When S. Pacific

Trade Boomed

Interesting Comparison Between 1900-1914 and 1918-1939

117 HEN William Bryan (popularly Yf known as “Bill O’Bryan”) died in Rarotonga on October 18, aged 65 (Nov. “PIM”), the Cook Islands lost one of the last remaining links with the halcyon days when Rarotonga was a port of call for regular trans-Pacific liners.

Large cargoes of fruit went away to Southern markets, and trade was booming. The Union Line, from Australia and New Zealand to San Francisco ran via Rarotonga and Tahiti; and Bill O’Bryan’s job at Rarotonga was no sinecure. With two heavy launches, strings of lighters and a ilarge force of native labourers, he was in charge of the loading and unloading of ships.

It is strange to think that that im portant trade, which boomed before World War I, withered and died and dis appeared after 1918. O’Bryan, lived in Rarotonga except for a recent break for war service in the Northern Cooks— for 35 years; and to talk with him about the Cook Islands was an education and an entertainment.

He knew the Cook Islands and their people, white and brown, better than most men. He was proud of being one of the last of the real old deep-sea sailors who had gone to sea in British square rigged ships in the ’nineties, and he had a wonderful fund of reminiscences about the brave days of “wooden ships and iron men.”

EDITORIAL NOTE—Some of the politico-economists who now are display ing such lively interest in the Pacific might explain why the sea-born trade between the Polynesian archipelagoes and Australia and New Zealand “withered and died” after World War I.

Prior to 1914, the Union SS Co. ran regular liners between Australia and San Francisco, via New Zealand, Rarotonga and Tahiti; between Australia and Van couver, via New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii; and Sydney and Auckland, via Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. There were three ships (Navua, Matua and Atua) on the latter service. There were other lines of very good ships running through the South Pacific notably, the Matson liners, running via Hawaii and Fiji from ’Frisco to Sydney; the German liners, looking after Samoa and New Guinea; and French liners, whose itinerary in cluded Noumea and Tahiti.

By 1939, of all those fine shipping ser vices there remained only the Union ships running between Sydney and Vancouver; the Matson liners, between ’Frisco and Sydney; the French liners; and the little “Matua.” running out of Auckland to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

What killed that lively and apparently profitable South Seas pre-1914 trade? An

intelligent answer to that question would help some of the politicians who are floundering around in the Pacific at the present time.