or Luganville?

The Big Hebrides Mix-up Do You Say Santo, Santos

• Walk into any RNZAF or United States Ex-Servicemen’s Club and ask any likely-looking World War II vintage ex-serviceman to place his finger on Luganville on a chart of the South-West Pacific, and you’ll almost certainly draw a blank.

BUT ask the same man to point out “Santos” and he will im mediately indicate the Segond Channel area of south-east Espiritu Santo Island in the northern New Hebrides. Yet officially there is no such place as Santos.

This is just one of the problems that pop up each time, as now, that a new edition of the Pacific Islands Year Book is being prepared.

Prior to World War 11, the few people who had occasion to talk about the island of Espiritu Santo naturally called it Santo for short.

On Espiritu Santo’s south-east coast, on the shores of the Segond Channel—which is formed by the small islands of Malo and Aore close off-shore—was a small settlement known as Luganville, administrative centre for this area.

During the Pacific war, the Americans arrived in great force, to set up a huge complex of bases all about the Segond Channel area.

There are several places called Santos with an “s” —in the Americas, and this seems to be the only sound explanation of why they attached this letter to a general name for this whole military city, of which Luganville became merely an insignificant suburb or sub division.

When the war ended, the word Luganville was virtually forgotten— but unfortunately it hadn’t just changed its name to Santos.

The trouble now is that no two people agree as to just what is meant by Santo or Santos. Is it the island? Is it Luganville? Is it the new wharf area? Or is it the gen eral Segond Channel area just as it was in military days? And is Luganville merely a part of this new Santos?

Most residents still call it Santo.

So do Islands merchants, shipping companies and airline operators.

Maybe the only sound test of whether there is a township called Santo/Santos, or a placed called Luganville is The International List of Telegraph Offices, published by the International Telegraphic Union’s Berne headquarters, and constantly kept up-to-date by them. It is an essential document in every tele graph office in the world —and what it says, goes! It lists Luganville, but not Santos, New Hebrides.

However* the word Santos (or Santo) is becoming so firmly en trenched in actual usage that some thing will have to be done about it on an official level before many more years.

In places like Sydney where tele graph officials are familiar with the Luganville-Santos mix-up, there is not much difficulty, but in more distant places many people know of no other name than Santos (or Santo) for this settlement, and an

increasing telegraphic problem will

develop overseas.

It would be interesting to know for whom Luganville was named — and just at what point the original pre-war Luganville existed —if it did at all.

The present town was virtually non-existent before the war. The Segond Channel was an area of French-o wn e d plantations and nothing more. The present town straggles for miles along the main road (Yank built) and the only people to benefit from that are the Tonkinese taxi owners.