The Kanaka Labour Trade In The Pacific

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Title:     The Kanaka Labour Trade In The Pacific
Author: Louis Becke [More Titles by Becke]

The _fiat_ has gone forth from the Australian Commonwealth, and the Kanaka labour trade, as far as the Australian Colonies are concerned, has ceased to exist. For, during the month of November, 1906, the Queensland Government began to deport to their various islands in the Solomon and New Hebrides Groups, the last of the Melanesian native labourers employed on the Queensland sugar plantations.

The Kanaka labour traffic, generally termed "black-birding," began about 1863, when sugar and cotton planters found that natives of the South Sea Islands could be secured at a much less cost than Chinese or Indian coolies. The genesis of the traffic was a tragedy, and filled the world with horror.

Three armed Peruvian ships, manned by gangs of cut-throats, appeared in the South Pacific, and seized over four hundred unfortunate natives in the old African slave-trading fashion, and carried them away to work the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands. Not a score of them returned to their island homes--the rest perished under the lash and brutality of their cruel taskmasters.

Towards 1870 the demand for South Sea Islanders became very great. They were wanted in the Sandwich Islands, in Tahiti and Samoa; for, naturally enough, with their ample food supply, the natives of these islands do not like plantation work, or if employed demand a high rate of pay. Then, too, the Queensland and Fijian sugar planters joined in the quest, and at one time there were over fifty vessels engaged in securing Kanakas from the Gilbert Islands, the Solomon and New Hebrides Groups, and the great islands near New Guinea.

At that time there was no Government supervision of the traffic. Any irresponsible person could fit out a ship, and bring a cargo of human beings into port--obtained by means fair or foul--and no questions were asked.

Very soon came the news of the infamous story of the brig _Carl_ and her fiendish owner, a Dr. Murray, who with half a dozen other scoundrels committed the most awful crimes--shooting down in cold blood scores of natives who refused to be coerced into "recruiting". Some of these ruffians went to the scaffold or to long terms of imprisonment; and from that time the British Government in a maundering way set to work to effect some sort of supervision of the British ships employed in the "blackbirding" trade.

A fleet of five small gunboats (sailing vessels) were built in Sydney, and were ordered to "overhaul and inspect every blackbirder," and ascertain if the "blackbirds" were really willing recruits, or had been deported against their will, and were "to be sold as slaves". And many atrocious deeds came to light, with the result, as far as Queensland was concerned, that every labour ship had to carry a Government agent, who was supposed to see that no abuses occurred. Some of these Government agents were conscientious men, and did their duty well; others were mere tools of the greedy planters, and lent themselves to all sorts of villainies to obtain "recruits" and get an _in camera_ bonus of twenty pounds for every native they could entice on board.

Owing to my knowledge of Polynesian and Melane-sian dialects, I was frequently employed as "recruiter" on many "blackbirders"--French vessels from Noumea in New Caledonia, Hawaiian vessels from Honolulu, and German and English vessels sailing from Samoa and Fiji, and in no instance did I ever have any serious trouble with my "blackbirds" after they were once on board the ship of which I was "recruiter".

Let me now describe an ordinary cruise of a "blackbirder" vessel--an honest ship with an honest skipper and crew, and, above all, a straight "recruiter"--a man who takes his life in his hands when he steps out, unarmed, from his boat, and seeks for "recruits" from a crowd of the wildest savages imaginable.

Labour ships carry a double crew--one to work the ship, the other to man the boats, of which there are usually four on ordinary-sized vessels. They are whale-boats, specially adapted for surf work. The boats' crews are invariably natives--Rotumah men, Samoans, or Savage Islanders. The ship's working crew also are in most cases natives, and the captain and officers are, of course, white men.

The 'tween decks are fitted to accommodate so many "blackbirds," and, at the present day, British labour ships are models of cleanliness, for the Government supervision is very rigid; but in former days the hold of a "blackbirder" often presented a horrid spectacle--the unfortunate "recruits" being packed so closely together, and at night time the odour from their steaming bodies was absolutely revolting as it ascended from the open hatch, over which stood two sentries on the alert; for sometimes the "blackbirds" would rise and attempt to murder the ship's company. In many cases they did so successfully--especially when the "blackbirds" came from the same island, or group of islands, and spoke the same language. When there were, say, a hundred or two hundred "recruits" from various islands, dissimilar in their language and customs, there was no fear of such an event, and the captain and officers and "recruiter" went to sleep with a feeling of security.

Let us now suppose that a "blackbirder" (obnoxious name to many recruiters) from Samoa, Fiji, or Queensland, has reached one of the New Hebrides, or Solomon Islands. Possibly she may anchor--if there is an anchorage; but most likely she will "lie off and on," and send away her boats to the various villages.

On one occasion I "worked" the entire length of one side of the great island of San Cristoval, visiting nearly every village from Cape Recherche to Cape Surville. This took nearly three weeks, the ship following the boats along the coast. We would leave the ship at daylight, and pull in shore, landing wherever we saw a smoke signal, or a village. When I had engaged, say, half a dozen recruits, I would send them off on board, and continue on my way. At sunset I would return on board, the boats would be hoisted up, and the ship either anchor, or heave-to for the night. On this particular trip the boats were only twice fired at, but no one man of my crews was hit.

The boats are known as "landing" and "covering" boats. The former is in command of an officer and the recruiter, carries five hands (all armed) and also the boxes of "trade" goods to be exhibited to the natives as specimens of the rest of the goods on board, or perhaps some will be immediately handed over as an "advance" to any native willing to recruit as a labourer in Queensland or elsewhere for three years, at the magnificent wage of six pounds per annum, generally paid in rubbishing articles, worth about thirty shillings.

The "covering" boat is in charge of an officer, or reliable seaman. She follows the "landing" boat at a short distance, and her duty is to cover her retreat if the natives should attack the landing boat by at once opening fire, and giving those in that boat a chance of pushing off and getting out of danger, and also she sometimes receives on board the "recruits" as they are engaged by the recruiter--if the latter has not been knocked on the head or speared.

On nearing the beach, where the natives are waiting, the officer in the landing-boat swings her round with his steer oar, and the crew back her in, stern first, on to the beach. The recruiter then steps out, and the crew carry the trade chests on shore; then the boat pushes off a little, just enough to keep afloat, and obtrusive natives, who may mean treachery, are not allowed to come too near the oars, or take hold of the gunwale, Meanwhile the covering boat has drawn in close to the first boat, and the crew, with their hands on their rifles, keep a keen watch on the landing boat and the wretched recruiter.

The recruiter, if he is a wise man, will not display any arms openly. To do so makes the savage natives either sulky or afraid, and I never let them see mine, which I, however, always kept handy in a harmless-looking canvas bag, which also contained some tobacco, cut up in small pieces, to throw to the women and children--to put them in a good temper.

The recruiter opens his trade box, and then asks if there is any man or woman who desires to become rich in three years by working on a plantation in Fiji, Queensland, or Samoa.

If he can speak the language, and does not lose his nerve by being surrounded by hundreds of ferocious and armed savages, and knowing that at any instant he may be cut down from behind by a tomahawk, or speared, or clubbed, he will get along all right, and soon find men willing to recruit Especially is this so if he is a man personally known to the natives, and has a good reputation for treating his "blackbirds" well on board the ship. The ship and her captain, too, enter largely into the matter of a native making up his mind to "recruit," or refuse to do so.

Sometimes there may be among the crowd of natives several who have already been to Queensland, or elsewhere, and desire to return. These may be desirable recruits, or, on the other hand, may be the reverse, and have bad records. I usually tried to shunt these fellows from again recruiting, as they often made mischief on board, would plan to capture the ship, and such other diversions, but I always found them useful as touts in gaining me new recruits, by offering these scamps a suitable present for each man they brought me.

I always made it a practice never to recruit a married man, unless his wife--or an alleged wife--came with him, nor would I take them if they had young children--who would simply be made slaves of in their absence. It required the utmost tact and discretion to get at the truth in many cases, and very often on going on board after a day of toil and danger I would be sound asleep, when a young couple would swim off--lovers who had eloped--and beg me to take them away in the ship. This I would never do until I had seen the local chief, and was assured that no objection would be made to their leaving.

(When I was recruiting "black labour" for the French and German planters in Samoa and Tahiti, I was, of course, sailing in ships of those nationalities, and had no worrying Government agent to harass and hinder me by his interference, for only ships under British colours were compelled to carry "Government agents".)

But I must return to the recruiter standing on the beach, surrounded by a crowd of savages, exercising his patience and brains.

Perhaps at the end of an hour or so eight or ten men are recruited, and told to either get into one of the boats or go off to the ship in canoes. The business on shore is then finished, the harassed recruiter wipes his perspiring brow, says farewell to the people, closes his trade chest, and steps into his landing boat. The officer cries to the crew, "Give way, lads," and off goes the boat.

Then the covering boat comes into position astern of the landing boat, for one never knew the moment that some enraged native on shore might, for having been rejected as "undesirable," take a snipe-shot at one of the boats. Only two men pull in the covering boat--the rest of the crew sit on the thwarts, with their rifles ready, facing aft, until the boats are out of range.

That is what is the ordinary day's work among the Solomon, New Hebrides, and other island groups of the Western Pacific But very often it was--and is now--very different. The recruiter may be at work, when he is struck down treacherously from behind, and hundreds of concealed savages rush out, bent on slaughter. Perhaps the eye of some ever-watchful man in the covering boat has seen crouching figures in the dense undergrowth of the shores of the bay, and at once fires his rifle, and the recruiter jumps for his boat, and then there is a cracking of Winchesters from the covering boat, and a responsive banging of overloaded muskets from the shore.

Only once was I badly hurt when "recruiting". I had visited a rather big village, but could not secure a single recruit, and I had told the officer to put off, as it was no use our wasting our time. I then got into the boat and was stooping down to get a drink from the water-beaker, when a sudden fusillade of muskets and arrows was opened upon us from three sides, and I was struck on the right side of the neck by a round iron bullet, which travelled round just under the skin, and stopped under my left ear. Some of my crew were badly hit, one man having his wrist broken by an iron bullet, and another received a heavy lead bullet in the stomach, and three bamboo arrows in his chest, thigh and shoulder. He was more afraid of the arrows than the really dangerous wound in his stomach, for he thought they were poisoned, and that he would die of lockjaw--like the lamented Commodore Goodenough, who was shot to death with poisoned arrows at Nukapu in the Santa Cruz Group.

The skipper nicked out the bullet in my neck with his pen-knife, and beyond two very unsightly scars on each side of my neck, I have nothing of which to complain, and much to be thankful for; for had I been in ever so little a more erect position, the ball would have broken my neck--and some compositors in printing establishments earned a little less money.

[The end]
Louis Becke's short story: The Kanaka Labour Trade In The Pacific

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