Shell

Killed By Enemy

Captain John MacEachran, of BSI

ANOTHER well-known South-west Pacific personality, Captain John MacEachran, of Gizo, BSI, was killed, on August 13, through enemy action, north of Australia, in the coursa of his duty.

Captain MacEachran was skipper of the ship on which Rev. H. Matthews met his death while escorting a party of half-castes from Port Moresby to a safer location. The death of Mr. Matthews, from drowning, and the fact that only one half-caste was saved from the whole complement of the ship, was reported in the September issue of the

“Pim.”

Mrs. MacEachran has been informed that at 11 a.m. on the day the vessel was sunk, the captain, chief engineer and wireless-operator, were standing on the bridge, when the first shell from a Japanese submarine made a direct hit, and killed all three.

Captain MacEachran had been in the Solomons as a planter and trader since 1916. He came from China, where he had been Superintendent-Captain in the Butterfield and Swines Shipping Com pany. Wishing to branch out for him self, he, in partnership with a Mr. Mus grave, bought a yacht, a most palatial affair, filled her with trade goods and nests of camphor-wood boxes, and set sail for the South Seas. Mrs. MacEach ran, who had preceded them by steamer, they picked up in Rabaul, and then they went on to the Solomons. Here the partnership ended—Mr. Musgrave taking to trading and the MacEachrans to planting at Vella Lavella, in the Gizo district, BSI.

Nature disposed of the £15,000 yacht.

A storm capsized it at its anchorage where it filled and sank, and could not be refloated, A few years ago, Captain MacEachran, while dynamiting fish, blew off his arm, and Mrs. MacEachran (who had been a nurse in Shanghai before her marriage) being all alone except for natives, took him away north to Rabaul in a small boat—a journey of many agonising days —where he could receive medical atten tion.

By the time World War II began, they had between 200 and 300 acres planted at Vella Lavella. Then a blight fell on the world of the South Seas planter; and, with the MacEachrans, as with many, it became a matter of digging in one’s heels and waiting, and hoping, for the storm to blow over. About a year before the Japs struck southwards, Burns Philp offered John MacEachran a job as skipper of one of their inter-island ships, and he was still serving in this capacity when, on August 13, he was killed.

And so enemy action removed a man who was held in high regard by all who knew him; whose good character and tireless energy deserved well of life; and who yet was one who experienced an extraordinary amount of bad luck. A storm destroyed his valuable yacht, an accident cost him his arm, the vagaries of the copra market destroyed his living, and a cruelly unlucky shot from a prowl ing enemy took away his life.

Mrs. MacEachran was evacuated from Gizo early in the year, and is now resid ing in Wynyard, Tasmania.

Death of Harold Beck

MR. Harold Beck, formerly a planter of Ranonga, BSI. was another who lost his life in the ill-fated ship which was sunk off the Papuan coast by enemy action, on August 13. Mr. Beck joined the vessel as second engineer, at the same time as Captain MacEachran.