George Murdoch: The Man Who

Arrested Pirate Mortelmans

By “Supercargo "

George Murdoch probably was the most able District Officer ever to serve in the Gilbert and Ellice Colony His efficiency was probably due to the fact that he did not join the service until he had gained much experience of that archi pelago as a trader.

THINK he was originally selected for administrative work by Swain, the first Resident Com ssioner there, and to my personal owledge he was held in high eem by W. Telfer Campbell, ptain John Quayle Dickson and Carlyon Eliot, all of whom lowed Swain, in that order, ibout the year 1892, Murdoch, i his friend Peter Garrick, of aian, went to Guatemala as irseers in charge of a party of bert Islands labourers, who had n engaged to work on the coffee ntations. Murdoch had married »irl of Tabituea, and they had > children, Agnes and Charles, i they accompanied him to atemala. )n their way back, the Murdochs it to San Francisco, and they left les at a convent near the Tamento River, in California, to educated, *n her way home to the Gilberts, les Murdoch arrived in Sydney the Ventura on December 7, 1901, I George Murdoch and his wife ie to Sydney to meet her. They went home by the ss Brunner, ch had been chartered by the ific Islands Company, and which arted in January, 1902. y now, her father’s position r the head of the G. & E. ainistration was well established, Agnes, as his attractive, well cated daughter, became well wn in that area. Murdoch was i in such high regard that nger officers appointed to this ice—like Wakeman, Davies, nble and McDermot —were sent hm for a period of preliminary aing. On occasion, he acted as stant Resident Commissioner, urdoch had had a sound educa , and his handwriting was like it. Because he knew the

language and the people so well, he could understand the working of the native mind—to the chagrin of many a native offender who had to appear before him in court.

He Arrested Mortelmans He was singularly successful in the lay-out of villages. They were well-planned and hygienic—a model for the District Officers—and they were built long before the first Health Officer (Dr. Alex Robertson) arrived in 1906.

Murdoch came from a good family. He told me that he thought his cousin was first officer

on the Titanic, when she struck the Iceberg and sank In April, 1912.

It was Murdoch who arrested the pirate Mortelmans on board the Louise J. Kenny at Tarawa; and Agnes was with her father at Abemama when he inspected the wrecked pirate schooner Nueva Tigre, or White Rose.

The story of Mortelmans, the pirate and murderer, is one of the most remarkable in the Pacific records.

He was a big, brutal Belgian, and an English lad named Skerritt and he were the crew of a little 45-tons schooner called Nueva Tigre, trading on the coast of Peru. One day in November, 1907, Mortelmans suddenly attacked and murdered both captain and mate of the schooner, and forced Skerritt to assist him in dumping the schooner’s cargo, and sailing her westwards, towards Australia.

They were two months at sea, during which they painted the schooner white, and changed her name to White Rose. On January 24, 1908, they piled her up on the reef on the east coast of Abemama, in the Gilberts.

The Gilbertese magistrate there arranged that Mortelmans and Skerritt should go as shipwrecked mariners on the Louise J. Kenny, a trading schooner, to Tarawa.

Mortelmans decided to seize the Kenny, made ready to murder the three white men, and gave Skerritt certain instructions. He suspected Skerritt, and never let the youth out of his sight.

(Continued on page 95)

Joseph Mortelmans.

The wrecked schooner "White Rose", as she lay on the reef at Abemama—from a photo graph taken 50 years ago.

However, Skerritt managed to whisper a few things to the cooksteward, and the latter warned the captain and supercargo. They grabbed Mortelmans, and tied him up in a cabin, and sent word ashore as soon as they reached Tarawa, on February 15, 1907.

G o f lif e The man who came aboard and gf S lm G a eo S r with five native p^fd^nc e was the

unsupported 0 word^^SkerrLtt 8

sentenced Nortel-

Court cprvitude for life

Skerritt w?th witnesses from Callao;

fc>Kernn, wiui w t, 1 h 6 fl d s explained why ’ the then Chief h Justice,Charles Major,

did not impose the death sentence, The full story is told by Gilchrist Alexander, formerly a magistrate in Fiji, in his book From the Middle Temple to the South Seas. Alexander was sent from Suva to South America to get the evidence which convicted Mortelmans.

Agnes Dolores Murdoch, who was born in 1885, eventually married a

soTUTtK

« 1951 ’ a & ed 66 - (The story of “ch 195*8.) *°“ m Her brother, Charles Murdoch, travelled with us in the Titus, from the Gilberts to Sydney, in October. 19Q3 to be ec j U cated.

He was a successful student, and he later joined a firm of engineers