"Bully Proctor"

The Story of the Notorious American Blackbirder Told by H. E. L. Friday

BEFORE Admiral Halsey became known during World War 11, I suppose the best-known American seaman in the Pacific was our old friend “Bully” Hayes, who was born in Cleveland. Ohio, in 1829.

His real name was Henry Hayes. He was six feet tall, of fair complexion, and had some success with the women, whom he was fond of abducting.

But in the moral sense, there were worse blackbirders than Hayes. One—and the proudest of his evil fame which stank in the nostrils of good men and true —was a fellow countryman of Hayes and also . bore the cognomen, “Bully.”

Captain “Bully” Proctor was all too well-known in his day, in Noumea, in Santo and in Franceville (which is the name the French vainly tried to give to Port Vila); further afield, in Apia and Suva, he also became something of a legend in his day, which was a long one.

At first this American worked largely for the French, who regarded him as their Number One kidnapper, of what he affectionately termed “black ebony,” for the New Caledonian nickel mines. The poor bewildered Hebrideans, men. women and children, but mostly men, were put up for sale outside the immigration office as each ship came in. Proctor received about £3 for every one he landed. In the palmy days he made a very good thing out of it.

The French knew that Proctor recruited quicker than his competitors. His methods were his own, and being an unscrupul ous brute, he stopped at nothing to fill his holds.

A favourite method was to kidnap a few women, and with these he would entice enough men on board and then sail away for Noumea. He was also an exponent, maybe the inventor, of the art of “wooling ’em,” or running down canoes and saving their occupants for Cale donian mining, Queensland cane cutting or the Fiji cotton fields.

So even in lean years, when the natives grew shy and exorbitant in their de mands, and when others of the black birding gang were finding it hard to make ends meet, “Bully” Proctor astonished everybody by coming in with a full cargo of humanity.

This is related as a favourite trick of his —after disposing of a stock of beads, cotton goods, fishhooks, tobacco, axes, knives, Jews harps, Turkey red twill and other trifles at a particular place (and perhaps a case of gin and a few rifles on the sly) he would take his ease, sitting on a log and quietly smoking.

Presently along would come a husky and unsuspecting native, one worth quite a bit on the Noumea market.

“Come here, boy,” Proctor would call, “come along and help me pull off my boots.”

The boy would oblige. Off would come one boot, without mishap. But when the native was struggling with the other, our captain would release the catch that held his second, and wooden, leg.

Backward the boy would fall with the limb clasped in his hands.

Not having the slightest idea that a limb could come off a human body so easily, he would be dumbfounded with horror. This was the sign for the cap tain to overwhelm him with a simula tion of terrible anger. The chief of the tribe must be called and compensation paid for the insult to the leg. How could any native be so impudent as to pull off the skipper’s leg! It would take

a lot of compensation to square an in sult like that! At least three or four re cruits, one of them, of course, being the unhappy leg-puller.

“Bully” Proctor carried out this ruse on many islands. But on one occasion the laugh was on him. This was at that well-known blackbirder’s rendezvous, Port Resolution, on Tanna, shortly before that harbour was destroyed by the volcanic upheaval of 1877.

Here one day three of the most notori ous blackbirders of the time. met. One of them was a Frenchman, and he had a glass eye; one was an Australian, and he had a set of false teeth; and the third was our Yankee, Captain Proctor, who had his wooden leg.

They had much liquor with them and as it was the off-season for hunting, they decided to visit an island tribe. It would be a sort of blackbirders’ outing and after dining well on the tribe’s pigs and poultry, yams and sweet potatoes, they would put on a great white-magician act such as no native tribe had ever seen before.

THE males of the tribe were squatted all around them; the women hang ing off and on in the distance peep ing at their strange visitors from behind the coconut trees, when the argument developed as to which was the greatest magician of them all.

“I am,” said the Frenchman, making passes in the air, and ending by pulling out his glass eye, which he gave the chief to inspect.

At this marvel a shout of wonder went up.

“What about these?” said the Aus tralian, putting his hand in and pulling out his Macquarie Street dentures.

Another cry went up, but now wonder was changing to alarm and anxiety. What ever would the white man be capable of next?

Proctor took the stage with the flair of an experienced actor, relishing in his part. Tossing off a mug of gin, he made a sweeping bow and called the chief to nominate his greatest warrior to assist him in his magic. When the man came forward, Proctor sat down with a flourish and extended his leg. In what he took to be the Oxford accent —and there were several Pacific Consuls of the day who might have served as his models — “James,” he ordered, “take off mai beastly boot!”

“James” bent to perform this service with the usual result—he fell backwards with the leg grasped in his hands.

But now something happened that Proctor had not bargained for. Led by the yelling warrior, still grasping Lhe Proctor leg, the whole tribe scattered into the bush as fast as they could go. Noth ing would persuade them to come back, and it was hours before Captain Proctor recovered his leg.

Another Proctor trick was to fire his pistol into his artificial limb to make the kanakas believe that nothing could harm him.

Proctor came to be known in Noumea and Vila as “Captain One Leg.” He claimed that he had lost the other in some war. His wooden leg had a rubber fitting which enabled him to release it quickly.

He was once surrounded by kanakas, and thinking himself lost, he had the idea of pulling off his leg and using it as a weapon. The kanakas took fright and ran away.

TWO of the ships of which he was master were the “Ernestine” and the “Ika Vula,” both notorious in their day. He flew the British flag when it suited him. and painted his schooner to look like the Queensland recruiting ships, which were better controlled and more popular with the natives who pre ferred to go to Australia ratnei than Caledonia, Fiji or Samoa. The reason was that the Queensland boys came home with a much bigger “box” than the others and were more sure of being returned.

I understand Proctor had no master’s certificate, but at different times he held recruiting licences from the French and from the British Consul at Samoa He worked indiscriminately for French, British or German agents.

His villainies covered the entire South Pacific. He used to boast that he had killed fifteen natives and would kill a lot more. He also threatened to shoot any European who fell foul of him. Several times he was attacked, and the Ika Vula was shipwrecked at least once, but re floated, after suffering grave damage.

That was in 1894, when tribes on Malli colo at war with one another would suspend hostilities in order to fall on their legitimate prey, any recruiting ship or shipwrecked crew.

Proctor was certainly a thorn in the flesh of Noumea Consuls C. J. Cruick shank and Layard, who also knew the American from his Suva days. There is no doubt that, after his exploits of the 3 880’s, British gunboats were told to check on his irregularities and to keep a special look out for him.

Eventually New Hebridean settlers took action to deter him from returning to their group. It was at Vila, in December, 1892, that Proctor’s evil eye fell on what he would have termed “an attractive piece of black velvet.” In other words, a comely young, brown woman who was making her way down the street to one of the stores. Proctor ran out and not only accosted her but grabbed her and pulled her into the house where he was tem porarily residing. As the French accounts put it, “he grabbed her for a purpose which was all too clear.”

The lass was still inside the house, per haps still struggling, when her husband, a native employed by “an Australian company established at Vila” came to look for her and was told where she was.

The boy knocked at the door and asked for his wife. He was answered with a stream of oaths, but kept on knocking.

Suddenly the enraged captain hurled open the door, and emptied his six-shooter into the native’s body. He sank to the road way, dead.

Such was the cold-blooded murderer Proctor had become after twenty years of island life. In most other places he would have been brought to justice, and hanged. It is to the credit of the white colonists of Vila, however, that they were as incensed by this cold-blooded murder as they were anxious to avoid native re prisals. They came along in a body, put Proctor in irons and had him carried on board a ship named the “Rockton,” then on its way to Fiji.

In Suva, the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific was asked to deal with him, but although complaints of his behaviour were sent to America, he seems to have eluded justice. (Continued on Next Page)

BEFORE this, Proctor had been .in Samoa where the prevailing inter tribal wars suited him. Here, too, he had exploited his unscrupulous and murderous tendencies.

The last news I have of him comes from the New Caledonian Polynesian de pendency of Futuna, which belongs for administrative purposes to the Wallis group. Early in the present century the French Government transport “Scorff” re turned to Noumea from Futuna with a native prisoner named Stephano Laoufou on board. He was exiled by the Cale donian governor to the Isle of Pines, at the request, it was said, of the two native kings of Futuna.

But Proctor was at the bottom of it.

His coup misfired, and away he must have sailed again, trouble-shooting to new islands south of the line.

I have an idea that he died as he had lived and came to a sudden and a sticky end, but where I do not know. Should any “PIM” reader have any reliable in formation about Proctor and his death, I should be grateful for details. This American kidnapper was certainly a re markable by-product of the South Pacific of his time