Tonga's message in a bottle

Out Of The Past

Stuart Inder digs into Tonga’s little-known Spanish past

PACIFIC EXPLORER Alejandro

Malaspina didn’t approve of the European practice of his f claiming land merely because one of their navigators happened to be the first white man to see it, but he was under instructions to claim Vavau for Spain; so in May 1793, Tonga’s green and attractive northern group became a Spanish possession.

The basis for Malaspina’s little known annexation was that 12 years earlier, Spain’s Francisco Antonio Mourelle had made the first recorded sighting of the group. Mourelle named Vavau the Martin de Mayorga Islands, after the viceroy of Mexico, to whom he happened to be carrying official dispatcnes from the Philip pines. During two weeks spent in Vavau in February 1781, Mourelle got on well with the Tongans and was im pressed with the excellent state of their roads and plantations.

It was one of tnose curious fortunes of history that James Cook, who vi sited Tonga no less than three times between 1773 and 1777, had not beaten Mourelle to Vavau. On his last voyage, Cook spent almost a fortnight in northern Ha’apai, little more than 100 kilometres south of Vavau, where he heard of the group and expressed interest in visiting it. But the Vavau high chief Finau, who was in Ha’apai at the time, put him off with a cock n bull story oi there being neither har bour nor anchorage there and Cook never did see Vavau. The group’s fjord-like harbours are in fact the best

in Tonga.

Malaspina, an Italian in the service of Spain, spent much of his time in a harbour Mourelle had named Port of Refuge. His instructions were to make a thorough examination of the group and to claim it in a public ceremony.

His two ships, Descubierta and Atrevi da, had already been on a long voyage of exploration and with scientists, sur veyors and even artists on board, were well equipped for the task.

The clay before the expedition finished its work, Malaspina prepared a document of possession and buried it in a bottle beneath a tent the scien tists were using as an observatory.

Translated from the Spanish, the document read: ‘The corvettes Descubertia and

Atrevida of His Catholic Majesty, under the orders of Captains Don

Alejandro Malaspina and Don Jose

Bustamente y Guerra, were in this port in the month of May of the year 1793, and having reconnoitered the whole archipelago around Vavao, they took possession of it in the name of

His Catholic Majesty, raising the flag

at the site of the observatory and accompanying this solemn act with seven cries of Long Live the King”, as did the natives presided over by their chief B una. The natives repeated Vavao foxa Espana the same number of times. This means “Vavao, son of

Spain”.

Malaspina’s men were the last Euro pean visitors to Tonga prior to the arrival of the first European settlers but the newcomers were ships’ deser ters and missionaries and none were Spanish. Nor was anything more heard of Spain’s annexation. Malaspi na fell out of Court favour not long after he returned to Spain, and was imprisoned for more than seven years and the voluminous papers of his expedition were ordered to be with held from publication.

Malaspina died in Italy in 1809, a few years after being released. Incred ibly, it was 1885 before an edited ver

sion of Malaspina’s journal together

with accounts of some of his officers was published in Madrid. This volume, and an officer’s account, pub lished in Uruguay in 1849, have never been translated into English.

The Tonga Government itself was unaware that the Vavauans had, almost two centuries ago, declared themselves to be “sons of Spain” until 1962, when Robert Langdon (a Pacific Islands Monthly contributor and later assistant editor) passed on the details to Queen Salote Tupou HI while she

was visiting Sydney. Langdon, a Span

ish history scholar who went on to spend 18 years as executive officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau of the Australian National University, Can berra, had uncovered this unusual

piece of Tongan history while re

seraching in Sydney’s Mitchel Library.

Queen Salote, who died in 1965 af ter 47 years on the throne, was re

portedly intrigued by the news but

showed no interest in having anybody search for Malaspina’s buried historic

al treasure. In 1978 her elder son, King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, was him self inspired to organise a search for the bottle.

By that time, inspection of a draw ing by an expedition artist, in the possesion of the National Library in Canberra, had unexpectedly revealed the probable site of the observatory tent. It had been erected on a small coral islet close to the foreshore of the Port of Refuge, after the top of the island had been levelled to provide sufficient working place for the scien tific party.

Access was by steps cut into the cor al, and the site had been selected to give the party privacy from the Ton gans who, as Mourelle had re ported, were inclined to be light

fingered.

first, however, the islet had to be firmly identified. This task was accom plished in early 1973 by a small group of enthusiasts led by long-time Vavau citizen and writer Patrick Matheson (whose books include a short history of Tonga, The Tongan Past), in Ross and Mmine Norgrove’s schooner, White Squall. It took some detective work before likely sites were narrowed down to one islet, on which the party found evidence of steps. But the top was overgrown with heavy vegetation, including some substantial trees.

That September, King Taufa’ahau

personally directed a large working

party in clearing the site. They unco vered holes in the coral, which the King judged to have held the tent pegs, and a central hole filled with rubble like the others that may have held the centre pole. Malaspina was believed to have used this to also hold the flagpole.

When the holes were cleared, however, there was no historic bottle to be found.

King Taufa’ahau was satisfied that the site on which Malaspina claimed Vavau for Spain had been identified.

But he suspected the unfortunate

navigator’s document of ‘annexation’

had not long survived the curiosity of his friendly nosts.

“If I know anything of my ances tors, they probably had the bottle up and were inspecting its contents be fore Malaspina’s sails disappeared over the horizon,” he chuckled. n