Origin of Tin Can Mail

Letter to the Editor 11HE Australian Broadcasting Commis sion asked me to do a brief News Review on the Tin Can Mail at the time that the population of Niua-foou was evacuated. It was based on an in terview given an Auckland newspaper many years before by Mr. Ramsay and on information given me personally by Ton gans who served with the Fijian scout ing units in the Solomons during the war.

It supplements the interesting and valu able explanation given by Count F. T.

Goedicke-Van Asten in the May issue of “PIM.” The five minute script read (in part):— Even people who have not travelled, have heard of Tin Can Island and its swimming postman. Authority on the service is English-born C. S. Ramsay, a frequent visitor to Auckland. He served with the New Zealanders in World War I, then became a trader. He has more recently managed the Morris Hedstrom store at Haapai. When he went to Niua’foou in 1921, he found that in the hurri cane season the people were deprived of communications for six months of the year.

Some years previously the mail had been sent from passing ships with rockets, but the mail was sometimes scorched in the process and the rockets set Are to the bush.

“I swam during the bad season!” Mr.

Ramsay says. “Owing; to interest shown by tourists, the captain of a ship asked me to keep it up. For ten years 1 con tinued the Tin Can Mail all the year round.”

Tongans give pride of place as post man to old Mr. Quensell, another trader.

He was succeeded by his son, C. Dugal Quensell, a half-caste whose Polynesian v,omo ic TnVnlp He Used to SWim OUt regularly with the mail from the time he was 10 or 12. To-day, he is a handsome, upstanding man, in his thirties, who runs a large store at Nukualofa.

Lacking anchorage, steamers at Tin Can Island anchor half a mile out. So the swim, demanding phvsical fitness, is one within the powers of o eood Austra lian life-saver. Shipping lines have co operated. and those on the regular Sydney-San Francisco run made it a point to cruise in the vicinity. On more than one occasion, ships have been flagged with a request for supolies when the islands only radio-set had conked out There’s no harbour and no beach, but the interest of travellers became keen, as the years went bv, and shioping lines felt they had “inherited the welfare” of the islanders.

Tin Can Island stamps, one may sup pose, will now mount greatly in value, but Pacific travellers will miss seeing the island post in operation.

I am, etc.,

H. E. L. Friday.

„ J Sydney, July 15.