Early Links With
pp. 78-80 · Read in the full issue
A Brett Milder Profile
Early Links With Levers
Joseph John Wells Is A
living link with the earliest period of Lever Brothers’ interests in the Pacific.
HE was born in London on August 27, 1888, did his schooling there, and sailed for Australia, via the Cape, in November, 1906. After trying Melbourne, Adelaide and Western Australia, he came to Sydney and took a job with Levers as deputy assistant supercargo in the SS Upolu.
This vessel was of 1,141 tons, and was bought by Levers in 1903. In 1907 her officers included Captain Miles Menmuir, Chief Officer Barron, Chief Engineer Loder, Chief Steward Cullen, Supercargo Mr. Danvers, and assistant Mr. Buchanan.
Jack Wells spent two years in the ship, making three or four round voyages to so many islands in the Pacific that he lost count after the first 100. At this time Levers had bought a lot of properties from the Pacific Islands Company Ltd., includ ing three large estates in Fiji, and the following islands: Flint, Sydney, Hull, Christmas, Suwarrow, Caroline, Burnie, Vostock, Gardner, Phoenix and Canton.
Their properties in the Solomons, purchased in 1905, included 25,870 acres from the natives, 12,000 from Government, and 51,000 from Captain Svensen, with headquarters at Gavutu. They also set up 17 trading posts to keep the home fires burning while the plantations were being cleared and planted.
The Upolu used to visit the Solomons and the eastern islands, the Gilberts and Ellice, the Union Group and Samoa, where a total of 300,000 seed coconuts were obtained for planting up the Solomons.
Copra was collected and taken to Sydney, where it was sold to Lever Bros, at Balmain. Other cargo con sisted of ivory nuts and tortoise-shell.
The currency used for trading was mainly dogs’ teeth, imported from London, and porpoise-teeth, collected by fishermen in Sydney.
In 1906, the great repatriation of kanakas from Queensland began, and the work of landing the returned labour to their homes in the Solomons kept the ships and staff busy for a whole year.
In 1910 Levers built two vessels,
the Kobiloko, of 170 tons, at Sy i and the Kulamhangara, 2,005 tot Scotland; these vessels took ove Solomons trade and the Upolu sold in 1911 to the Brisbane M Company.
The eastern islands were fom be of little value to Levers, andl put up for sale. The UpoliA obtained gold-lip shell from Thu Island and this was planter Christmas and Suwarrow ire lagoons, but there was no div at the time.
Flint, Suwarrow, Caroline Vostock were sold to S. R. Mat of Auckland, and the six isles « Phoenix were sold to the Ss Trading Company. Christmas: sold to Father E. Rougier in and Levers concentrated their im in the Solomons.
Long before this, Jack Well swallowed the anchor, or rath'i tally-book, and he worked in S until he joined the 19th Bad AIF. He was later transfenr the Ist Cyclists’ Battalion and ft at the end of the war, to the: unit which later grew into thei Graves Commission. Jack married in 1916—his bride beini Hermione Guilda Carroll.
When Sydney Smith’s Weeki started, Jack got a job in the and he was still there, as payn when the paper went out of a tion nearly 26 years later.
Although during his Island) periences he had met Jack II in his Cutty Sark at Apia, ano other characters who claimed M sailed with “Bully” Hayes, < claims his time with the ft
(Continued on page 78)
Smith’s as the most interesting of his life.
Smith’s also published the R the Arrow, and the Daily Gm They employed a medley of and back-and-white artists, fu or freelance, whose names ft large Who’s Who in journal! those years.
When Smith’s folded, JackJ into the temporary obscuriti deadly respectability of an ins office, from which he emerr 1958 to regain his freedom inj ment.
He and his wife now spem of each year in Sydney, and Goroka in the Eastern Highly New Guinea, where their tw\ live.
Both sons were wartime pilots with the RAAF but Johm a coffee-planter and trader, anu is the manager of Cottee’s Passe New Guinea. The Wells’ alse a daughter, Cynthia, living hi Delhi, where her husband, Gillick, is Senior Trade Commij
for Australia.-