Capt. Klebingat

Ose Old Happy

Ys In Tonga

emories of Capt. Klebingat

reference in March issue of If " to Captain Klebingat brought ?. lively memories from Miss '.red H. Free, formerly a resident l uckland and Tonga, and now •es Voeux Road, Suva: Captain Klebingat is still on ieck! Now, there is a man with ■eal material for a book. He ably is one of the few men left spent all his life in sail, ptain Klebingat came along a way with the Melrose, in when I was a member of the is Hedstrom staff there. He fht a cargo of lumber and oil E think he made two or three But that first trip nearly i in disaster. er unloading at Nukualofa, the )se set off for Niuafo’ou, to pick return load of copra for San ;isco; and our head manager a branch manager decided to the opportunity to go along on t of inspection. They took only Jh food for a week, but had ddition a few supplies for ay, the “Tin Can Mailman,” ling two cases of whisky—pre 3ly to revive his gaspy throat swimming out to the Tofua. i Melrose got blown south to ermadecs, and was lost for six By the time they got to d’ou there was very little left t —and still less of Ramsay’s y. vas about this time that the kainiu got blown from Tonga : New Hebrides, with a couple itives on board, a couple of iits, and a lot of hope. No one d to think that it was such idful thing as it might appear j. They were lost for three is; but natives apparently used to that sort of thing. >THER time when Captain lebingat was in Tonga he had near mutiny on board. He an immense man—k ind 1 y, , with something of the per ty of Von Luckner—a born . For crew he had, as you can nderstand, some of the worst an be picked up in San Fran and they played up a bit nga. Being months at sea, g from San Francisco, may added to the trouble, night, when the captain came ard, as soon as he stepped on eck a seaman hit him with ying pin. course, the police came into md Captain had to make a lent about the matter. He 3d the statement to me (I was enographer in the firm); and short and to the point, some on these lines:

“When the master boarded the ship, the said seaman came at the said master and struck him with a belaying pin (looking at me with a twinkle in his eye), said master de fending himself.”

This was a masterly understate ment for, as a matter of fact, the said master hit that fellow so hard that he was unconscious for two days, and I think the ship sailed without him.

ON his next trip, there happened to be in Nukualofa harbour a small yacht, containing a New Zealand family. They lived on the sea in this yacht and tripped around from place to place—a delightful life, but one that could not be lived

to-day, with the form-filling-ln and currency restrictions and other things that make a traveller’s life a misery.

The family consisted of a father and mother, a young boy of about twelve, and a beauteous girl about seventeen, with a bounteous mop of hair, the colour of ripe wheat on the Darling Downs, in Queensland, a New Zealand complexion and a sun-tan, made by the sea, and the sun and not got out of a bottle as to-day.

She apparently was the “crew”— I do not remember if the small vessel carried any other crew—and the minute she sailed into Captain Klebingat’s horizon, it was a case With him. (Over)

he boss said to me one day: iptain Klebingat says he is in » with that girl, and is going to te back and marry her.” True ugh, a couple of months later, he k us a letter to be forwarded on her (the yacht had gone, long ie), with the remark: “My hat till in the ring, as you see.” ire enough, he did go back the >wing year to New Zealand and ry her. wonder, did they live happily • after? Certainly, they both had lar tastes, and she was a itiful and capable girl. [EN, what about all those other colourful characters that flitted across the scene in Tonga in the ’twenties—old Ned Sandys, from Luka (a direct descendant of an y Archbishop of York, of that e) who used to come to town lis cutter, and draw a couple lundred pounds, which he took y in a little canvas bag, and l proceed to go to the Tonga i for a festive night; but Ned never known to lose that money, :h he eventually took back to uka to buy copra, id then there was Ross Murray, was merry one dark night, and )ed on a white horse which iened to be roaming around, animal apparently belonged to Queen; for, feeling the un stomed burden on its back, it iptly bolted and threw Ross ray off in the Palace yard.

All those colourful and happy days are gone now in Tonga: people come down for a couple of years on a contract, and never get the atmosphere of the place like we did in the old days.