vissiere intended to make for the Australian mainland, just as his lieutenant and the three boats had done. Once off land, he would decide whether they should head north, through Torres Strait and on to Kupang, or turn south towards Port Curtis (Gladstone), which was the most northerly settlement on the east coast at the time. When he reached the Australian coast, he found the same southerly trade winds that Lt Vaisseau had.

       Despite the seemingly optimistic start, the passage was arduous, hampered as it was by unpredictable weather. Prolonged calms left them stranded for days at a time. The doldrums were only relieved by violent storms that lashed them mercilessly and threatened the safety of the vessel. By the time they were rounding Cape York, the boat was leaking alarmingly. Captain Vissiere pulled in at Albany Island so urgent repairs could be made before they left the relative safety of the Australian mainland. Once the leaks were plugged, they got underway, ready to cross the Arafura Sea. On 30 October, four weeks after setting off from Mellish Reef, La Deliverance sailed into Kupang harbour.   

    Though they suffered greatly during the ordeal, Captain Vissiere did not lose a single person as a result of the wreck or the 4000 km voyages undertaken by the survivors to reach Kupang.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2023.

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  • The Loss of the Saint Paul and its Horrific Aftermath– 1858

    Stranding of the Saint Paul, on Rossel Island. Auguste Hadamard, Le Tour du Monde, volume 4, 1861.

       In September 1858, the French ship Saint Paul was wrecked off Rossel Island, east of mainland New Guinea, with as many as 370 people on board. Of those, fewer than a dozen escaped with their lives. One of those was Narcisse Pelletier, who made it to Cape York, where he lived with the Uutaalnganu people for the next 17 years. His story is told in the next chapter. All the rest were massacred while they waited to be rescued.

       The Saint Paul was a French merchant ship of 620 tons under the command of Captain Emmanuel Pinard. In July 1858, she set sail from Hong Kong with an estimated 350 Chinese passengers bound for Sydney to try their luck on the New South Wales goldfields.

       The ship made slow progress from the outset due to adverse weather conditions. By the time she was somewhere north of New Guinea, the captain was concerned they would run out of food before reaching port. Rather than stick to the regular shipping route, east of the Solomon Islands, Captain Pinard chose to shorten his voyage and save time by sailing through the risky reef-strewn waters between the Solomons and New Guinea.

       Unfortunately, the gamble did not pay off. They were plagued by more bad weather, and thick mists enveloped the ship, barring Pinard from making any solar observations so he might accurately plot his position. The captain was sailing blind as he tried to thread his way through the treacherous Louisaide Archipelago when disaster finally struck.

    Saint Paul.

       On the night of 10/11 September, the Saint Paul struck a reef off Rossel Island on the eastern edge of the archipelago. The ship was beyond saving, so the next morning, the passengers were ferried ashore with what stores and provisions could be salvaged.

       They set up camp on a small rocky island about two or three kilometres off Rossel Island. A couple of days later, Pinard sent his first mate with half his crew across to Rossel to look for water. Islanders attacked the water party, and several of Pinard’s men were killed. The rest returned empty-handed.

       Pinard would later report that he then took the longboat crewed by most of the surviving seamen and set off for the Australian mainland to find help. He also claimed that he had only done so after consulting with his Chinese passengers and receiving their approval. Leaving behind most of the food, firearms and the second boat, he and his men set off. Years later, the cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier would contradict his captain’s statement, claiming they had fled in the dead of night, leaving the Chinese passengers to their fate.

       Pinard and his crew, including Pelletier, landed near Cape Direction after a nearly two-week passage. There, they received food and water from the local Uutaalnganu people before putting back out to sea in their boat. However, when they left, Pelletier was not with them. For some reason, he had been deliberately left behind.

    The crew of the Saint-Paul attacked by natives of Rossel Island. Auguste Hadamard, Le Tour du Monde, volume 4, 1861.

          Meanwhile, Captain Pinard and the Saint Paul’s crew were found by Captain McKellar of the schooner Prince of Denmark. He agreed to take them to the French settlement on New Caledonia, but he could only do so after he first delivered provisions to a party of beche-de-mer fishermen camped on a remote island. By now, the Chinese had been marooned for over a month, and it would be mid-December before the Prince of Denmark reached Port-de-France (Noumea).

       When Pinard finally reported the loss of his ship, the French immediately dispatched a warship to rescue the stranded passengers. The Styx reached Rossel Island on 5 January 1859, but when Lieutenant Grenoult and his men went ashore, they made a shocking discovery. Of the 350 or so people left on the island, they found only one survivor. Through sign language, he seemed to convey to Grenoult that everyone else had been massacred. Still, the shocking details would only come to light after they arrived in Sydney a few weeks later, and an interpreter could translate his story. What follows is drawn from the survivor’s own words and Lt. Grenoult’s official report.

       For a little while, the Islanders left the Saint Paul survivors alone. Then some of the Chinese ventured across to Rossel Island in the Saint Paul’s boat, and they were never seen again. A few days later, several Islanders paddled over to the castaways’ camp, offering food to anyone who returned to Rossel Island with them. When they also failed to return, the Chinese grew suspicious, and no amount of encouragement would compel them to leave their island despite their growing hunger.

    Detail from an 1829 Marine Chart showing Rossel Is. Courtesy NLA.

       Then, after the Chinese had been stranded for about a month and were in a feebly weak state, the Islanders descended on them in large numbers. Some of the castaways put up a fight, but they were easily overpowered. The camp was ransacked, and the Chinese were forced into canoes and taken to Rossel Island. The castaways would soon learn the grisly truth about what had become of those previously missing men.

       The Saint Paul survivors were corralled in a large clearing and carefully watched. Over the next several weeks, a few men at a time were separated from their comrades, beaten to death, butchered, and their flesh cooked over a fire. This horrific spectacle was apparently played out in full view of the dwindling number of survivors.

       By the time the Styx steamed into view, just half a dozen Saint Paul survivors were still alive. On seeing the French warship, the Islanders fled into the mountainous interior, taking with them four Chinese and a European sailor. Only the single man was left behind because he had been too weak to bother with. He had hidden among some rocks until the Styx’s boats landed and the French sailors stepped ashore.   

    Lt Grenoult and his men spent three days on Rossel Island trying to find the others, but without success. The Styx then delivered Captain Pinard, his men, and the young Chinese passenger to Sydney.   

     © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2023.

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  • The Mystery of the Peri

    HMS Basilisk overhauls the Peri off the Queensland coast. Courtesy: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich London.

       In February 1872, the crew of HMS Basilisk found 14 men barely clinging to life on a derelict schooner adrift off the far north Queensland coast. The vessel’s name was not immediately apparent, and none of the survivors spoke English. It was a mystery as to how the ship came to be in those remote northern waters, and one that would take some time to solve.

       The side paddle steamer HMS Basilisk was steaming up the Queensland coast on a three-month cruise around Torres Strait. They were to deliver stores to the government settlement at Somerset, chart several recently reported navigation hazards and generally show the flag in that remote part of the continent.

       When the Basilisk was in the vicinity of Hinchinbrook Island, a lookout sighted a small fore-and-aft schooner off in the distance. It was rare to come upon another ship in those waters, so Captain John Moresby called for his telescope and examined the ship more closely. It was immediately clear to the master mariner that not all was as it should be with the strange vessel.

       Moresby noticed that the schooner sat heavily in the water as she sluggishly rode the long, smooth swells. His first thought was that her crew must have abandoned her for some reason. As the Basilisk drew closer, Moresby could see that her weather-beaten sails were poorly set and flapping loosely in the light breeze. The rigging was slack, and there was no sign of anyone on deck.

    Illustration of the Basilisk’s discovery of the Peri. Source: Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 29 Feb 1872, p. 53

       When the Basilisk raised her ensign, signalling to the strange vessel to identify itself, they got no response. But as they drew nearer still, a couple of Pacific Islanders armed with muskets staggered to their feet near the schooner’s stern. Moresby then spotted several more men lying scattered on the deck. He sent two boats across to investigate.

       What the sailors found is best summed up in Captain Moresby’s own words: “… they were living skeletons, creatures dazed with fear and mortal weakness. As our crews boarded, other half-dead wretches tottered to their feet, fumbling too at rusty, lockless muskets. … They were dreadful to look at – being in the last stage of famine, wasted to the bone; some were barely alive, and the sleeping figures were dead bodies fast losing the shape of humanity, on a deck foul with blood.”

       The boarding party found several dead and decomposing bodies on the deck. There was five feet of putrid water sloshing about in the hold. The cabin had been ransacked, and the deck bore the marks of numerous axe strokes. Parts of the deck were also stained brown by large pools of what appeared to be dried blood. And, there was no fresh water or food anywhere to be found. All the evidence, Captain Moresby later recalled, pointed to a violent and tragic incident having taken place on board the schooner.    Moresby held a funeral service for the dead and buried them at sea. He then steamed towards Cardwell, 40 km away with the schooner in tow. He landed the 14 survivors, none of whom spoke any English, but for the word “Solomon.” Moresby assumed they meant they were from the Solomon Islands. He then continued North towards Torres Strait, leaving Midshipman Sabben in charge of several sailors and the schooner. He would collect them in a couple of months on his return to Sydney.

    HMS Basilisk commander – Captain John Moresby. Photo sourced from his autobiography Two Admirals.

        The pieces of the puzzle would slowly come together over the next weeks and months. After Sabben’s men had scrubbed the headboards clean, they discovered the schooner was called the Peri. The Peri had recently been reported missing in Fijian waters. On 27 December 1871, she had sailed from Viti Levu with approximately 90 “indentured” Pacific Islanders bound for a cotton plantation on Taveuni, 100 km away, but she never arrived.

       About 30 of those 90 men had been kidnapped in the Solomon Islands and taken to Levuka in Fiji. At the time, the South Pacific was in the midst of a cotton boom, and the white plantation owners struggled to find enough field workers or kanakas to tend their crops. Many Islanders fell victim to more unscrupulous “recruiters” who stopped at nothing to fill their quotas.

       At Levuka, kanakas were disembarked and sold to plantation owners to serve three-year contracts. At the completion of their time, it was the plantation owners’ responsibility to pay off their workers and return them to their home islands. The kanakas themselves were supposed to have willingly agreed to the arrangements and be appropriately compensated for their labour; however, that was not always the case.

       In this instance, the kidnapped Solomon Islanders were sent to an Australian plantation owner on Taveuni Island. But while in transit, they seized control of the cutter and escaped. The vessel was later found aground on a small island in the Yasawa group, and most of the men were recaptured a couple of weeks later.

       The other 60 or so Islanders who had been on the Peri had likely also been recently kidnapped. They had fallen into the clutches of a notorious blackbirder named Captain McLever. By December 1871, both groups of kidnapped men had been transferred to the Peri and were about to be sent to work on a plantation on Taveuni Island.   

    It is not entirely clear what happened next, but it seems the 90 kanakas rebelled, killed the captain and crew and seized the ship. Over the next six weeks, they sailed or drifted nearly 3500 km west until they were found by the Basilisk off the Australian coast. From the water in the hold and the general state of the ship, Moresby believed they had weathered at least one severe tropical storm during their passage. And judging by their emaciated state, food and water had run out long before they were rescued. The blood stains and axe marks led some to speculate that the survivors may have resorted to cannibalism, but that was never conclusively proved, and none of the bodies found showed signs of having been butchered.

    Approx track of the Peri.

    By the time the Basilisk‘s crew boarded the schooner, there were just 14 men still alive. One more would succumb soon after being put ashore at Cardwell.

       The remaining 13 Solomon Islanders were taken to Sydney by the Basilisk on her return from Torres Strait and eventually sent back to Fiji on HMS Cossack so they might be repatriated. However, eight jumped ship when the Cossack stopped briefly at Matuku Island, perhaps fearing they were being returned to Fiji to be punished. When the last five Peri survivors were finally questioned through an interpreter in Levuka, they told the British Consul that they had been kidnapped. They described how, when they paddled out to Captain McLever’s ship, their canoes were sunk and they had been beaten and locked in the hold.   

    McLever was arrested, and the Solomon Islanders were taken back to Sydney so they could testify at his trial. However, no one had thought to send a translator, and the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. The Islanders were sent back to Fiji, but what happened to them after that is unknown.

    1.Moresby. John RN, Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea and D’Entrecasteaux Islands, John Murray, London, 1876, p.4.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2022.

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