A Real Pioneer of the

Death Of Captain

Wm. Hamilton

A Real Pioneer of the Northwest Pacific

P|NE of the best-known “old-hands” in the Western Pacific, Captain William Hamilton, trader, pearl-sheller, and plan ter, of Thursday Island, New Guinea, and the Solomons, died at Turramurra, N.S.W., on November 26, aged 85. Known throughout the Islands as “Squeaker”

Hamilton—owing to a defect in his voice, the result of an operation in his early youth—he was universally respected and liked.

Of Scottish parents, he came to Aus tralia at the age of 10, in 1862, and with in a few years, while still in his ’teens, had established a small shipping service along the Queensland coast. He began the adventurous career that was to lead him into faraway and strange places by carrying miners and stores to the newly discovered Palmer goldfield, Cape York.

Eventually, drifting to Thursday Is., he took charge of a pearling fleet and sailed across to the Gulf of Papua. From there he went to Manning Strait, between the large islands of Choiseul and Ysabel, and for many years was pearl shelling around Manus and the Northern Solomons. Making his headquarters at Choiseul Bay, he took up large areas of land under both the German and British Administrations in New Guinea and 8.5.1. His trading and planting interests extended from the Admiralty Group (Bismarck Archipelago) down through Bougainville and the Solomons.

Finally, in 1923, he bought out his partner, Mr. N. J. Howes, and formed Associated Plantations Ltd., which to. k control of all his land interests and of which he was managing director. The estates included the show plantations of Inus, in Bougainville, and Choiseul, in 8.5.1.

During recent years, Captain Hamilton had lived mostly in Sydney and Bris bane. He made many visits of inspection to B.S.I., and his tall, slightly-built figure, with tanned face and heavy, snow-white moustache, was a familiar sight in the Group. On his last trip, two years ago, he developed a tropical ulcer on his leg, and after spending some time in hospital at Kieta and Brisbane, had since lived quietly with his daughter at Turramurra.

Connected in the early days with the Advisory Council, and having taken part in many historic happenings in B.S.I., Captain Hamilton’s life was full of col ourful adventure and incident. Through out his lifetime in the Islands he kept a diary and had amassed a trunk-full of important documents and papers relating to the Western Pacific —all first-class material that, in the hands of a compet ent writer might make a best seller.

He is survived by his daughter, Mrs.

E. M, Stevenson, of Sydney, and a son, who lives in Brisbane.

Captain W. Hamilton