Vacant Possessions

Out Of The Past

Stuart Inder recalls the scramble for possession of two islands contending governments admitted were unfit for human habitation.

A two-line notice stating that the British Government had agreed that Matthew and Hunter Islands should be attached to New Caledonia, under France’s con trol, appeared in the French Residen cy information bulletin in Vila, New Flebrides, in November 1965.

The notice seemed to resolve own ership of the two useless, volcanic chunks of South Seas real estate two centuries after Europeans first saw them islands that were among the last places on earth not claimed by any government.

But 23 years later, their ownership is still far from settled. Both New Caledonia and Vanuatu adminis tered Jointly by Britain and France as the New Hebrides until independence in 1980 now claim them.

It is interesting to note that territo rial disputes in the South Pacific are surprisingly rare and those few to arise in recent times have been re solved painlessly. The fierce disputes took place last century, when the great

powers of the day disputed possession

of a number of important groups, in cluding the islands of Samoa, the Solo mon Islands, New Guinea and the New Hebrides. It was the bitter Anglo-French struggle for supremacy in the New Hebriaes that resulted in

the compromise joint administration

of those islands.

In 1965 Britain was able to annex the unclaimed Conway Reef, west of Fiji, and incorporate it in Fiji’s bound aries without any dispute. In 1972, af ter a group of commercial adventures planned to set up a private republic west of Tonga on unclaimed Minerva Reef, Tonga promptly erected a cou ple of tiny artificial islets there and annexed them warning off the claimants without further trouble.

In 1979 the United States cleverly walked away from some old claims that might have led to squabbles with the Cook Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Kiribati if they had been allowed to remain on the record. The century old claims were for the three islands that now constitute Tokelau, for four islands in the Cooks, four in Tuvalu and 14 in Kiribati. Political reality, in the form of possession, had long since

overtaken the claims, so the US clever ly drew up treaties that made the is lands over to the possessors as good will gifts. The islanders accepted the “gifts in the spirit in which they were offered, and honour was satisfied.

A similar approach could resolve the competing claims for Matthew and Hunter but this outcome is unlikely until the constitutional future of New Caledonia is settled, which promises to be a slow and painful process.

Vanuatu’s post-colonial sensitivities are, naturally, understood by the lead ers of New Caledonia’s Independence front, who indicated to Vanuatu a few years ago that an independent New Caledonia would resolve the dispute in Vanuatu’s favour.

Vanuatu stakes a traditional claim to ownership of the islands. Matthew is known to the Vanuatu people as Umaenupne and Hunter as Umaenaeg. According to Vanuatu, the islands were officially unclaimed but appeared on the map of the New fteorides for most of the long con dominium period and the Frencn nev er disputed it. Only towards the end did France pressure Britain to agree to their attachment to New Caledonia.

However, Vanuatu argues, Britain had no authority to give tne islands away.

Matthew Island is about 480 kilometres east of New Caledonia’s southern tip and 240 kilometres southeast of Vanuatu’s most southerly

populated island, Anatom (formerly

Aneityum). Hunter is about 50km southeast of Matthew; both are little more than rocky havens for sea birds, actively volcanic, and incapable of sup porting human life.

Matthew was first recorded and named in 1788, by Captain Thomas Gilbert, commander of the Charlotte, one of the fleet of convict transports that colonised Australia. He named it Matthews’ Rock after the Charlotte’s owner. Hunter was sighted and named in 1798 by Captain Fearn of the British merchant snip Hunter.

Volcanic activity has considerably

changed Matthew, the larger of the two, since Captain Gilbert first sighted it. As pure real estate, the two islands are worthless: their new significance lies in the fact that with the creation

of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive eco nomic zone, the country that owns them can extend its resource rights.

Few people even knew of the islands until 1962, when they won some local notoriety and not a little amusement when a claim for Matthew was made in the Condominium Joint Court in Vila by two island businessmen of in

dependent and entrepreneurial spirit

Bob Paul, an Australian and long time Vanuatu resident, and the late Henri Martinet, a Frenchman living in New Caledonia.

Their joint application cost them 15 shillings each, but it caused a more

expensive flurry of activity among

British and French officials of the day.

The two men weren’t too serious, but became more determined when they saw the official reaction: France sent a warship to Matthew, probably to claim it, but couldn’t put a party ashore be cause of the sea conditions. Later the weather prevented Paul himself from getting ashore with a bag of cement to erect a cairn, but he dia swim ashore and plant a coconut as a gesture.

The daredevil Martinet tnen tried to land a light aircraft on the island, but crash-landed and was rescued by a French naval helicopter. He returned in a second plane to repair his first, but came down in the sea and had to be rescued again.

The aircraft wreckage on Matthew

began attracting the curiosity of pas

sing yachts, ana in 1973 the Austra lian Navy was asked to blow it up.

Martinet went ashore with the team from HMAS Melbourne so that he could salvage the engine. The official RAN photograph of this exercise was captioned “the desolation of the is land, a volcanic formation composed mainly of basalt and slag. The cliffs were nearly 600 feet high. All around the Navy men as they worked were signs of a possible active volcano the smell of sulphur was everywhere”.

In 1975 a French warship officially took possession of the islands for France, erecting plaques. But follow ing its independence, Vanuatu sent a party of its own to raise the flag.

In the end, however, neither Bob Paul nor Henri Martinet ever received a satisfactory answer to their claim. □