Islands Shipwreck
p. 87 · Read in the full issue
Plaque In London Church. Recalls Story Of Early Islands Shipwreck
One of the rewards of visiting out-of-the-way London churches is the chance of making un expected and interesting dis coveries about distant places in far off times.
RECENTLY, at St. Mary’s Church Rotherhithe—a poor district on the south bank of the Thames —such an unexpected discovery came my way.
Fastened to the north wall of the interior is a brass plate commemorat ing the death in December, 1784, of a certain Prince Lee 800, described as the son of Aba Thule, king of Coorooraa Island in the Pelews.
The inscription goes on to refer to the natives’ humane treatment of the crew of the Antelope, an East India man, which went aground at the island on August 9, 1783.
Reference books soon showed that the modern name of this island is Koror (formerly Kororu) which is in the Palau District of the Carolines.
And a rather scarce book, which I have had access to, gives an account of the Antelope’s crew’s three-month stay on the island.
The book, compiled by G. Keate from a journal kept by the Antelope’s commander, Captain Henry Wilson, tells how the crew’s first task was to build a stockade ashore and to put into it all the stores and equipment that they could salvage from their ship.
The crew then built a smaller ves sel in which they eventually sailed to the Philippines to the west.
Natives Helped
The natives, besides providing fresh food, helped to paint the new ship; and, as a reward, Captain Wilson lent 10 of his men to help King Abba Thule in a battle with natives of an adjacent island.
Attractive engravings in Keate’s book show excellent paved walks and well-built jetties and causeways in the vicinity of the main village.
Captain Wilson became popular enough to be made a chief, or rupack, of the first rank which involved the presentation of a particular bone always to be worn on the wrist.
This is said by Keate to be that of
a whale “or some animal of that species”—and from a sketch in his book, it looks like the axis from the vertebral column.
When the time came to sail, Prince Lee Boo, the king’s second son, was taken aboard to be shown the sights of far-away England under Wilson’s guidance.
When this young man of 20 arrived in London he was duly impressed by the sight of a four-poster bed, stage coaches, a harpsichord and “houses on houses up to the sky”.
Smallpox
His pleasant manners and disposi tion, coupled with his quick observa tion and determination to learn to read and write, impressed everyone, and he took to Mrs. Wilson whom he called his mother.
Sad to relate, however, he soon contracted an acute form of small 1784 and diCd jUSt aftCr Christmas ’
The treatment recommended by Wilson’s doctor, to take warm baths and have plasters put on his back, shows the state medicine was in at this time.
As some small compensation for the death of this promising young man, the East India Company sent some cattle to the Palaus, where they were treated as sacred beasts, despite the harm they did by grazing on young coconut palms and other crops.
Since those days, the Palau Islands have been successively under German, Japanese and now American but next to nothing has been written them by British writers since Keate’s book was published nearly
180 years ago.