Pages From The Past

The Romance of John Salmon and Queen Tinamana

By Julian Hillas

ABOUT the heads of commoners who have attained royal rank there has always been an adra of mystery and ad venture. Brook of Sarawak, Ross of the Cocos Islands, even the negro Emperor Jones of Haiti. Kings, sometimes only for a day, they sweep like picturesque meteors across the more prosaic pages of history, rising—and often falling—by the force of arms.

Not so John Mortimer Salmon. The only arms he used were those he wound around the young and beautiful Princess Mereana, of Arorangi, Cook Islands, and, clinging to her, lifted himself to the rank of Prince Consort, Court Treasurer, Chairman of the Federal Parliament, and possessor of the grandiloquent title of Te Ariki tapu Rangi —Sacred Chief of the Heavens.

And yet, contrary to popular concep tion, he lived to regret what he had done.

Grandson of one Thomas Dunnett, of Ramsgate, John Mortimer Salmon spent his youth in Tahiti, appearing in Raro tonga some years later as agent and re presentative of John Brander, a Papeete merchant.

In the 70’s, Rarotonga was ruled by its last independent sovereign, Queen Makea Nui Ariki, an old lady as Aercely jealous of her royal prerogatives as she was quick to punish those who attempted to usurp or question them.

Arriving in Rarotonga in 1874, Salmon immediately fell in love with the young

Princess Mereana, heir presumptive to the throne of Arorangi—a district on the wes tern side of the island —and a niece of the powerful Queen Makea. Mereana, unspoiled and lovely as a tropic dawn, returned his affection, and all that re mained was for them to get married, which they would have proceeded to do had not Makea “hit the roof” of her coral lime palace.

“Never while I live!” said the old Queen, and things being as they then were it looked as though she spoke truly.

For, standing four-square behind the throne, was the London Missionary So ciety, at that time represented by James Chalmers (“Tamate” —afterwards mur dered in Papua). Rev. Mr. Chalmers also had matrimonial plans for the future Queen Tinamana, and these did not in clude the Aamboyant John Salmon, whom the former in no way considered a suit able person. So he threw the whole weight of his organisation against the proposed marriage and carried the day.

But John and Mereana were made of sterner stuff. Their love was forged in the heat of a grand passion which even deAed the L.M.S.

John now turned to more practical sources. The Humholt, a trading schooner belonging to Brander, was lying in Avarua, loading cotton, and the captain was a friend of Salmon’s. For a con sideration he agreed to take the lovers over to Mangaia, a distance of some 110 miles.

On the night arranged for their departure, Mereana almost wrecked the venture, for womanlike, she had left her packing to the last moment and was unable to decide what should or should not be taken. But

eventually, accompanied by three friends as young and foolish as herself, she stole down to where Salmon had beached a borrowed canoe.

Stealing across the lagoon, their paddles cut a phosphorescent path through the warm water, brilliant as the star-hazed Milky Way above their heads. Several times they paused, and to divert sus picion Salmon lit the palm-leaf Ashing torches which he had brought for the purpose. Thus they passed the schooner Coronet, whose master, Captain Rose, was known to be hostile towards the lovers, and reaching the Humholt, were taken aboard.

Half an hour later the Humholt slipped gently through the reef passage. Morning found the hue and cry hot on the fugi tives’ trail.

The Coronet was despatched in pursuit, and, Ailed with Makea’s picked warriors, whooped its way across the sapphire sea, a short lap behind the Humholt.

The vessels reached Mangaia almost simultaneously, where the spokesman for Queen Makea demanded the immediate surrender of Mereana. Feeling ran high, and the Rarotongans persisting in their demands, Brander’s captain announced that he would shoot the Arst man who attempted to board him. Whereupon the Coronet, being the faster of the two ships, threatened to return to Rarotonga and there burn the Humholt’s cargo of cotton, which was still on the wharf. At this

stage, Salmon himself Mereana to accompany her kinsmen.

The two vessels made the return voyage together, the Rarotongan contingent whooping even more vociferously than before, and poor little Mereana, loverless, and dispirited by the prospect of having to face her formidable Aunt, indiscriminately shed tears on both accounts.

For the next year or so, Salmon wandered disconsolately from island to island, and the flame of desire which Mereana had kindled burnt steadily, fed by letters and messages sent secretly on friendly schooners. Back eventually in Tahiti, he there learned for the first time that Makea’s opposition had weakened, and throwing all on a bold move sailed again for Rarotonga in the Atalanta.

At Rarotonga he found that the Queen was away in Atiu, an island of which her husband was hereditary ruler, and al-

though Rev. Chalmers remained adamant to argument or entreaty, Makea, after a little further persuasion, consented to send for the lovers. Once more John and Mereana prepared to embark, but the Rarotongans, influenced by the L.M.S., refused to allow Salmon to take passage, The latter, feigning resignation, waited until evening and under cover of darkness was carried aboard the Venus, concealed among a pile of mats, and although the vessel was searched before sailing, he re mamed undiscovered.

But the natives, still suspicious, and urged thereto by the missionaries, pur sued the Venus in their own schooner, the Ngamaru Ariki. Makea, however, hunted them away on arrival at Atiu, and there, after various other delays, John Salmon and the Princess Mareana were married.

For several years John - continued as

agent for Brander, living in compara tively humble circumstances at Tup-apa, in Rarotonga. It was during this period that the notorious “blackbirder”, Bully Hayes, paid the island one of those visits which invariably left somebody the worse off, and the flamboyant John Mortimer was exactly the kind of person in whom Mr. Hayes specialised.

Breezing ashore, the Captain placed an order for supplies that ran well into three figures. All day whaleboats ferried cases out to the sinister, swift-sailing craft lying in mid-channel. Salmon, it appears, either had no knowledge of the man with whom he was dealing, or else over estimated his own ability to outwit the other. With the last load he went on board himself.

Hayes was pacing the poop, shouting orders and waving his arms. Salmon ap proached him with a sheaf of invoices, but for all the notice he received he might as well not have been present.

Sails were being shaken out, and the cable rumbling in before Hayes appeared to see his visitor.

“Good God! Mr. Salmon,” he exclaimed, “What are you doing here? You’d better step lively or you’ll be coming along with us.”

Again John attempted to thrust the papers into his hand.

“Invoices?” Hayes asked him in a puzzled tone. “Keep ’em. Everything’s aboard, isn’t it? . . . Well, that’s alright then —you’ve got the invoices and I’ve got the goods. We each know where we stand, don’t we? What more do you want?”

“But the money, Captain,” John expos tulated, casting an anxious eye over the side.

Hayes ran him to the rail. “Now then, Mr. Salmon,” he said sharply. “Another thirty seconds and you’ll be bound for Samoa. We’re under way already, .so make up your mind!”

John scarcely hesitated. Tumbling into the waiting boat he watched “blackbirder” move gracefully away on the tide.

Captain Hayes had made another coup.

For a quarter of a century Salmon pro vided his neighbours with amusement. In 1888 Mereana’s uncle having died, she mounted the throne of Arorangi under the hereditary title of Tinamana, John mod estly contenting himself with the lesser rank of Prince Consort, Prime Minister and Court Treasurer. From the house in Tupapa they moved to the double-decker Palace at Arorangi.

Life now blossomed with a new fulness.

Queen Tinamana hung on her husband’s lightest word, and her subjects, following her example, paid him a deference which was vastly to his liking, while any Euro pean who was foolish enough to address him as “Your Highness” might safely count upon a royal welcome.

But finance, always the bugaboo of in

digent royalty, became a pressing pro blem. John’s ideas were too lofty to keep pace with Tinamana’s income. Frequently he was hard put to find the means of carrying out his grandiose schemes, and local traders soon began to regard him with a suspicious and despairing eye. It was a long time before they either forgot or forgave him for the project which ulti mately cost Donald & Edenborough (pre decessors to the present A. B. Donald and Co.) close on £7OO.

Consigning through this firm, Salmon despatched a sample cask of island lime juice to San Francisco. The report which came back was highly satisfactory and the repeat order considerable. But at this stage it struck the Prince Consort that by adding salt-water to each barrel, he would not only save himself a great deal of trouble, but also “fortify” the pure juice!

Living at the edge of the lagoon rendered this an easy process, and on the next ship away went several dozen casks of “forti fied” limejuice.

On the strength of these he wrote to one of the largest carriage works in Cali fornia that “he was instructed by Her Majesty, Queen Tinamana, to request that eleven buggies be forwarded to her through Donald & Edenborough’s local branch”, the invoice to be sent on by the same ship to the firm’s head-office in Auckland, where it would arrive «a fort night after the goods had been delivered in Rarotonga! John had learned a wrinkle or two about invoices!

The buggies duly appearing, they w-ere assembled and magnanimously presented to the leading chiefs of each district!

Meanwhile, the “fortified” limejuice had also reached its destination; and there was poured into the harbour at San Fran cisco. Donald & Edenborough were left to recover the sum of £7OO from the Prince Consort. Needless to say, they never succeeded in doing so.

And then, in 1908, Mereana died.

Had Fate reversed the order of their deaths, John Salmon might have passed ‘“to that bourne from which no traveller returns” a happy, contented man, to the last a central figure on the little stage of his choice.

But with Mereana’s decease his day was over, and to poor John the night of eclipse must at times have seemed painfully long.

Relations of the new Tinamana, wearied by past pretensions, hustled him uncere moniously from the Palace, stripped him of his honours and fine-sounding titles, permitting him finally, out of respect for the late Queen, to occupy a little house which he had once built opposite the royal dwelling.

Almost penniless, and attended by two servitors as decrepit as himself, John Salmon sank slowly into an obscurity feebly lit by the pale light of memory.

Even those whom he had formerly wined and dined at his table now forsook him.

With Irish lace at his cuffs, and the toes of his canvas shoes ever wearing thinner, he eked out a miserable existence as a casual interpreter.

In a tarnished gold-laced cap (the pres ent of a visiting warship) and wearing the medal which he had bestowed upon himself when Chairman of the Federal Parliament, he was more an object for pity than ridicule at such functions as he appeared at —a shadowy ghost from the days when romance and adventure marched across the page of Islands life; an anachronism in the swiftly-moving pre-war era of 1909, which was soon to obliterate even the site of his last resting place, by erecting over his grave the first of the chain of packing-sheds that now rings Rarotonga.