Making A Fortune In The South Seas

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Title:     Making A Fortune In The South Seas
Author: Louis Becke [More Titles by Becke]

A short time ago I came across in a daily newspaper the narrative of a traveller in the South Seas full of illuminating remarks on the ease with which any one can now acquire a fortune in the Pacific Islands; it afforded me considerable reflection, mixed with a keen regret that I had squandered over a quarter of a century of my life in the most stupid manner, by ignoring the golden opportunities that must have been jostling me wherever I went. The articles were very cleverly penned, and really made very pretty reading--so pretty, in fact, that I was moved to briefly narrate my experience of the subject in the columns of the _Westminster Gazette_ with the result that many a weary, struggling trader in the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides and other groups of islands in the South Pacific rose up and called me blessed when they read my article, for I sent five and twenty copies of the paper to as many traders. Others doubtless obtained the journal from the haughty brass-bound pursers (there are no "supercargoes" now) of the Sydney and Auckland steamers. For the steamers, with their high-collared, clerkly pursers, have supplanted for good the trim schooners, with their brown-faced, pyjama-clad supercargoes, and the romance of the South Seas has gone. But it has not gone in the imagination of some people.

I must mention that my copies of the _Westminster Gazette_ crossed no less than nine letters written to me by old friends and comrades from various islands in the Pacific, asking me to do what I had done--put the true condition of affairs in Polynesia before the public, and help to keep unsuitable and moneyless men from going out to the South Sea Islands to starve. For they had read the illuminating series of articles to which I refer, and felt very savage.

In a cabin-trunk of mine I have some hundreds of letters, written to me during the past ten years by people from all parts of the world, who wanted to go to the South Seas and lead an idyllic life and make fortunes, and wished me to show them how to go about it. Many of these letters are amusing, some are pathetic; some, which were so obviously insane, I did not answer. The rest I did. I cannot reproduce them in print. I am keeping them to read to my friends in heaven. Even an old ex-South Sea trader may get there--if he can dodge the other place. _Quien sabe?_

Twenty-one of these letters reached me in France during February, March and April of last year. They were written by men and women who had been reading the above-mentioned series of brilliant articles. (I regret to state that fourteen only had a penny stamp thereon, and I had to pay four francs postal dues.) The articles were, as I have said, very charmingly written, especially the descriptive passages. But nearly every person that the "Special Commissioner" met in the South Seas seems to have been very energetically and wickedly employed in "pulling the 'Special Commissioner's leg".

The late Lord Pembroke described two classes of people--"those who know and don't write, and those who write and don't know".

Let me cull a few only of the statements in one of the articles entitled "The Trader's Prospects". It is an article so nicely written that it is hard to shake off the glamour of it and get to facts. It says:--

"The salaries paid by a big Australian firm to its traders may run from L50 to L200 a year, with board (that is, the run of the store) and a house."

There are possibly fifty men in the Pacific Islands who are receiving L200 a year from trading firms. Five pounds per month, with a specified ration list, and 5 per cent, commission on his sales is the usual thing--and has been so for the past fifteen years. As for taking "the run of the store," he would be quickly asked to take another run. The trader who works for a firm has a struggle to exist.

*****

"In the Solomons and New Hebrides you can start trading on a capital of L100 or so, and make cent, per cent, on island produce."

A man would want at least L500 to L600 to start even in the smallest way. Here are some of his requirements, which he must buy before leaving Sydney or Auckland to start as an independent trader in Melanesia or Polynesia: Trade goods, L400; provisions for twelve months, L100; boat with all gear, from L25 to L60; tools, firearms, etc, L15 to L30. Then there is passage money, L15 to L20; freight on his goods, say L40. If he lands anywhere in Polynesia--Samoa, Tonga, Cook's Islands, or elsewhere--he will have Customs duties to pay, house rent, and a trading licence. And everywhere he will find keen competition and measly profits, unless he lives like a Chinaman on rice and fish.

"In British New Guinea you can dig gold in hand-fuls out of the mangrove swamps" (O ye gods!) "and prospect for any other mineral you may choose."

Gold-mining in British New Guinea is carried out under the most trying conditions of toil and hardships, The fitting out of a prospecting-party of four costs quite L500 to L1,000. And only very experienced diggers tackle mining in the Possession. And his Honour the Administrator will not let improperly equipped parties into the Possession.

"It is the simplest thing in the world" to become a pearl sheller. "You charter a schooner--or even a cutter--if you are a smart seaman and know the Pacific, use her for general trading... and every now and then go and look up some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolla... Some are beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell, that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.

All very pretty! Here is the "simplicity" of it--taking it at so much _per month_: Charter of small schooner of one hundred tons, L200 to L300; wages of captain and crew, L40; cost of provisions and wear and tear of canvas, running gear, etc., L60 (diving suits and gear for two divers, and boat would have to be bought at a cost of some hundreds of pounds); wages per month of each diver from L50 to L75, with often a commission on the shell they raise. Then you can go a-sailing, and _cherchez_ around for your treasure beds. If you dive in Dutch waters, the gunboats collar you and your ship; if you go into British waters you will find that the business is under strict inspection by Commonwealth officials who keep a properly sharp eye on your doings. If you wish to go into the French Paumotus you have first to visit Tahiti, and apply for and pay 2,500 francs for a half-yearly licence to dive. (Most likely you won't get it) If you try without this licence to buy even a single pearl from the natives, you will get into trouble--as my ship did in the "seventies," when the gunboat _Vaudreuil_ swooped down on us, sent a prize crew aboard, put some of us in irons, and towed us to Tahiti, where we lay in Papeite harbour for three months, until legal proceedings were finished and the ship was liberated.

"About L150 would be the lowest sum with which such a work" (scooping up the treasure) "could be carried out. This would provide a small schooner or a cutter from Auckland for a few months with all necessary stores. She would require two men, competent to navigate, two A.B.'s, and a diver, in order to be run safely and comfortably; and the wages of these would be an extra cost A couple of experienced yachtsmen could, of course, manage the affair more cheaply."

Some of these recent nine letters which I received contained some very interesting facts. One man, an old trader in Polynesia, wrote me as follows: "Some of these poor beggars actually land in Polynesian ports with a trunk or two of glass beads, penny looking-glasses, twopenny knives and other weird rubbish, and are aghast to see large stores stocked with thousands of pounds' worth of goods of all kinds, goods which are sold to the natives at a very low margin of profit, for competition is very keen. In the Society Islands the Chinese storekeepers undersell us whites--they live cheaper." And "in Levuka and Suva, in Fiji, in Rarotonga and other islands there are scores of broken-down white men. They cannot be called 'beachcombers,' for there is nothing on the beach for them to comb. They live on the charity of the traders and natives. If they were sailor-men they could perhaps get fifteen dollars a month on the schooners. Why they come here is a mystery.... Most of them seem to be clerks or school-teachers. One is a violin teacher. Another young fellow brought out a typewriting machine; he is now yardman at a Suva hotel. A third is a married man with two young children. He is a French polisher, wife a milliner. They came from Belfast, and landed with eleven pounds! Hotel expenses swallowed all that in three weeks. Money is being collected to send them to Auckland," and so on. There is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions. According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in a year or so.

Did the "Special Commissioner" know that these articles would lead to much misery and suffering? No, of course not. They were written in good faith, but without knowledge. For instance, the wild statement about looking up "some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolls... beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.--there is not one single reef or atoll either in the North or South Pacific that has not been carefully prospected for pearl-shell during the past thirty-five years.

Then as to gold-mining in British New Guinea, "where you can dig gold in handfuls out of the mangrove swamps".

Diggers who go to New Guinea have to go through the formality of first paying their passages to that country from Australia. Then, on arrival, they have to arrange the important matter of engaging native carriers to take their outfit to the Mambare River gold-fields--a tedious and expensive item. And only experienced men of sterling physique can stand the awful labour and hardships of gold-mining in the Possession. Deadly malarial fever adds to the diggers' hard lot in New Guinea, and the natives, when not savage and treacherous, are as unreliable and as lazy as a Spanish priest.

In conclusion, I can assure my readers that there is no prospect for any man of limited means to make money in the South Seas as a trader. Any assertions to the contrary have no basis of fact in them. In cotton and coco-nut planting there are good openings for men of the right stamp; in the second industry, however, one has to wait six years before his trees are in full bearing.

[The end]
Louis Becke's short story: Making A Fortune In The South Seas

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