'Gappy' Fitch's

colourful life ends at 91

By R. W. Robson

“Cappy” Fitch, of Papua, is dead.

He lived 91 years and all—except those of his early boyhood—were packed with incident and adventure.

Christened Algernon Sydney (names he hated) he was successively a student in England; a sailing-ship cadet; an officer and commander of sailing ships including a hospital ship during the Boer War; for nine years a government pilot on the Hoogli River, taking ships through the Ganges Delta to Calcutta; a trader on the coast of Papua and head of Steam ships Trading Co. Ltd. for 27 years.

For the last 25 years he had his luxurious home in Kirribilli Point, Sydney, and travelled far and wide.

He was a keen and usually a cynical observer of men and affairs, and had a sense of the dramatic. I tried to persuade him to write a book —it would have been a best-seller if it got past the censor—but he would have none of it.

It has been my fortune to know most of the men who established or guided the big trading enterprises in the South Pacific Islands—Maynard Hedstrom, of Fiji; Joe Mitchell, of Burns Philp; Tibby Hagen, of Noumea; Bob McKegg, of Raro tonga; Walter Carpenter, of New Guinea; Oscar Nelson, of Samoa; Ivan Nelson, of Nelson and Robert son; Willie Watson, of Rarotonga; Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen, who took over the Queen Emma empire in German New Guinea; and Cappy Fitch, of Papua. Although all were singularly different in character, each had three things in common; they were remarkably bold in founding speculative enterprises; they had the faculty of getting the loyalty of out standing men in running the big cor poration they created; and their very salty reminiscences were made agree able by a sense of humour.

In my memories of these pioneers, Captain Fitch stands out.

He had lived half his colourful life when, soon after World War I, he arrived in Australian waters with a rather battered old steamer named “Queenscliffe”. With the ship, he tried some enterprise—l’ve forgotten what —in Tasmanian waters.

But it was not successful, so he took the steamer to Papua, and traded along that inhospitable coast, between

Samarai and the Fly River. He ex changed his goods for the local pro duce, which he then sold in Moresby.

They were tough traders in those primitive river-mouth ports, but Fitch was tough, too, and he slowly built up a profitable business.

He established a small store in Moresby, which was supplied mainly by the busy “Queenscliffe”. Officially, the enterprise was Steamships Trading Company Ltd. and presently “Steamies” was offering a modest challenge to the big and powerful Burns Philp organisation. But in the early days, the STC men were known as the “Queenies”, after the old steamer.

In the twenties, “Cappy” had the good fortune to meet Eric Vivian Crisp; and “Viv” helped him greatly when he opened a branch at Samarai, and extended his activities in a big way into rubber-planting.

During the thirties, the booming gold industry had enlivened Papua’s rather pallid economy, and Steam ships grew with it. By 1939, when World War II came along, STC had become BP’s liveliest rival in the territory. But its rapid growth had over-strained its capital structure, and life wasn’t easy for the very enter prising Fitch-Crisp organisation.

The Japanese invasion in 1941-1942

changed everything. Except on the north coast, the enemy did not actually land troops in Papua, but his bombers were all over Papua, and early in 1942 all civilians, including the traders, were evacuated to Australia. Bomb damage and looting wrecked Port Moresby. It looked like Steampships’ end.

For a year or two, “Cappy” grumped miserably around Sydney.

Then, as the enemy’s grip on New Guinea weakened, he disappeared.

Long afterwards, I learned that he had put the Hoogli River sign, or something, on the military czars who ruled Papua at that time, and had been allowed back into Moresby. He made for himself a little residential cubby-hole in his big store; and there he lived for a couple of years, and kept a critical eye on events, while meticulously compiling lists of the losses his extensive properties had suffered.

The war ended in 1945, and sud denly Australia found itself with a War Damage Compensation Fund, built up over the years as an insurance against invasion; and there had been no invasion of Australia.

But there was devastation in the Australian territories and it was proper that the fund be diverted there. There was £l4 million, for

distribution to the war sufferers— and there was “Cappy”, with formal evidence to support his claim for a huge sum as war-damage compensa tion.

The rest is history. Steamships Trading Co. came back into PNG trading in a blaze of glory and optimism, with former stock-sheets turned into hard cash, with new plant and equipment, and with more mature plantations.

Before the decade ended, “Cappy” had retired with a snug personal fortune, the highly competent Vivian Crisp had taken charge of the whole lively organisation, and STC shares were eagerly bought on the Sydney stock exchange.

I lunched with “Cappy” and his wife occasionally at the Royal Sydney Yacht Club and the RAC, and heard their stories of frequent world tours.

But they did not have the flavour of his tales of the old days, when he went bucketing around the Horn in Antarctic weather, or dodged pirates off the Chinese coasts, or dealt sum marily with thieves among Indians he encountered when surveying the up per Ganges River.

In another decade “Cappy” Fitch, like other notable pioneers, will be but a memory there; but he surely left his mark on non-official Papua.