First Missionary Ship

How the “Duff” took L.M.S.

Evangelists to Tahiti

By The Rev. Cecil Northcott, M.A.

THERE are two missionary ships to-day which sail among the small islands in the South Seas —one is the Southern Cross VII. of the Melanesian Mission, and the other the John Williams V. of the London Missionary Society, named after the pio neer John Williams, who met his death at the hands of savage New Hebrides na tives.

The exciting story of missionary ships goes back 140 years for it was on August 10, 1796, that the first missionary ship, the Duff, sailed down the Thames for the Pacific.

One of the reasons why the Duff set sail with the gospel was that Captain Cook had come home from the South Seas with won derful tales of beautiful islands and savage peoples. English people had just begun to think of the great world which as yet was untouched by the gospel. The “inspired cobbler,” William Carey, had reached India and his letters had stirred the people’s in terest.

So a group of ministers and laymen join ed together in London to form the London Missionary Society whose sole object was to “preach the gospel of the blessed God.”

But how were the first missionaries to go to the South Seas? England was at war with France and everybody said it was a foolish time to begin foreign missionary work. But the pioneers were undaunted, and they looked round for a ship and a captain.

The captain came first. Down at Horn dean in Hampshire there was living James Wilson, a handsome man in the prime of life. He had come from a family of 19 children born on Tyneside and had run away to sea. At 15 he was present at the famous battle of Bunker Hill when young America gave a heavy blow to the old country. Then he went out to India on one of the great majestic clipper ships of those days. He was captured in a battle there after swimming a river full of croco diles. The tyrant Hyder Ali kept him in a dungeon chained between dead men for two years. He and the other prisoners were forced to eat the vermin crawling on the walls and floor in order to keep alive.

But Wilson was one of the few who came out alive.

Wilson had never taken much interest in religion. But one Sunday evening he went to service in the little Baptist Chapel at Horndean and heard a sermon which stirred his heart. He was converted and at once wanted to do something to show his faith. He volunteered to be the cap tain of the first missionary ship.

He helped to find the ship. She was lying in the Thames down at Blackwall. and Wilson recommended the Society to buy her for £5,000. She was 267 tons, with a fine copper bottom to withstand the weeds of the sea. So the little? Duff was fitted out, and up and down the country all sorts of people volunteered to sail in her as missionaries to the unknown South Seas.

The people chosen were a curious as sortment for missionary work. There was a shoemaker, a harness-maker, a tailor, a man described as a hatter, a linen draper, a bricklayer, carpenter, surgeon, cabinet maker. gardener, blacksmith, cooper, butcher, weaver, cotton manufacturer, shopkeeper, and five ministers. Many of them had given up their jobs to volunteer for this great adventure.

If we had been living at Gravesend, as

the snip sailed down the Thames, we might have heard on that August Saturday night a curious conversation between the Duff and a man-o’-war lying in the river.

Owing to the war with France every ves sel was examined before she sailed down the channel.

“Whither bound?” challenged the man o'-war.

“Tahiti,” came the reply.

“What cargo?”

“Missionaries and provisions.”

No one on board the man-o’-war had ever heard of such a strange cargo, so a midshipman was sent off in a rowing boat to examine this strange sight. Next day the Duff was allowed to proceed to South ampton.

There they had to wait for five weeks until a convoy of ships could be arranged to take them safely past the coast of France. Some of the missionaries had their wives and children on board, as there was every hope of starting prosper ous homes on the South Sea islands.

Going on across the broad Atlantic, the little Duff proved herself a good sailer, and Wilson determined to leave the other ships behind at Rio do Janeiro and sail on alone.

What a sail that was! Down the long coast of South America, the ship headed for Cape Horn. At the top of her mast the mission flag of blue with the dove of peace on -it waved in the strong wind.

Near Cape Horn it began to blow a gale.

For a fortnight Wilson and the ship fought the storm. The daily service of prayer, singing, and scripture reading was kept up down below in spite of illness and discom fort.

At last the captain had to turn back and go half way across the w'orld to the Cape of Good Hope, and make for Tahiti that way. For 90 days the Duff saw no other ships and a great loneliness came over the

company. Alone on the great ocean they had no news of home and were afraid that in the savage islands they were coming to, circumstances might be too much for them.

They sailed on into the year 1797, and on a Sunday morning in March entered the wide, blue bay of Tahiti. Seventy canoes of naked tatooed warriors rushed out to meet the ship, and were astonished to hear a strange noise floating across the water.

It was a hymn, “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness.” and they watched one of the missionaries preach on the deck. The natives expected to hear cannon and rifle shots, but here was a new sort of people coming as friends.

Some of the missionaries were taken to small remote islands where all their cour age and stout hearts melted at the heathen savagery and unresponsiveness of the people. On Tahiti itself the main group of the missionaries held on. No one could speak the language. So the bricklayer.

Henry Nott, began the laborious task of writing it down from listening to the sounds the natives made. It took him 40 years to finish his task, and by that time he had translated the Bible into the lan guage.

Murder, treachery and extreme loneli ness made some of the missionaries give up and retreat to Australia in a passing ship. But five of them, Mr. and Mrs. Eyre, Henry Bicknell (carpenter), Henry Nott (bricklayer), and John Jefferson, held on.

The climate began to tell on them, and for four years they heard nothing from home. Their clothes became ragged, and Mrs. Eyre had no woman friend. But said Henry Nott: “We have endeavoured to lisp out something of the things of Christ.”

The fruit of their heroic work is seen today in the Christian communities of the London Missionary Society in the South Seas. Only recently Tahiti publicly re

stored the graves of the humble heroes who brought the gospel to her.

Wilson and the Duff sailed homewards with a tale which kept Britain excited for weeks. People crowded to visit her in the Thames and walk the decks which had burned under the sun of the South Seas.

Little did they know of the tale of Chris tian heroism which was going on among the people she had left behind.

Soon a new expedition was. planned by the London Missionary Society and new volunteers came forward. But on the next voyage the Duff was captured by priva teers and never seen again, after the mis sionaries had been landed in South America. Her name is a great one in Christian story, and the long line of her successors in the five ships called John Williams carry the news of the gospel to day.

Mr. G. Moore, general manager in New Zealand for the Yorkshire Insurance Co., visited Tahiti in June on one of his perio dical tours of inspection of his company’s interests in French Oceania,