Death Of C. C. Palmer,
p. 89 · Read in the full issue
Tahiti
From Our Own Correspondent
Papeete, Jan. 5.
A VETERAN of Papeete’s waterfront, Mr. Charles C. Palmer, died on December 27, after a long illness. He was born in New Zealand, of British stock, 85 years ago, and he arrived in Papeete, with his father and a brother.
The brother, Fred, was drowned in the Pautana River, while still a boy.
“Pauma Iti,” as Charles was affectionately known, had an adventurous life. When, in 1903, he was at Hikueru, in
the Tuamotus, a great tidal wave swept all these islands, with terrible loss of life. Palmer, survived by fighting his way from tree to tree, when the seas were nearly above the tops of the coconuts, and when one of the trees on which he was resting was uprooted, he would swim to another, until the storm subsided. When he descended he found, among floating wreckage and drowned people, the body of his wife, formerly Miss Ida Brander.
Again in 1906, a cyclone swept the
islands, and again he escaped by doing practically the same thing.
Mr. Palmer is survived by his wife, (a former Miss Hoppenstedt), and a son and grandchildren.
Nauru triplets, Richard, Joseph and John Tracey, aged 12 years 8 months, have been enrolled at Chevalier College, NSW, for 1951. Their father is with the BPC on Nauru.