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CHAPTER 1
Origins of Pearling on the East Coast
From the Southwest Pacific to Torres Strait
Torres Strait Islanders are a maritime people, and, like most Melanesians before colonization, they were avid traders, with a tempo of life largely determined by the vibrant exchange networks that connected individuals, clans, and villages. Much of the trade was utilitarian, involving the necessities of life, such as food or the implements to obtain food, like dugong harpoons (wap). Some items changed hands as gifts, and others had specific social or ceremonial purposes. Trading voyages undertaken in large, sleek, double-outrigger, seagoing sailing canoes drew communities together, both in their preparation and execution, and successful trade was celebrated in dance and song, exuberant occasions when the young flirted and elders sanctioned marriages and reaffirmed alliances. The principal exports were marine products, mainly shells of various sorts, used for personal adornment — luxury items, in effect. Torres Strait Islanders traded valuable arm-rings (wauri) and disc-pendants (dibidibi), both made from the cone shell (Conus litteratus millepunctatus). There were beautiful olive shell (Olividae) necklaces called waraz and shell nose sticks called kirkub. And then there were the highly prized, crescent-shaped pearl shell (Pinctada maxima) chest ornaments called mai, one of the most important items exported to the adjacent New Guinea coast (figure 4).
Reports of Torres Strait Islanders seen wearing mai alerted colonial entrepreneurs that commercial quantities of mother-of-pearl might be found in Australia's tropical waters, but although pearl shell was known to be valuable, few in the colonies comprehended how it actually stood as a commodity. In 1843 J. Everard Home of HMS North, reported from Port Essington, a short-lived (1838–1849) outpost on the Cobourg Peninsula in what is now the Northern Territory, that "pearl-oyster shells almost compose the beach." He went on: "Pearl fishing, properly conducted, might, in my opinion, be carried on with great success. Very small seed pearls are frequently found. Some have been found larger than a common pea; but these oysters are all taken from the mud, and in very shallow water. It is believed that divers would be rewarded with the greatest success in sandy banks and deeper water."
The emphasis on pearls and Home's lack of interest in the potential value of mother-of-pearl reflects the mind-set of his homeport, Trincomali, in Sri Lanka. It was near the renowned pearling grounds of the Gulf of Mannar, where the pearl shell itself had little value.
In Australia the enveloping South Asia imperial connection, and perhaps the British East India Company's (BEIC) monopoly on trade to China, obscured the commercial possibilities of the product. Home mistook edible blacklip oysters (Saccostrea echinata), which grow profusely in north Australia, for the Sri Lankan pearl oyster (Pinctada fucata), which is about the same size. And confusion about pearl oysters was not confined to British captains. When D. H. Kolff of the Dutch brig Dourga was shown examples of Pinctada maxima at the Aru Islands in August 1825, he concluded that it would not produce pearls: genuine pearl oysters were much smaller and thinner. Since at least 1811, pearl shell, mainly from around Tahiti, passed through the port of Sydney on its way to London, and in the mid1850s some of these consignments exceeded one hundred tons, but this was the less valuable Pinctada margaritifera. There was also talk of a mother-of-pearl industry in Western Australia, sparked by the discovery of extensive beds of the even less valuable Pinctada sugillata at Shark Bay. This industry took another decade to develop, and it largely relied on the take of pearls.
Although Sydney merchants knew that high-quality pearl shell could be found in Torres Strait, the product that first caught their attention was tortoiseshell, the commercial name for the thirteen plates, or scutes, that form the carapace of one species of marine turtle, the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata). Marine turtles were superabundant in Torres Strait, and Torres Strait Islanders hunted them for meat, harvested their eggs, and had numerous uses for the fat. But the hawksbill was targeted mainly for its beautiful shell. Islanders used this translucent, dappled material to fashion extraordinarily elaborate ritual masks and to make more mundane objects, such as scrapers and fishhooks. It also featured in their external trade. In the world market, China was the principal destination, but tortoiseshell was also prized in Europe. It's malleable when heated, keeps its new shape when cooled, and in an age lacking synthetic plastics, was one of the few easily worked decorative materials. It could also be laminated for added thickness and strength, perfect for expensive tea caddies and jewelry boxes that in mid-nineteenth-century Europe were the height of fashion. In 1827 Singapore, a major clearing port for tortoiseshell, the price reached 1,000 Spanish dollars a picul (about 60 kg or 130 lb), and Sydney traders sailed to Torres Strait with the sole purpose of bartering for it. In 1839 the 150-ton schooner Essington obtained four hundredweight (about 200 kg or 440 lb) in just a few days, and in 1846 the ninety-ton schooner Castlereagh acquired nearly a hundredweight (about 50 kg or 110 lb) from a single Torres Strait Islander canoe.
Later in the 1840s, Sydney traders concentrated on sandalwood in the southwest Pacific. When that was almost cut out, they diversified into bêche-de-mer, the smoke-cured sea cucumber (Holothurian) that is a signature ingredient in Chinese festive cuisine. Since at least the seventeenth century, Chinese junks had traded for bêche-de-mer (known in the Indian Ocean by the Malay word trepang) principally at Manila and Makassar (Ujung Pandang), and Indonesian trepangers reached the north Australian coast well before James Cook. Because Sydney merchants were hobbled by imperial restrictions on their trade, and the BEIC's China monopoly that was not lifted until 1834, the first intensive phase of the Pacific bêche-de-mer industry was initiated by the enterprising merchant-shipowners of Salem, Massachusetts, who collected in Fiji mainly for sale in Manila. When overfishing saw this business collapse in the 1850s, the industry fell more to Sydney traders, who began to exploit the Great Barrier Reef. Ultimately, it was the quest for productive bêche-demer grounds that pushed the colonial fishing frontier north to Torres Strait.
James Paddon led the way. He was an Englishman who, in 1844, with the backing of a Cantonese merchant, established a sandalwood station at Aneityum in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), shipping direct to China. He became one of the most successful traders in the southwest Pacific, and in 1858 he decided to relocate to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, where he knew from John MacGillivray that bêche-de-mer was abundant. At the time, MacGillivray was the leading scientific authority on the Great Barrier Reef, having spent months there when he was a naturalist with the HMS Fly (1842–1846) and HMS Rattlesnake (1846–1850) hydrographical expeditions. But problems with drink and debt saw him dismissed from the service in 1855, and after a few difficult years eking out a living as a commercial natural history collector in Australia, he went to work for Paddon at Noumea. It was science in the service of the colonial project. MacGillivray's knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef and his expertise as a naturalist influenced Paddon to try the Queensland coast.
Geopolitical forces also were at work. The French had annexed New Caledonia and the nearby Loyalty Islands, and this made "Sydney English" traders in the region anxious about the future. Across the Coral Sea the new British colony of Queensland beckoned. Its virtually unexploited northern regions offered attractive prospects, not the least of which was an administration that favored rather than discouraged British trade. On December 10, 1860, a letters patent authorized by Queen Victoria took effect when Queensland's first governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, proclaimed the colony. Six months later, on July 16, 1860, Paddon's hundred-ton brig Julia Percy sailed from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) on a 1,600-mile voyage west-northwest to the Great Barrier Reef.
Julia Percy was under Paddon's most experienced captain, William Banner, who had a share in both vessel and venture. It was packed to the gunwales with chests, casks, and coops for pigs and poultry, with two whaleboats on the davits, a large lifeboat hoisted overhead diagonally between the masts, and two more strapped to the deck. MacGillivray described Julia Percy as "an ancient bluff-bowed brig" and "the dullest sailer in these seas." It carried seventy-six souls, many of whom slept on the cargo. They were mostly South Sea Islanders from New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), and the Solomons. By the 1860s South Sea Islanders predominated in sandalwood and bêche-de-mer crews, generally with a mix of experienced and green hands. That seventeen Europeans were aboard is more telling, because it indicates a significant restructuring of Paddon's business. Ten islander women sailed as companions to seven white men, a New Caledonian, and two Chinese men. There were also two children. This touch of domesticity confirms a more or less permanent relocation, but women, even "boat wives," were expected to work, whether paid or not. Seven Chinese sailors was more than might be expected, but given Paddon's links with the South China Sea and the large number of Chinese miners on the Australian gold fields at the time, the number is perhaps not surprising — they certainly would have given Julia Percyan edge when it came to bêche-de-mer curing expertise and product knowledge.
Banner reached the outer Great Barrier Reef in twelve days, negotiated a passage through, and anchored at Lizard Island, where grass huts were erected and work commenced on a large storehouse and manager's residence. He then sailed both north and south, scouting for good patches of bêche-de-mer, but nowhere was it more prolific than at Lizard Island, so he headed back. When he got there the station was taking shape, but morale had deteriorated. Two Chinese crewmen, a Loyalty Islander, and a European had succumbed to fever, and the camp was seething with discontent. Paid a whaling lay, that is, a percentage of the profit of the voyage, the men saw that their shares were shaping up to be woefully inadequate. Anxious to bolster profits, Banner decided to go north again, this time as far as Torres Strait to trade for tortoiseshell (figure 5).
Julia Percy weighed anchor on November 7, 1860, but unsettled weather and the old brig's poor sailing qualities meant the voyage took more than three months. When Banner arrived back at Lizard Island on February 10, 1861, the situation was desperate. Six more people had died, and as many again were severely debilitated by fever. A heavy gale had unroofed the store, swamped the garden, and damaged two whaleboats, which had been out of commission ever since. Bêche-de-mer gathering had ceased altogether. One of Paddon's vessels had arrived from the southwest Pacific to take off produce, but Julia Percy, a "miserable old tub" to begin with, was now barely seaworthy. Banner finally decided to abandon the station and sail south, where he learned that Paddon had died at Noumea on February 13, 1861.
In the untangling of Paddon's complicated financial affairs, his Great Barrier Reef speculation collapsed. Nevertheless, sixty tons of bêche-de-mer had been consigned to China, and Banner was impressed by Torres Strait. Although Torres Strait Islanders were headhunters and had a fearsome reputation as warriors, they were friendly and honest in their dealings with Julia Percy and keen to barter for tobacco, tomahawks, and butcher's knives. He was well pleased with the four hundred pounds (180 kg) of tortoiseshell he had obtained, and the islands were fertile, unlike Lizard Island, and capable of producing that rare necessity on the far north Queensland coast — abundant fresh vegetables. The northeast Torres Strait islands lay just inside the northern extremity of the Great Barrier Reef where it curves into the Gulf of Papua, and the waters teem with marine life.
Two years later, in 1864, another of Paddon's former associates, Charles Edwards of the sixty-ton schooner Blue Bell, now in shares with the Sydney merchant-shipowner Robert Towns, established the first bêche-de-mer camp in Torres Strait itself, at Erub (Darnley) in the northeast. Towns, after whom the north Queensland city of Townsville is named, is notorious for initiating the traffic in South Sea Islander labor, which over a period of fifty years supplied some sixty thousand workers to toil in slavelike conditions on Queensland's sugar plantations. But in Torres Strait he was, like Paddon, retreating from the southwest Pacific sandalwood trade into bêche-de-mer. By 1866 he had Edwards in charge of three vessels: Blue Bell, Melanie, and Woodlark. Banner himself returned in 1866, this time backed by James Merriman, another prominent Sydney merchant-shipowner, who was the city's mayor in 1873, 1877, and 1878. Merriman employed the 244-ton barque Metaris and two ketches, Telegraph and Edith, and later the schooner Blue Bell, which he and Banner purchased from Edwards as a wreck and refitted. Banner established his first bêche-de-mer camp at Ugar (Stephens), just to the northwest of Erub, before relocating in 1869 to Tudu (Warrior), a small, waterless coral cay at the bottom of Warrior Reef, about thirty miles to the southwest.
Torres Strait Islanders generally were willing to accommodate bêche-de-mer camps, if only to gain access to European manufactures. The camps slotted into a system of traditional trading nodes, in which clans exercised exclusive rights over particular trade routes and products. Friendly relations could break down quickly, though. Three years before at Mer, just to the southeast of Erub, a group of visiting Poruma (Coconut Island) men harried, killed, and beheaded a Maori "leading hand" from Towns's Woodlark, who had been prowling the island at night looking for women. The Woodlark party, who were camped at neighboring Dauar, crossed to Mer the next day and avenged their shipmate, killing nine people (women and children included) and torching canoes and huts. The following morning, they fired on a canoe arriving from Damuth (Dalrymple Island), killing more Torres Strait Islanders. Nevertheless, Pasi, the notable Dauarzogo-le through whom this story has passed into history, recalled that soon after these bloody events, belligerents took a step back and the violence dissipated.
Banner's arrival at Tudu in late April 1869, with his crew of about seventy South Sea Islanders, represents a watershed in Torres Strait history. The Tudulgal were renowned for their audacious 1792 attacks on William Bligh's ships and were still regarded as dangerously aggressive. We know that Kebisu, a truly formidable warrior of legendary stature in Torres Strait memory, was present. About forty Tudulgal families were camped at the southeast end of the island, so Banner set up his camp on the northwest side, where there was a decent anchorage. Thirteen large sailing canoes crowded with people left, probably for Iama (Turtle Back Island), a larger and more fertile Tudulgal island, but five canoes remained behind and Banner soon established friendly relations with those islanders.
While Kebisu's year of birth is unknown, he must have been a mature man in 1869. By all accounts he was physically intimidating, but his authority also derived from his status in the two dominant Tudu-Iama clans, Kursi (hammerhead shark) and Kodal (saltwater crocodile). His birth name was Isoa, and he had been adopted into the chiefly Kursi line and given custody of the Kodal shrine at Iama, which meant he was a zogo-le. The families who quit Tudu soon made overtures to return, but for three months Banner warned them off. Eventually an agreement was struck, probably formalized between Banner and Kebisu. While for Kebisu this might have involved severe compromises, his clan authority survived the crisis and was consolidated when colonial authorities recognized him as a mamoose, or paramount chief. If official reports are to be believed, for the next few years harmony prevailed at Tudu, as the Tudulgal joined in the work of the Merriman bêche-de-mer camp.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Octopus Crowd"
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