Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-02-04
DIVERS FOR PEARL FISHERIES.
Englishmen to supplant japanese in
Australian Waters,
from the London Standard

From the London Standard.
The first of the white divers who are to
replace the Japanese in the Australian
pearl fisheries sailed from England today
on the steamship Waimana.
These men are going out to a life of
great adventure and no little peril All
three are ex-navy men, two of them div
ers and the third a tender, whose duty it
is to look after the pumping apparatus
and the signaling lines and who really
carries in his hands the life of the man
who is garnering oysters sixty feet below
the surface of the sea.
In pursuance of its white Australia"
policy, the commonwealth government
has practically decreed that from the end
of next year every diver and every tender
in the Broome and Thursday Island lug
gers shall be a white man. Notice has
been given to the boat owners that no
lugger carrying Japanese divers will be
licensed for the 1913 season.
The pearl fishers question whether white
men Will be able to sustain the arduOus
and perilous work of diving. The Japa-
nese diver has peculiar qualifications He
has tremendous endurance and fatalistic
temperament. Experiences which shatter
the nerves of the ordinary man have no
effect upon him. In the past Javanese
kanaka and Malay divers were largely
OuSted them all.
In the early days the pearl fisheries
rivaled the Spanish main of Elizabethan
times. 1t was byword that there was
and more vice to the square yard on
Thursday Island than in any other por-
ton of the globe of equal area Times
have changed; the fisheries are stringent
~ regulated; but if there is little poach
ing and no more bloodthrsty fights for
she'll pearling is still we'll nigh the most
adventurous life in the world
Mother O. pearl fetches about EGO a
ton in the London market This is the
object of the pearlers search, the pearls
are the lucky accidents. Each Iugger
carries diver, his tender. a crew of half
dozen Malays or Timor boys and a
white shell opener" Five tons of shell
a season. which lasts from March to No
vember is good haul for one lugger
The oysters lie on the bottom sometimes
bare. sometimes almost buried in the sand
or hidden in coral formations and the
depth varies from ten to twenty fathoms
in the Broome fisheries to forty-five faith
oms (270 feeD in the Darnley Island fish
cry.
The excitement is always intense The
diver may bring up ten oysters or not one
One shell may contain fortune in the
shape of a pearl or pearl blister" or
the whole lot may contain nothing. AS
matter OF fact pearls are rare that on
the Thursday Island boats. which do not
carry a smell opener. tney are the d.
ver's perquisite Only the other day
japanese diver brought up a pearl which
was sold for Ell 100.
The shell opener sails in the lugger
as check on the honesty of the diver
and the crew. He receives the shell and
the pearls on account of the owner of the
boat. and it can be readily imagined that
if by chance a fortune is fished up in
some lucky shell he must sleep with one
eye on his native crew until he gets to
port, perhaps a month hence. Although
the pay is only f6 month, there Is no
lack of young Englishmen for this haz-
ardous occupation.