Nicolas Minister

Tales about a Famous Old Sea-Rover of The Louisades

TRADING to-day in Papua has none of the glamour and romance of the old wild days of 50 and 60 years ago.

In those early years, a wide open, if dangerous field was offered to the intrepid adventurers who sailed the shores of this little-known island in search of a fortune.

The whole of New Guinea, from one end to the other, including the archipelagoes of islands trailing off the south-east coast, was over-run by fierce fighting tribes who involved themselves in ceaseless warfare and savagery. Any newcomer was re garded as an enemy and deserving of death.

To-day, with security, the romance of trading has gone. Trading is now con ducted on definite lines, with scheduled prices, which the natives fully understand.

Whether a trader lives in an inaccessible district or not makes little difference: the native demands a set price or goes else where. His time is his own and distances to him are no object. He treats the trader with scant courtesy and cheats him on every possible occasion.

Romance implies adventure, and adven ture insecurity. The only insecurity to-day, for the traders, is the uncertainty of making a living. The falling market and the heavy costs of freight and pro duction are the main points of his con sideration, and to these are added the drab monotony of his existence, loneliness and isolation.

How different were the conditions in the “good old days”!

Of the many traders who ventured to this unknown land between 1874 and 1886, almost the only one who survived was Nicolas Minister. Nearly all met death at the hands of the savages.

The renowned Nicolas was by far the most picturesque personality of those times. He carried on his trading, while Captain Fryer, Webb, Miller, Craig and other well-known men were murdered.

He was a handsome man, “with pleas ing, resolute features and finely sparkling eyes,” who is said to have been more feared by the natives of the Louisades than “all the men-of-war in the British Navy.” A Greek by birth, born at Latmos in 1850, he commenced, at a very early age, a career concerning which, if only the stores told of him were true, “he might well have been a lineal descendant of the Lambro immortalised in Don Juan.”

At the age of eleven, Nicolas was shipwrecked off the Italian coast, and was the sole survivor of a crew of fourteen. Ever afterwards, he led an adventurous sea faring life, which eventually led him to the north coast of Queensland and the islands of New Guinea.

While on the Queensland coast Nicolas had many wild experiences with abori ginals. while fishing for pearl shell, beche de mer, in Torres Strait: and it was mainly owing to his knowledge of natives, that the Queensland Government retained him as boatswain in their schooner “Pearl,” under Captain Pennyfather, and his assistance was sought in capturing and punishing the “blacks.” He believed in rough justice in dealing with a crude people, though he was feared by both the natives of Northern Australia and New Guinea, yet he retained their undoubted respect. “Taubada Nicolas” (Big Chief

Nicolas) he was called in the Louisades.

Nicolas Minister was attracted to the Louisades in 1882 by the beche de mer fishing, which was being carried on by a few traders and Chinamen, who sailed there in their cutters and junks, from Cooktown and from China. The native labour traffic for the Queensland planta tions was then also in full swing, and the rumours of those days associated Nicolas rather too closely with “black birding’’ scandals.

That the scandals were serious, was proved by a Royal Commission in 1885 which, sitting in Queensland, found that of the 648 recruits obtained in New Guinea and the adjacent islands, in 1884, all were “seduced on board under false pretences.”

Beche de mer and pearl shell fishing paid well, and so did recruiting, and

Nicolas established numerous depots, scattered about the islands—at Panniet, Brooker, Joannet, Sud Est and Rossel, and he spent his time between these, Port Moresby and Queensland, in his cutter “Dulama,” sailing from one to another, collecting and distributing his trade. He did well; but his expenses were heavy, and though his one wish was to make a fortune and return to his home country, Greece, his wish was never fulfilled.

There are many tales told of Nicolas’s daring in these islands, and of his du plicity in dealing with the treacherous, wily little inhabitants. Always on the alert to secure his head, either as a trophy, or to fulfil their duty to a superstitious belief, the natives gave him no peace.

But he took no chances. At night, in variably, he barricaded himself securely in his cutter, and in the morning, slipping the hatch back suddenly, he swept the deck with his sabre, making sure that no native waited for him with a toma hawk.

The Brooker Islanders, notorious for their treachery, were determined in their efforts to secure him, and in 1884 they nearly succeeded. One late afternoon, making the island, Nicolas sailed too close inshore and grounded. Immediately

canoes filled with natives shot out and surrounded the cutter. Nicolas was jostled overboard, but clung to the gun wale. A native slashed at his fingers, and he sank, and was given up as drowned.

The looting then began. Howling and yelling, the natives wrenched at the trade, and, in the excitement of dividing the spoil, they gave no thought to Nicolas.

He was hiding under the stern, clinging to the rudder, and biding his time.

Suddenly, with a terrible cry, Nicolas appeared over the side, and sprang on board. The terrified natives, thinking it was his spirit, dived overboard and swam in a panic to the shore. Next morning, the pigs of the ringleaders were shot, their canoes destroyed, and their houses burnt to the ground.

Nicolas declared openly that “When ever and wherever he got the opportunity he would put a bullet through their bodies.” The Brooker Islanders left him in peace ever afterwards. Nicolas’s repu tation grew, as time went on, and he was held in great respect by all the neigh bouring islanders.

Shortly after the event at Brooker, while Nicolas was passing Pannasseea, the gate of the Louisades, two larger sail

ing canoes, manned by fifteen fierce war riors, bore down upon the “Dulama.”

With matted curls streaming in the gale, they rushed their canoes alongside. But, as they were boarding her, the Greek’s pale, wan face appeared over the cabin hatch. With a frightened shriek of “Ho!

Towpatta Nicolas!” (Big Chief Nicolas!) they drifted astern and turned swiftly back. They had mistaken his cutter for another.

A good tale is told of Nicolas Minister, which is declared to be true. Minister was delayed at Thursday Island, waiting for a schooner to take him across to New Guinea, when a French warship dropped anchor in the harbour. Hearing that the French were looking for a competent guide to the islands, Nicolas presented himself and offered his services.

They were in search, they told him, of a refugee from justice, a man named Nicolas Minister, a Greek and a trader in the Louisades. Nicolas undertook to act as their guide; and he sailed forth in state for his islands. The naval officers gained nothing but his pleasant com panionship—which they were sorry to lose —but Nicolas, on the other hand, did well.

Apart from the generous pay he received as pilot, his reputation soared sky-high amongst the islanders. For, circling through the Louisades, he touched at all his trading sites, where he threatened the natives with destruction if they did not accede to his demands. Who, in future, would have dared to disobey the owner of such a powerful warship!

Though Nicolas managed to evade the treachery of the natives, such was not the case with other traders of his time.

Massacre followed massacre in 1884-5-6, and, in consequence, there was consterna tion in Australia.

Some asserted that those traders had got only their desserts; but Theodore Bevan, the well-known explorer and trader, who was in New Guinea at the time, took up the matter on behalf of the traders. In consequence of his writings, he was interviewed by Admiral Tryon, of H.M.S. Nelson, in Sydney, and he sug gested measures by which the islands might be rid of the vendetta, and recom mended Captain Fryer (who was then alive), and Nicolas Minister “as having the requisite knowledge and experience to help, if these measures were carried out.”

It was not until after the revolting murder of Captain Craig, three white men, and a Malay, in September, 1886, at Joannet Islands, that measures were taken, and Mr. Bevan’s recommendation adopted; for we read that in 1887, Special Commissioner, John Douglas, commis sioned Nicolas Minister to accompany a punitive expedition consisting of an As sistant Resident Magistrate and 45 na tives of other islands, to deal out justice to the murderers.

Justice was carried out. It was effect ive, but crude, and it did not commend itself to the high ethics of the Special Commissioner; The expedition was se verely censored. Nicolas hunted down the murderers mercilessly, in their own fastnesses, and dealt out destruction; but thereafter “the murders of unoffending Europeans went out of fashion, as one of the fine arts of the natives of the Louisades.”

This was perhaps a fitting climax to Nicolas Minister’s reign in the Louisades of New Guinea.

In writing of these murders one natur ally has only the white man’s point of view. Perhaps, if all the circumstances were known, it might appear that the na tives had some justification—that some times white lives were taken to pay for those lost on Queensland plantations.

But, mostly, no reason beyond a love of bloodshed or a desire for plunder was found.

Conditions changed, from then on, in New Guinea. In September, 1889, a Gov ernment was formed with Sir William MacGregor as the first Administrator; and 1889 saw the beginning of Sir Wil liam MacGregor’s long series of explora tions, and the discovery of gold in the Louisades. Miners poured into the coun try from Cooktown, and the islands were opened up rapidly.

Under these new conditions, Nicolas Minister still carried on his trading, and his pearl shell and beche de mer fishing.

He did not make his fortune, neither did he see the land of his birth. One can imagine how, as the years drifted by peacefully, and the country became more and more settled, Nicolas sighed for the wild old days, when he was a law unto himself and a terror in the land.

On January 18, 1915, Minister died at the age of 65, at Teavi, in the Trobriand Islands, on his last trading station, after an illness of three weeks. He was the last of the sea rovers.

Times have changed so completely in New Guinea (Papua) to-day that Nicolas Minister, and the massacres of his time, 1884-6, are now almost forgotten. In the Louisades, where once savagery and bloodshed prevailed, law and order are completely established.

Mollie Lett.