George Murdoch, Colourful

Pacific Islands Monthly

Magazine Section

Pioneer Of The Gilberts

By Ken Mcgregor

Early in 1882, the small trading schooner Sunbeam limped into the wide lagoon of Abe mama, Gilbert Islands. She had been badly damaged by storms off Majuro, in the Marshall Islands to the north, a few days before. Aboard the Sunbeam, a 20-year-old Scots adventurer named George Murdoch watched as several large canoes pulled out from shore and approached at a fast clip. Prominent in the largest canoe was a massive Gilbertese with a long mane of coal black hair, who a few minutes later clambered aboard the Sunbeam.

This was the first meeting between reorge Murdoch and Tembinoka, sspotic king of Abemama and earby Aranuka and Kuria. It was portentious meeting for both men.

The Gilbert Islands’ most powerful, lost feared chief, was to create his wn commercial empire with the hites—trading, running his own ups with European crews and cap ins. The young George Murdoch as to help him do it and then carve is own colourful niche in mid acific history as a renowned and spected trader and administrator.

There are men alive today who can ill fill in many of the details of lurdoch’s career at first hand. But ic full story of Murdoch has yet ) be documented and it would be story worth telling.

Tembinoka, that day aboard the mbeam, got right down to business, ie needed a ship and he offered a jge quantity of accumulated copra >r the Sunbeam.

To the ship’s master, Captain enty, and to Murdoch and another aman, Charles Turk, he offered bs as mariners and supercargoes )oard his trading fleet.

How he got there

All offers were accepted on the iot. The copra load was too good 1 miss, and the Sunbeam’s New ;aland owners had paid only £4O r their now-damaged vessel.

For a few months after meeting jmbinoka, Murdoch lived on bemama close to the king. When ;mbinoka played cards in the enings, Murdoch played also, though he rarely won a game be use Tembinoka insisted always on e choice of the two hands.

Murdoch was soon put in charge of the copra plantation on the king’s three islands, and also on nearby islands such as Nonouti. Trade in turtles, which abounded on Kuria, was also under his direction.

Atoll life, which is a fairly amphibious business, suited Murdoch, who had always hankered after the sea. Born in the small Scottish town of Dalbeattie in 1861, he had left home at 16 as an apprentice seaman on the barque Loch Urr, which made a return trip from London to Auck-

land. It was during a storm on this voyage that he had his right knee damaged. For the rest of his life he had a slight limp.

In 1879 he left Britain for New Zealand in the vessel Wigtonshire.

He was never to return to the land of his birth. In New Zealand, he had joined the Sunbeam which was bound for Majuro.

He prospered

Murdoch prospered from the time he landed in the Gilberts, but two of his former shipmates were not so lucky. Sometime in 1883, the year after the Sunbeam reached the Gilberts, Tembinoka sent Murdoch and Charlie Turk from Kuria to Abemama to help get a stricken vessel off the Abemama reef. They salvaged this vessel, Rose of Fiji, and brought her back to Tembinoka, who purchased her.

The king then sent Turk and 30 natives, male and female, to Aranuka to load Rose of Fiji with copra. Near Aranuka she was hit by a storm and the vessel drifted. After several weeks at sea she grounded on the reef at Nonouti. Billy Lowther, an old mariner who had been on Sunbeam, died from hunger on board, and Charlie Turk and the natives were found in a bad way. Due to privations suffered at this time, Turk died of dysentry at Nonouti.

Not long afterwards Murdoch himself escaped disaster when one of Tembinoka’s vessels, Coronet, piled up on the Astrolabe Reef, Fiji, while delivering copra to Levuka for sale.

The ship’s master, Captain Hay ward, and crew managed to get off in the ship’s boat, and in Levuka

The wrecked schooner, "White Rose", as she lay on the reef at Abemama.

with Robert Louis Stevenson

they chartered a small schooner to get them back to Abemama, where they found Tembinoka furious at the loss of his vessel, Murdoch and Captain Hayward set off for New Zealand, where they chartered the schooner Louie for Tembinoka and brought her back.

Murdoch now decided he had time enough to do things for himself.

Although his friendship and respect for Tembinoka continued until Tembinoka’s death in the mid-1890’s, Murdoch now began to carve out his own career.

He set up as a trader on Abemama in partnership with a young German, Paul Hoeflich, who had formally been at Jaluit in the Marshall Islands.

Both learned the local languages and engrossed themselves in Gilbertese history and custom. Murdoch made a special study of the religious wars on Tabiteuea in the early 1870’s.

Took a wife

Murdoch moved to Nea, Tarawa, about 1884, and took a wife—an attractive Gilbertese girl named Nei Takeiti. They had a daughter, Agnes, in 1885 and a son, Charles, in 1890.

Most traders in the Gilberts of those days married or lived with local girls. One of Murdoch’s closest friends, a venerable trader on Nonouti, was said to have fathered at least half the children on that island.

This man traded regularly with Murdoch and died at a great age several years later. Other friends of the time included Captain C.

Doughty, Messrs. H. N. Newton and G. E. L. Westbrook.

R. L Stevenson

It is not certain if Murdoch ever met Robert Louis Stevenson during the latter’s stay in the Gilberts, but Paul Hoeflich certainly did.

Hoeflich met Stevenson in 1889 at Abemama, and he later travelled in the old schooner Equator to Apia, Western Samoa. Except for a brief return visit in 1891, to liquidate his Gilbertese trading interests, Hoeflich didn’t see Murdoch again, although they corresponded for many years. (Hoeflich died in May, 1942, after about 50 years in Apia.) Among Murdoch’s trader-friends were the famous “Jimmie” E. Smith and Andrew Turner of Nikunau,

E. Myers of Tarawa, Jim Myrne of Marakei, Frank Valero and Charlie Lowe of Bern, Jim Gleeson of Nonouti, Charlie Jones and Max Brechtefeld of Abemama, Alfred Restieaux, who left numerous progeny in the Ellice Islands, Jerry Flowers of Funafuti and Mike Shee of Maiana.

In those days there was room for individualists. Big trading groups like Burns Philp, the On Chong company and later W, R. Carpenter (who eventually took over On Chong) came on the scene at a much later period and, of course, since 1942 these too have disappeared from the colony.

One of the most bizarre characters Murdoch knew was Patrick Hird, a supercargo for Henderson McFarlane.

of Auckland, who died at Funafut in 1900.

Hird had a huge beard and smokec a smelly pipe. From his mouth h( would often trail a length of tubing which was concealed beneath hii beard, went under his singlet anc ended in the seat of his trousers When Hird smoked he breathed fin out of his backside—a feat whicl gained him a special reputation.

Early Battle of Tarawa

Murdoch was on Tarawa during the battle between north and soutl Tarawa in 1884. This bitter fight, ii which many Gilbertese lost theii lives, later became known as th« “Battle of Nea”.

More inter-tribal fighting or Tarawa about 1886 made it i dangerous place to live so Murdocl moved to Maiana. At Maiana h( took charge of a Hernsheim and Co trading station—he had in fact traded intermittently for this Germai company after he made a voyage tc Jaluit in 1883.

In 1892 Murdoch joined the steam ship Montserrat, which was recruiting labour in the Pacific Islands foi Guatemala, Central America. No on< could speak Gilbertese better thai Murdoch and he proved invaluabh to the shipowners during their opera tions in the Gilberts.

Then with 400 labourers, ant together with shipmates Jim Gleeson

Tern Tekenaiti and his sister (children of Agnes Murdoch) stand beside the tomb of Tembinoka, king of Abemama. This picture was taken in 1944 by Rob Wright.

George Murdoch's native-built house on the beach at Abemama. The figure in white is Murdoch.

*eter Garrick and Charley Komaka ai as overseers, he sailed for Guate aala on the vessel. With him went is seven-year-old daughter, Agnes, a be educated in San Francisco.

Murdoch remained four years in outh America. By the time he eturned to his wife and son on Lbemama, he found that Captain '. H. N. Davies, of HMS Royalist, ad proclaimed Abemama a British rotectorate.

The first Resident Commissioner, Ir. C. R. Swayne, had arrived and r hen Swayne offered Murdoch a job s District Officer, in 1897, at $2OO year, Murdoch decided to take it.

District officer now

His main duty was to set up and laintain a system of native lagistrates on the widely scattered lands —the task of the magistrates ;ing to handle purely native dis jtes.

As the infant government had no ;ssel of its own, Murdoch travelled )out on regular trading ships, in uding the early Burns Philp steamers itus and Ysabel, the company’s tartered schooner Louise J. Kenny, ie On Chong and Company vessel runner, or the German schooner timer.

In early 1902 he took time off to avel to Sydney with his wife to illect Agnes, who had now gone to ustralia after completing her educa >n in the United States.

The intelligent civilised Agnes, a ;autiful part-European 17-year-old, und Tarawa very strange after her e in San Francisco. She had plenty poise and spoke with an American cent. Her position must have been uilar to that of Emma Coe (later ew Guinea’s Queen Emma) who turned to Apia, Western Samoa, in •69 after her American education.

Mortelmans case

Murdoch’s daughter spent a great al of her time with Sarah and annah, the daughters of a trader Tabiteua, Alfred Kicking, but itable prospective husbands were irder to come by than girl friends d, shortly after her mother— urdoch’s wife—died in 1908 at the e of 37, Agnes, the beautiful girl th the San Francisco education, arried the then Head Chief of semama, an illiterate despot. But at’s another story.

One of the most interesting of urdoch’s experiences during his ng period as District Officer was e Mortelmans case.

In January, 1908, Captain Isaac Handley, master of the auxiliary schooner Louise J. Kenny, captured at Tarawa a notorious pirate, Joseph Mortelmans, and his offsider, a young man called Skerritt.

Mortelmans had previously murdered the captain and mate of the Peruvian vessel Nuevo Tigre, from Callao, Peru. With the frightened youth Skerritt, he had then changed the vessel’s name to White Rose and had sailed west across the Pacific to Abemama, but there the vessel had grounded on a reef.

Captain Handley took his two captives to headquarters at Betio, Tarawa, where the then Resident Commissioner, Mr. W. Telfer Camp bell, and Murdoch took charge of them. The government chartered the Louise J. Kenny from Burns Philp and Murdoch then had the task of taking Mortelmans and Skerritt to Suva for trial. Both the captives were dangerous and Tarawa’s small prison was inadequate.

After a lengthy trial, Mortelmans was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served in New South Wales.

Released in 1927, he was deported to his native Belgium.

As an administrator, Murdoch helped introduce a plan to train native orderlies at the small Betio hospital at Tarawa. He also started his own system of encouraging islanders to build all new houses

about three feet above the ground,, because on the low-lying atolls, rubbish was frequently washed into native houses, spreading disease.

George Murdoch was the only government representative many Islanders ever knew. He spoke their language and they trusted him to handle disputes when local magistrates failed. When he wasn’t travelling he lived in a comfortable native house on Abemama.

Retired

About 1917, when 57, ill-health forced Murdoch to give up his job as District Officer, and he settled down to growing copra on the four mile long atoll of Kuria. He also owned a small trade store, but he closed the store in 1932 when the government began actively encourag ing native trading societies.

Murdoch married again on his retirement from government service —to Mamie Randolf, daughter of an Abaiang trader, and they had eight more children before Murdoch died quietly on Kuria on September 19, 1936. He was 76.

George Murdoch’s descendants are living today in the GEIC, Fiji and the Solomons. His second wife is still alive at the age of 85. The beautiful Agnes died about 1950, aged 65.

The present-day Murdochs include: Mrs. Dolores Fay, of Honiara; high chief Tekinaiti Tokatake, of Choiseul Island, BSIP; Jack Murdoch, David Murdoch, Sam Murdoch. Alec Murdoch and Mrs. Grace Murdoch, all of Tarawa; George Murdoch, Jr., of Kuria, GEIC; and Mrs. Ellen Milne, of Brewster Road, Suva,

Joseph Mortelmans, one of the last of the South Seas pirates, who was captured in January, 1908.

Agnes Murdoch and her two sons. This picture was taken in 1941.