The Editors' M aillag

Forgotten History Of

Suwarrow's Pearls

Sir, —I was extremely interested read in your August issue (p. 24) ; account of Suwarrow Island and »oon as it is at the present day.

Many years ago, when I was an iployee of Lever’s Pacific Planta ins Ltd., at Gavutu, their Solomon ands HQ, we were often puzzled to the origin of some wire cages lich were stowed at the back of * wharf under a coal shed. These ;re flat-bottomed and semi-circular shape, somewhat like an old jhioned rat trap.

On one occasion when Mr. G.

Iton, the general manager was on inspection visit from Sydney, we ked him about them, and his )ly was “They represent the last £10,000”.

Apparently somewhere about the ar 1906 he had been induced to rest some of the company’s funds an attempt to breed “culture arls” by a Professor Saville Kent, arl oysters were shipped from ursday Island on the company’s amer Upolu (formerly a Union Co. vessel) being kept alive in iks, with running sea-water, during ; trip to Suwarrow.

The net result of these operations s a jar full of nacre-covered small [tons and other objects, the cages, d some diving gear, which were aught to Gavutu. The buttons nt on to Sydney.

Until that time, I believe, Suwar v had no pearl oysters, and the empt to cultivate them there must ely have been the first on a com :rcial scale.

I must congratulate you on your ;sent production of the magazine, lad not seen a copy since leaving nikoro, BSIP in 1958, but I was early contributor to one of the ly numbers of the eight-page aadsheet with which the magazine rted. Nowadays, 1 receive copies ough courtesy of one of my sons, io uses it in his company’s busi es to keep track of transport ar igements.

H. Chaperlin.

rkes Street, inly Vale, NSW.

Editor’s note: Our thanks to our I friend Mr. Chaperlin (whose first ntribution to PIM appeared in cember, 1930) for recalling ver’s pearl shell venture at Suwar v. We should add that, 30,000 dls were shipped to Suwarrow, :ording to an account of the iture given to PIM in November, 35, by the Upolu’s commander, ptain Charles Menmuir. All were

of the golden lip variety as blacklip shell was already plentiful at the atoll. The golden lip shell spatted (i.e. spawned) all right, but the results were not the success hoped for; and before any further experi ments could be made, Lever’s lease of Suwarrow expired and the New Zealand Government declined to renew it. When Lever’s began their venture, golden lip shell was worth about £9O a ton more than the black lip variety, and it therefore seemed a sound business proposition,

From Med To Mum

Sir, —Please allow me to make some comment on the review on page 97 of your August issue entitled “From Numazu to Numbers, Taxco to Taxidermy”. I was very sorry to see that your reviewer credited the wrong author with the story “From Med to Mum”.

The story “From Med to Mum” was written by the late author of South Sea stories, James Norman Hall, and was later published under the title A Tale of a Shipwreck. The book is an excellent one and worth reprinting.

Hall was working on his trilogy on the Bounty mutiny when, to get some local atmosphere and to know more about Pitcairn, he thought it advisable to visit that island.

Transportation from Tahiti, where he lived, was very rare. But at last a chance came. Mr. Pedro Miller, a well-known South Sea merchant, chartered the schooner Pro Patria, the former American schooner Santa Rosa Island. She was commanded by Captain Winnie Brander, another well-known personality in French Oceania.

Sailing from Tahiti, the Pro Patria worked her way slowly through the Tuamotu Archipelago; stopped at Bligh’s Island (Tematangi) to collect firewood; and visited Mangareva to load some coconuts to give to the Pitcairn Islanders.

After a couple of days on Pitcairn, they resumed their voyage and were on their way to revisit Mangareva when the Pro Patria was wrecked on the reef of Timoe, an uninhabited atoll.

Hall’s tale of the wreck itself, of the subsequent voyage in a whale boat from Timoe to Mangareva, and of the voyage from the Gambiers

to Tahiti in a cutter, is a classic.

And no one but Hall could have written so fascinatingly about the visit to Pitcairn.

Fred K. Klebingat

West 22nd Street, San Pedro, California.

Loss Of The "Lakemba"

Sir, —Your magazine being known for its fair play, may I express my astonishment at the few lines you spent on the disastrous wrecking of the 8,000-ton MV Lakemba. When I had the misfortune to wreck my vessel, the MV Wallisien, on the un lighted reef off Nukutolo rock in bad weather, this stranding was given full coverage in your magazine, and there were sensational Press reports and radio coverage by The Fiji Times and Radio Suva.

Yet a vessel more than 10 times the Wallisien’s size got wrecked only four miles from Vatulele Island light house, barely a few hours after leav ing Suva, with 80 passengers on board and nearly £2 million value in ship and cargo ... no inquiry was held except a “private” one, where it was, among other things, stated that the vessel was running on “auto matic pilot” with no one on watch on the bridge. No further inquiry was “deemed necessary” nor was the public told what happened. But my crew and myself were summoned in front of the Marine Board in Suva barely five hours after being landed on the wharf after our rescue.

E. W. Lamberty

Ex-master, MV Wallisien Santo, New Hebrides

Editor’s note: Captain Lamberty need fret no further about our fair play. The Lakemba struck Vatulele on October 4, and the report he com plains of was brief because we chose to insert it into the last pages of our October issue despite the grim faces of our long-suffering printers, who pointed out that our deadline was passed. We had to throw another story out of the page to accommodate it. Our November issue gave a half page to the Lakemba, and again this month (p. 108) we have reported an aspect of the collision which intrigues us as much as it does Captain Lamberty.