Suwarrow's New

Hermit Costs

Yachtsmen £1Oo

Two New Zealand yachtsmen, John and David Glennie, had to pay £lOO to the Cook Islands

Government recently to defray

the cost of removing a hermit from isolated and normally un inhabited Suwarrow Island in

the Northern Cook Group.

THE hermit is Michael Swift, a 26-year-old Londoner, who joined the Glennies’ trimaran High light in Tahiti in July. Two months iater, Swift was left on Suwarrow island at his own request—but without the authorisation of the Cook islands Government.

News that Swift had been landed mi Suwarrow was revealed in late September when the Glennies put into Pago Pago, 540 miles to the south-west, with one fewer passenger m board than was shown in their capers.

Illegal Immigrant

When the Cook Islands Govem nent heard of this, it declared that Swift was an illegal immigrant, and t asked the New Zealand Govern nent to order the Glennies to go ?ack to Suwarrow to take him off.

The New Zealand Government :aught up with the Glennies shortly ifterwards in Apia, Western Samoa, when the NZ High Commissioner old them that they would either lave to go back to Suwarrow to get >wift; pay £lOO to defray the cost )f sending another ship there to get lim; or face charges of entering the -ook Islands other than through a gazetted Customs port of entry and anding an illegal immigrant.

The Glennies decided to pay the £lOO. But as they had little money with them, David Glennie got a job in Apia as a refrigeration engineer, which enabled him to earn the necessary money.

After the money was deposited with the New Zealand High Commissioner, the Glennies sailed for Suva, where they arrived towards the end of October.

The Glennies’ encounter with Michael Swift was their second notable adventure since they began a cruise of the South Pacific from Auckland in May.

Their first adventure was when a whale attacked their boat about 400

miles north-east of Auckland, en route to Rapa, French Polynesia, The trimaran shipped about 80 gallons of water, and the Glennies had to bail continuously until they reached Rarotonga, 1,200 miles away (PIM, July, p, 23).

After repairing the trimaran, the Glennies went on to Tahiti, where they met Swift, who had arrived in the Pacific in July last year on the delivery voyage from Hong Kong of the Cook Islands ship Tagua.

Swift, a tall, thin, dark-haired art student, had apparently developed the idea of living on Suwarrow through reading (possibly in PIM for March last year) about the New

Zealand hermit Tom Neale, who lived alone on Suwarrow, off and on, from October, 1952, to January, 1964—with the New Zealand Gov ernment’s permission.

Anyway, Swift persuaded the Glennies to take him to Suwarrow and leave him there—along with 40,000 refuel units for a cigarette lighter, fishing gear, medical kit, knives, a coconut scraper and other essentials.

According to the Cook Islands News , which obtained information about Swift from Captain Don Silk of the Tagua, Swift left London for India after betting a friend that he could hitch-hike there on £lO.

Swift apparently accomplished the journey within the limit he allowed himself, and then spent “quite a long time” living in an Indian monastery.

When Captain Silk met Swift in Hong Kong, he was living aboard a junk that was due to sail to Aus tralia. He claimed that he had reached Hong Kong from Thailand.

"Decidedly Anti-Social"

Swift asked Captain Silk if he could work his way as far as Fiji aboard the Tagua when complica tions prevented the junk from sailing for Australia.

As he “appeared all right” and had had previous experience at sea, Captain Silk agreed to sign him on as a seaman.

He proved to be an efficient, hard-working seaman; he was clean, pleasant and well-behaved; but he was “singularly uncommunicative”, a very small eater, and “decidedly anti-social”, “Most of us feel we have some debt to the society we live in,”

Captain Silk told the Cook Islands News. “But Michael felt no respon sibility whatsoever. He didn’t feel he owed anything to anyone or to any system.

“He simply wanted to be on his own.”

The Cook Islands News com mented : “Michael Swift can hardly be condemned for his individualistic approach to life . . . But the Govern ment here has a correct view that if one man can land on Cook Islands territory without permission, then others might attempt to do the same, and others might be far less harmless than Michael Swift appears to be.”

FOOTNOTE: When PIM went to Press, no news had come to hand on what plans, if any, the Cook Islands Government had to remove Swift from Suwarrow.