1,000 Miles In Small Boat

The Odyssey of Jimmy Marsters, of Palmerston Is.

By Julian Hillas

"MUTINY on the Bounty” and “Men Against the Sea” recently have famil iarised many people with Bligh’s epic voy age over 3000 miles of practically unknown water. Bligh carried a sextant and other instruments and as captain of a man o’ war he was an experienced navigator.

It remains for someone to picture the almost equally epic feat of “Jimmy” Mars ters, quarter-caste Palmerston Islander, who, with a single companion, traversed in 1919 the thousand odd miles which sepa rate Penrhyn Island from the Phoenix Group in the north.

Marsters’ knowledge of navigation was confined to a rudimentary acquaintance with the stars and a belief that if a boat left Penrhyn and followed in the wake of the setting sun she would eventually, plus a little luck, reach Samoa.

Sixteen years ago Jimmy was a husky young man in the early twenties, the pos sessor of a soft winning way with the ladies of Penrhyn, where life was dull and fathers notoriously more hard-hearted

than on any other island of the Cook Group.

Time hung heavily and adventure called.

A tin of “bush-beer,” two friends, a lonely spot on the warm moon-washed sands —and Marsters took up the chal lenge. They were all tired of Penrhyn.

Somewhere in the west lay islands where living was easier and parents more com pliant: where the plums of life had a rare bloom and could be taken for the asking.

And so it was decided that these three, together with their respective young women, should sail away from unlovely Penrhyn. The beer filled them with a fine new sense of courage and, as they stole back to the sleeping village, romance danced before them along the shores of the lagoon.

To Marsters was assigned the task of procuring a suitable boat, and he selected the best of the small pearling craft, a twenty-foot carvel-built cutter half-decked and freshly painted. The work of pro visioning her was left to the other two.

One night, a week or so later, six people crept quietly through the settlement and, wading out into the shallow lagoon, boarded the cutter where she lay at anchor. Paddling silently into the chan nel, they steered for the great passage in the reef. A few lights still shone from the houses ashore and, away on the left, a cock crowed in the darkness. For a moment the spirit of adventure flickered and, dur ing that second, one of the couples slipped overboard and swam for the beach.

In silence, the other four paddled on, through the crescent horns of the passage and, sweeping out on the tide, bore away to starboard. The sounds of the village were now smothered by the boom of the surf, and the island itself only showed as a low bank on their right.

Again, the spirit of adventure sank almost to zero, and another couple took the water, striking out for the nearby reef.

Jimmy Marsters and the girl Topou were now alone in the cutter. With them were fifty or sixty mature coconuts and a four gallon tin of drinking water.

Marsters tightened his belt, cursed his erstwhile companions and set a course which he believed would bring them to Samoa. Then he lashed the tiller and went to sleep with Topou in his arms.

He kept on doing this —with slight varia tions —for the next twenty-eight days.

Once he managed to catch a booby bird which had foolishly taken a nap on the masthead; but otherwise they lived on coconuts, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Now, it is only in fiction that the hero feeds his wench on such unvarying diet and she marries him in the last chapter— presumably to live happily ever after on the same fare. In real life, things work out differently; and, if you do not believe me, you can ask Topou. She is a middle aged woman; but she still has quite a lot to say about coconuts in general and Jimmy Marsters in particular.