Penalty Of Fame

Salote Claimed to be of German Descent

By F. T. Goedicke-van Asten, of Auckland.

THE publicity earned last year by Queen Salote of Tonga, when she was an honoured visitor at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England, has had some curious results.

Among these must be noted a claim made by Das Grune Blat, published in Detmond, Germany, wherein it is stated, in detail, that Queen Salote is of direct German descent.

A reporter of Grune Blat (which, naturally enough, is German for "‘green leaf”) described a long in terview he had with a Mr. Muhr, of Hamburg. Mr. Muhr said he was a third cousin of Queen Salote, and produced old photographs and letters to prove it. He insists that Queen Salote is a great-great-grand daughter of the former Heinrich Meyer, of Boxtehude (a place near Hamburg; and that Heinrich Meyer became King George Tubou of Tonga. It happened this way, according to Mr. Muhr.

Heinrich Meyer, when 18, left Hamburg in a sailing ship for the South Seas. They were wrecked in the Friendly Islands, and all hands were lost except Meyer and

a young sailor. Both tried to reach land—Meyer succeeded, but the other youngster was drowned.

The exhausted Meyer fainted on the beach; and, when he recovered consciousness, “he was surrounded by a group of natives, staring at his almost naked body and admiring his white skin—they had never seen a European before.”

This young Heinrich Meyer became—like hundreds of others in similar circumstances—the pampered pet of the village. He was adopted by a large Tongan Chief,

and the chief’s daughter became his wife. When the chief died, Meyer succeeded to his place as head man.

The improvements he made in domestic and village life made him famous; he became a notable leader in war; and presently he pro claimed himself King of Tonga as “George Tubou I”, That was the story, served up with trimmings for the entertainment 0 f people in Europe who had been attracted by Queen Salote’s famous smile ' (Continued on Next Page)

NATURALLY, I read this extra ordinary story with interest.

When first I visited Haapai, in 1885, King George Tubou I was a resident of Lifuka, which was the headquarters of the Haapai govern ment. He was then about 90 years old, and he certainly was not a European. The king was born in Haapai, and he preferred life there to life in Tongatabu. I met him on several occasions* and drank many cups of kava with him.

According to my diary, King George told me he was born in 1795, and when the Port-au-Prince was seized by the Tongans at Haapai, in 1810, George I was present, and 15 years old. (Captain F. Rhodes, in his Pageant of the Pacific, says that the Port-au-Prince —which was a whaler-privateer commanded by Captain Duck, armed with 30 guns, and carrying a crew of 51—was seized by the natives of Lifuka on November 23, 1806. They massacred 37; and one of the 14 survivors, who were held prisoner until 1810, was William Mariner, who wrote the story of their adventures in his famous book, Tonga Islands. — Editor.) I left Haapai in 1888, and returned in 1893. This was just after the death of King George Tubou I, and he had been succeeded by his great-grandson Taufaakau as George Tubou II (Queen Salote’s father).

Anyone who wishes to know the true story of King George I, the “Grand Old Man of the South Seas,” from the time that he was 15 until 1893, when he died at the age of 98, should read Mariner’s Tonga, Sir Basil Thompson’s The Diversions of a Prime Minister, and The History and Geography of Tonga, written by the Rev. Mr.

Woods.