Old Days in The Louisiades Memories

Louisiades Memories of the First Recruiter

By D. H. Osborne

THE Louisiades, consisting of hundreds of islands ranging in size from mountainous Misima, Sudest and Rossel, to tiny coral atolls, are strung out in several groups, altogether about 200 miles in extent, eastwards of Sama rai.

Until the Battle of the Coral Sea, few beyond Papuan planters, miners, pearl ers and others who made their living in this part of the Pacific, knew of the Archipelago. Then, briefly, in May, 1942, it came into prominence as the northern boundary of the Coral Sea, where a decisive naval battle was fought.

Jap seaplanes and naval craft sheltered in the Louisiades, at that time.

But the Louisiades were known to the “blackbirders” in the days when South Seas labour was recruited for work on Queensland and Fijian sugar plantations.

A man named Captain Inman appears to have been one of the first to cash in on this hitherto unexploited labour sup ply in the Louisiades —and that by pure chance. He left Maryborough, Queens land, in his sailing ship, intending to recruit in the Solomons, and he took his wife and small son, Jimmy, along as pas sengers. A few days out they ran into bad weather and Mrs. Inman became very ill. The Captain altered course and headed for the nearest land, where he hoped to shelter until his wife recovered.

The nearest land happened to be Sudest.

Now this area was suffering a severe drought, and the natives on Sudest and Rossel were practically starving, and for once a recruiting ship must have appeared to them as a craft straight from their heathen heaven. Inman had practically to beat them off, so eager were they to recruit. He was back in Queensland with a full complement in the time it usually took to get to the Solomons —no doubt highly pleased with himself.

He made a second trip, with the same

result, and then a third. But the drought had broken. Result: food was plentiful —the natives’ bellies were full—no more cheap recruits for Captain Inman.

Apparently, in due course, some of these natives were returned to their vil lages, and it is reported that when Sir William MacGregor visited Sudest years later, he was surprised to find natives whp could speak English. Amusingly enough, these natives’ knowledge of Australian-ese is indicated by the fact that even to-day they call their feasts “races.”

The late Captain Colin Thompson claimed to be one of the first to land on another of the Louisiade islands, Motu rena. Here, later, the Europeans on another ship were murdered by the natives, helped by the native members of the crew. At neighbouring Brooker Island, practically an identical mass murder occurred; and the British Navy, in the good, old, high-handed fashion of the period, arrived a considerable time afterwards and shelled both islands, as a reprisal.

Early European visitors found the houses of the Louisiade natives decorated with human bones and skulls and assumed, naturally enough, that they were head-hunters. This was not so, however. The bones were merely memen toes of deceased friends and relatives.

The Moturena inhabitants appear to have been a particularly violent lot. and to have indicated their dislike of the European every time opportunity per mitted. Nicholas Minister—better known as Nicholas the Greek —once ran foul of them while anchored off their island.

They attended to him with a tomahawk and then threw him overboard, and obvi ously expected that that would be suffi cient to remove anv normal human being from earthly circulation. They felt per fectly safe in going below and opening up his trade goods.

But Nicholas was more than a normal human being—considerably more. He swam to the bows of his boat, and climbed up the anchor-chain, and appeared before the would-be murderers, very bloody but certainly unbowed. They were knocked speechless, momentarily, until it dawned on them that this could be nothing less than Nicholas’ ghost.

Then, with screams of fright and anguish, they rushed to the side of the boat, tumbled into the water, and swam for the shore. Nicholas was free to wan der, unmolested, in any of those parts ever after.

Later, Captain Craig and his crew were murdered while pearl-fishing off Janet Island, near Sudest, and the schooner burned to the water’s edge. Sir William MacGregor offered a reward for the murderers, dead or alive —and, according to that gentleman himself, Nicholas came into the picture once more, by the simple act of shooting the chief of the village, lopping off his head and presenting it to the amazed and furious Sir William, with a claim for the cash prize. He threatened to arrest Nicholas for murder.

True or false, this was a tale that Nicholas loved to tell. Nicholas was quite a lad, and, it is feared, he had more than a few skeletons in his cup board.

Captain Les. Hilder, who was a member of the Intelligence Corps at Port Moresby until his retirement through ill-health, is now in Sydney. His health is now im proved, and he is “doing his bit” as an official of the Department of the Interior.