The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1871-11-18
Kidnapping in the south seas.S

1hN ~ ~ viz NSAS VI - ~ NSNA ~
in London, a notice of which appears in the
Examiner. The author is Captain George Pal
mer, who as commander of Ii. b. Ms ship
Rosario, cruised among the islands of the South
Pacific during several months in 1870. Captain
Palmer paid particular attention to the mitigated
form of slavery which, under the pleasant title
of 50 foreign immigration F" has for some years
been in full force in FIJI and Queensland. 1t
was Captain Palmer who caught the Daphe
schooner, belonging to Mr.. Ross levin, a FIJI
cotton planter and " foreign immigration agent"
and sent her off to Sydney, to be tried as a
SLAYER. 1t was claimed that the Immigrants !"
carried to FIJI and Queensland by the numerous
schooners trading among the Pacific Islands, were
fairly and honestly obtained, under a law OF the
Colony known as the Foreign Immigration ACT,
but the plain, simple statement OF Captain
Palmer, carries with it the absolute conviction
that the ssAct" is nothing more or less than
90 kidnapping in the South Seas" The captain
assures his readers in the outset, that '' the fol-
lowing pages are written with the sole object of
exposing the deeds that have been perpetrated
among the beautiful islands of the South Pacific,
by men calling themselves Englishmen, and
whose transactions have been invariably carried
on under cover of our glorious old flag" lie
himself appears to be an intensely ample and
single-hearted old hero, often reminding one of
Drake and the old seamen of Queen Elizabeth's
day "a man after Mr.. Carlyle's own heart, who
firmly believes that wickedness is the devils own
work, who fears his God and honors his Queen,
and who holds that the strong hand of the Exc
cutive cannot be brought down too heavily upon
evil doors and who, holding to all these things
firmly, is not ashamed to say as much in plain
and forcible English. Anything like hypocrisy
or lying makes him furious.
lie is indignant at the cheap sneers launched against our
missionaries, for whom he has an honest and deep reverence
as for brave men doing a great and good work in the midst of
dangers and privations. To him the missionaries and their
the poor heather from darkness to light and from the power of
Satan unto God" But he none the less has his own idea of
thoroughly, in man-ofwar's fashion. He remembers how the
the Towdies in splendid style - and he longs for a Similar n
committee, which shall make Levuka {" too hot for the seedy
villains from the New Zealand and Australian colonies" AS
a preliminary to this happy state of things, and anxious to aid
MI. Thurst9n, the English Consul, in keeping order, he in
Inmates to him that a good hairy boatswains mate, and a
couple Of quartermasters are entirely at his disposal as long
little affairs in which the authority of the Consul had been set
al naught," he had, he assures US, to talk TO several indi-
tail, we hear that lone man, who was unusually troublesome.
he threatened to take in irons to Sydney, which had the desired
effect of soothing the complaint he was laboring UNDER"
Speaking of the sometimes hasty and ill-con-
sidered action of commanders of war vessels in
the Pacific, the Captain remarks:
"Unfortunately our men-oEwar are too often sent up
amongst the islands to shell some native settlement in return
vfIainy and rapacious cruelty of white traders. Only one
side of the question is ever heard, and the consequence is that
many innocent people suffer"
Public opinion in England, the United States
and the Colonies, has at length become pretty
thoroughly aroused to the fact of the real existence
of a system of kidnapping of the Ignorant natives
of tue South Pacific Islands. The press has done
its duty in bringing the subject to notice, and We
have the satisfaction of knowing that this Journal
is recognized in influential circles abroad as hay
ing done its modicum of duty, however small, in
exposing the evil.
But this wretched traffic in men is not yet
stopped, nor will it be SO long as the planters
will pay high prices for the stolen = labor and
the strong arm of civilized governments is not
interposed between the islanders and the kid
nappers. A good swift screw steamer, with extra
hands on board for a prize crews, and Captain
Palmer for master, would make short work of the
Infamous traffic.
BY late accounts we read that the islanders in
some of the groups have organized themselves for
mutual protection against Z" recruiting and trad
ing vessels. In some cases, the natives are
reported to have removed almost wholly from the
thinly settled islands and gone to more populous
ones for protection. One report mentions that
the schooner Donald Mclean was warned off
from one of the islands. Failing to 60 promptly,
she was boarded by swarms of natives, who cut
the rigging and then turned the vessel adrlft.
Surely, this was a mild revenge when the provo
cation is remembered-the kidnapping and carry
ing into slavery of the people.
As a result of the awakened public sentiment
in the Colonies on this subject, we learn that one
Alexander Longman, master of the schooner
Challenge, had been tried and convicted on two
charges, for " assaulting Polynesians on the high
seas, for that was the form which the prose-
cution took. The sentence pronounced was two
years imprisonment for the first offence, and one
year in addition for the second. 1t was urged by
the local journals, that it would be furthering the
cause OF humanity if the commander of the naval
in those seas should detatch one of his
vessels to cruise among the islands as far south as
the Fijs, with authority to overhaul and examine
every vessel having native " immigrants on
board.
Monthly.