14 minute read
Fighting an inhuman trade
HM Schooner Sandfly and anti-blackbirding in the Pacific
The Australian National Maritime Museum was recently gifted two private journals by Royal Navy Chief Gunner William Henry Bound, written during his period of service on the Australia Station in the 1870s. The journals were donated by siblings Shirley Dentith and Adrian Bound, who are William Bound’s great-grandchildren, and were passed down to them by way of their father and grandfather. Dr James Hunter discusses Bound’s service, Australia’s illegal trade in Pacific Islander labourers during the latter half of the 19th century, and the significant role played by a small flotilla of Australian-built naval vessels to suppress it.
William Twizell Wawn, Recruiting Labourers in the So. [South] Sea Islands, 1892. Image courtesy State Library of New South Wales
Working 1:24 scale model of HM Schooner Sandfly’s sister-vessel Renard. The model was manufactured by J.W. Owlett during his period of service as Renard’s Quartermaster between 1875 and 1877. Image courtesy Royal Museums Greenwich
WILLIAM BOUND SERVED as chief gunner aboard HM Schooner Sandfly, one of five vessels specially designed and constructed for the Royal Navy to interdict the illegal labour trade known as ‘blackbirding’. This illicit activity occurred in ships that operated in the waters of northern Australia and the South Pacific islands during the 1870s and 1880s. ‘Blackbirding’ was a colloquial term used to describe the coercion of Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Islands (and Australia) – through deception and/or kidnapping – to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in distant countries. In colonial Australia, plantation owners in New South Wales and Queensland were notorious for sending blackbirding vessels to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea) to lure islanders away with the promise of well-paid work. Instead, most were exposed to poor living conditions and minimal – or no – pay for hard labour on sugarcane and other plantations. The practice was in operation between 1863 and 1908. The British government declared blackbirding illegal in 1868 and commissioned construction of the schooners in Sydney to aid its suppression by intercepting blackbirding vessels and incarcerating their crews. All five anti-blackbirding schooners were built at the Millers Point (Sydney) shipyard of John Cuthbert according to the same design, with a length between perpendiculars of 80 feet (24.4 metres), beam of 18 feet, 6 inches (5.6 metres), and a depth of hold measuring 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 metres). Native Australian timber was used exclusively in their construction and included grey ironbark (Eucalyptus siderophloia) for the keel, frames of blackbutt (Eucalyptus pilularis) and blue gum (Eucalyptus saligna), with kauri (Agathis australis) for the external (hull) and internal (ceiling) planking. All architectural elements were assembled entirely with copper fasteners and hardware, and the hull beneath the waterline was clad in Muntz metal ‘of 18, 20 [and] 22 oz., over chunam’ (a water-resistant plaster or putty made from quicklime and sand, which had its origins in Asian and Indian shipbuilding).1 Sandfly was launched on 5 December 1872 and commenced naval service the following year. Bound joined the vessel on 22 May 1873 and served aboard it until April 1876. The schooners were assigned to the Australia Station, an independent command of the Royal Navy established in 1859 that was responsible for the waters around the Australian continent. By the 1870s, its boundaries of influence had expanded to include Papua New Guinea, Melanesia and Polynesia, all of which contained islands or island groups that were sovereign realms, colonies, or protectorates under the control and/or protection of the British Government and Royal Navy. William Bound was born at Portsea (Hampshire) on 20 January 1841 and joined the Royal Navy on 22 December 1855 at the age of 14. He served as a seaman for four years before being promoted to Petty Officer in 1859. Bound was assigned the rank of Gunner 2nd Class on 15 September 1870 and was detached to the 104-gun First Rate ship of the line, HMS Royal Adelaide. He travelled to Australia aboard the merchant ship Clara and briefly joined the crew of the 22-gun corvette HMS Clio in Sydney (where it was serving as the flagship of the Australia Station) before being transferred to Sandfly. The voyage to Sydney did not start off well: Clara was prevented from departing Plymouth for nearly two weeks due to inclement weather, and it was while still stuck in port that Bound learned his wife had given birth to a son, on 5 January 1873. As Clara’s departure was imminent, he was unable to visit his
family and instead ‘sent [a] Telegram on shore at once to Mrs. [Bound]’.2 He would not meet his son until the boy was three years old. Clara finally departed for Sydney on 11 January, but the vessel was in very poor condition and uncomfortable for its passengers, as Bound noted in a journal entry during the voyage: As the ship rolls so the water rushes in and out of the cabins (if I may call them such, for they are more like horse boxes). As for our mess berth it is a rough place the same as the cabins and just as wet, for instance if you go in to tea, then if you are not quick in drinking it, besides getting wet yourself, your tea is half salt water from the leaks overhead. Such is our personal comforts taking passage to Australia in Ship Clara.3 The cold and wet conditions may have contributed to the sudden death of one of Bound’s shipmates, Navigating Sub-Lieutenant Purchase, who reportedly ‘was taken ill [on the afternoon of 12 January] and at 7 o’clock in the evening … expired’.4 Clara’s overall condition was so poor that, following an inspection of the lower deck and aft accommodation areas on 21 January, the senior Royal Navy officers on board ordered the vessel’s captain to enter the nearest port. The captain protested, but eventually turned his ship around and headed back to Plymouth two days later. By now, the naval personnel had ‘taken charge of steering the Ship’ given Clara’s ‘very poor … company [that were] few in number’.5 The whole experience left an impression on Bound, who noted a new-found disdain for merchant ships and hoped ‘it will never fall to my lot [to take passage in one] any more’.6 Clara finally arrived back in Plymouth on 28 January. Following approximately two weeks of repairs at the British naval dockyard at Devonport, Clara embarked for Australia for the second time, on 15 February. The ship was now in much better condition and Bound noted in his journal the following day, ‘We are making a much better start this time than we did the last and we are far more comfortable on board in every respect’.7 The remainder of the voyage was largely uneventful. Clara arrived at Sydney on 20 May and Bound embarked aboard Sandfly soon after. Shortly after Bound joined Sandfly’s crew, the schooner was involved in the seizure of the brig Aurora, in October 1873. Aurora was engaged in blackbirding and taken into custody for violating Queensland’s Polynesian Labour Act 1868, which banned the practice. Early the following year, Sandfly participated in hydrographic surveys in the waters of Papua New Guinea, but suffered damage to its rudder during a severe storm and had to be assisted back to Sydney by the crew of the paddle sloop HMS Basilisk.
Late 19th-century license granted to Thomas Robson to carry Pacific Islander labourers from Malden Island and Nui (Atoll) to Melbourne aboard his vessel, the barquentine Delmira. ANMM Collection 00051919
Although engaged in the suppression of blackbirding, Sandfly’s interactions with Pacific Islanders were not always positive or beneficial. During the schooner’s third operational voyage in the latter half of 1874, it was attacked on 20 September by a large group of islanders in canoes while at anchor in Carlisle Bay at Santa Cruz (Nendö Island) in the Solomon Islands. Bound notes in his journal that Sandfly’s crew dreaded poison-tipped arrows, a mere scratch from which was ‘sure to cause your death and you also die in agonies’.8 Although the Santa Cruz islanders fired several volleys of arrows at the schooner and its crew and threatened to ‘shoot [the captain] and set fire to the ship’, no injuries or deaths were reported.9 The response from Sandfly was arguably disproportionate. ‘Defensive’ cannonading with both round shot and explosive shells totally destroyed all the attacking canoes and resulted in the deaths of ‘about 30’ islanders.10 A shore party then burned ‘two large villages’ and their ‘well fitted up’ war canoes.11 Sandfly departed Santa Cruz three days later, leaving in its wake death and destruction among the very people it was charged with protecting from the scourge of the illegal labour trade. Sadly, the islanders’ aggression was almost certainly the result of fears that Sandfly was a blackbirding vessel, as those involved in the trade often disguised their craft as missionary and merchant vessels – and even ships of war – to deceive those they intended to kidnap. In part because of Sandfly’s violent exchange with the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, the Australia Station’s Commander-in-Chief, Commodore James Goodenough, visited Carlisle Bay in his flagship, the 21-gun screw corvette HMS Pearl, in August 1875. Goodenough wished to encourage better relations with the islanders, and to that end went ashore on 20 August with gifts and trade goods. While the initial response from the islanders was positive (yams and matting were traded for some knives), the situation quickly deteriorated and Goodenough and two of Pearl’s ratings were struck with poisoned arrows. The shore party were able to escape, and Goodenough ordered retaliatory fire, but insisted it be aimed over the islanders’ heads. The three wounded men developed tetanus and ultimately died of their wounds, but Goodenough in his final hours declared he would not ‘allow a single life to be taken in retaliation’.12 However, violent encounters between British warships and Pacific Islanders occasionally still took place, and Sandfly is perhaps best known for another, in October 1880, after Bound left the vessel. Known as the ‘Sandfly Incident’, it occurred while the schooner was again in the Solomon Islands, this time conducting hydrographic survey work near Guadalcanal. The schooner’s commander, Lieutenant James Bower, went ashore at nearby Mandoliana Island with five of Sandfly’s crewmen to survey the eastern shoreline of the adjacent island of Nggela Pile. While encamped, the survey crew came under attack by a group of islanders from nearby Gaeta. Four of the sailors were killed in the initial assault. Bower escaped but was later captured and killed, while the one remaining crewman eluded the attackers and swam 16 kilometres to the community of Honggo on Nggela Pile, where he was rescued and taken to safety by other islanders. On 22 October, the surviving sailor reached Sandfly and reported news of the attack to the schooner’s officers who, in turn, undertook a punitive raid at Rita Bay, opposite Mandoliana Island. They found no inhabitants but burned several canoes on the beach in retaliation. As the shore party returned to Sandfly, they were fired upon by a group of islanders, resulting in the death of one sailor and wounding of another. Sandfly subsequently returned to Sydney to report the incident, and reprisal raids carried out by the crews of HM Ships Emerald, Cormorant, Alert and Renard (the latter of which was one of Sandfly’s anti-blackbirding sister schooners) resulted in destruction of several houses, canoes and crops belonging to the islanders, as well as the execution of four of the perpetrators who had attacked Bower and his men. The massacre’s leader, Vuria, the son of Gaeta’s chieftain, managed to escape. He remained in hiding for over two decades.
After ten years of naval service, Sandfly was paid off in 1883 and sold for £1,000 to Messrs. Sahl and W H Moseley. In an ironic twist, it was soon bound for Tonga to participate in trade with the South Pacific Islands – a venture that during the 1880s often included blackbirding. However, there is no indication from historical records that it participated in the transfer of Pacific Islanders to Australia (either legally or illegally).
01 Chief Gunner William Henry Bound, RN, c. 1890. Image courtesy Shirley Dentith and Adrian Bound
02 HM Schooner Sandfly (right) and its sister-ship Beagle at anchor in Tasmania’s River Derwent, c. 1880. Image courtesy Maritime Museum of Tasmania
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By August 1884, Sandfly was in service of the colonial government in Tonga and the following year it reported on the creation of a new volcanic island in the Tongan archipelago. In 1887, the ship relayed information of an insurrection and attempted assassination of the island’s Premier to authorities in New Zealand. In March 1890, it was purchased for £350 by Mr H Beattie on behalf of a Sydney-based syndicate. On 3 December 1893, Sandfly was wrecked on the island of San Christobal in the Solomon Islands while undertaking a trading voyage. The schooner was caught in a tidal current and drifted onto rocks, while its final owner and master, William Thomas Kirkpatrick, was ashore bartering for copra. Attempts by the crew to tow Sandfly to safety before it grounded were unsuccessful, as was a last-ditch effort to anchor, due to the great depth of water near shore. All the crew survived, but upon reuniting with Kirkpatrick they quickly abandoned the vessel and departed in one of the boats with ‘only a tin of biscuits and a barrel of water’ due to perceived ‘unfriendly’ behaviour by the island’s inhabitants.13 News of Sandfly’s loss was delivered to Sydney by its sister-schooner Renard, which, by then, was also in civilian service and trading in the Solomon Islands.
At the conclusion of his service on Sandfly, on 11 January 1876, Bound transferred to HMS Pearl (Goodenough’s former command, which replaced Clio as the flagship of the Australia Station). He returned to the United Kingdom in June 1876 and was assigned to HMS Excellent, a shore-based installation in Portsmouth, where he served as a ‘theoretical instructor’ of naval gunnery. Bound served as a Gunner 2nd Class on several other British warships between 1882 and 1892, including HM Ships Monarch (the first seagoing British warship with gun turrets), Hibernia (which transported convicts to New South Wales in 1818–19), Neptune (an ironclad turret ship originally built for Brazil, but acquired by the Royal Navy in 1878), and Pembroke (a 74-gun Third-Rate ship of the line). On 1 August 1889, Bound was assigned to HMS President, a drill and training ship berthed at London’s West India Docks, and served there until January 1896. During his time aboard President, Bound was promoted to Chief Gunner. Bound’s final assignment with the Royal Navy was at the Admiralty, where he was promoted to Honorary Lieutenant, and served between 20 January 1896 and 31 March 1904. He was pensioned on 1 April 1904 and died at the age of 75 on 12 January 1919. By the turn of the twentieth century, many Pacific Islanders – including victims of blackbirding and their descendants – had formed settled communities in Queensland and northern New South Wales. Tragically, the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 legislated for the mass deportation of approximately 10,000 indentured labourers still living in Australia. The Act was part of a suite of Commonwealth laws that became known as the ‘White Australia’ policy. Deportations commenced in 1906 and continued until mid-1908. By 1910, only about 2,500 Pacific Islanders remained in Australia. Despite these policies, their communities survived and thrived, and today their descendants constitute Australia’s South Sea Islander community.
1 ‘Launch of Two Schooners from Cuthbert’s Yards’, Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier, 21 December 1872, p. 7. 2 W H Bound, Private Journal of W.H. Bound, Gunner R.N. (December 13th, 1872 – September 19th, 1874), 7 January 1873. ANMM Collection.
3 Ibid, 24 January 1873. 4 Ibid, 12 January 1873. 5 Ibid, 22 January 1873. 6 Ibid, 21 January 1873. 7 Ibid, 16 February 1873. 8 W H Bound, Private Journal of W.H. Bound, Gunner R.N., HMS ‘Sandfly’, Australia (September 20th, 1874 – April 29th, 1876), 22 September 1874. ANMM Collection. 9 Ibid, 20 September 1874. 10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 J M Ward, ‘Goodenough, James Graham (1830–1875)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4 (1851–1890), Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 1972. 13 ‘Loss of the Sandfly: Stranded on the Solomon Islands’, Australian Star, 7 March 1893, p. 6.
Dr James Hunter is the museum’s Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology.
