Missionary Pioneer

In A Double Pickle

That doughty missionary pioneer, Rev. John Williams, 125 years ago, had a unique experience with a leak in a ship, his famous “Messenger of Peace”.

HE built the little sailing vessel himself, in Rarotonga; and, by use of it, he introduced Christi anity into many islands of Polynesia.

After a happy meeting with old King Malietoa Tavita, Williams sailed away from Samoa, for Vavau; and on November 11, 1832, the Messenger sprang a leak.

Out on the ocean, they pumped and they searched, but they could not find the leak. But they kept afloat by continuous pumping and got to Vavau.

They took their gear out of the ship, and raised the cabin floor, and inspected the inside; and native divers examined the outside. But eventually they had to leave for Nukualofa, still leaking and pump ing.

John Williams has told how that night he lay sleepless in his bunk and “in my mind I went over every plank and every seam, and every bulk-end in the vessel, from stem to stern-post, from keel to deck, and I cannot think that anything could possibly have given away.”

Mystery Solved

In Nukualofa, two English cap tains took over, heaved down the Messenger, and solved the mystery.

In one place, two augur holes had been bored, for one bolt. One hole had been left unplugged, and the Messenger had sailed thousands of miles before the water eventually crept past the mud and the crushed coral which had filled the hole.

With paeans of joy, they put the ship back on her even keel, and tidied up.

Within a few hours, to their horror, they discovered the little ship half full of water. They just managed to get her to a shallow place, before she sank. They then discovered that the carpenter had drilled the muck out of the hole, with an augur, hut had neglected to plug it up.

It took them a fortnight to raise the shin and make her ready for sea. “All our tea, sugar, salt and biscuits.” records the missionary, “which had been placed in the cabin, were pickled together.”

Williams was afterwards murdered and eaten by New Hebrides savages.

His son and his grandson suc cessively filled the office of British Consul in Samoa in the turbulent days between 1865 and 1885.