From his shipboard notes and through frequent cross-questionings, Will Mariner reconstructed his adventure for Martin, who offered it to the public in a lengthy work. This book, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean, first appeared in 1816 in two volumes. It was so much in demand that a second edition was published the next year, and a third came out in 1827. Today it is treasured as a work of first importance in Pacific ethnology, as well as a stirring narrative of wild adventure.
Will was the second child of Captain Magnus Mariner, who had served on the British side in the American Revolution as owner and master of a privateering ship under the orders of Sir William Cornwallis. Afterward, the privateer business became unprofitable, and the captain settled in London and married. His son Will was born at Highbury Place, Islington, on September 10, 1791. He got a better education than most lads of his position, for he spent five or six years at Mr. Mitchel’s Academy at Ware in Hertfordshire. When Mitchel died, the boy returned home well grounded not only in the three R’s but also in history, geography and French.
Will had always shown a fondness for an active life and a thirst for information about the world. His sports were usually those of a daring sort. He read many books of travel, and often used to say that he would like to five among savages and meet with strange adventures. But he was not in the mood then to go to sea, and according to the custom of the time, in 1804, when only thirteen, he accepted a post in an attorney’s office.
About six weeks later, Captain Isaac Duck came to dinner and changed Will’s mind. Duck, now about forty, had come to bid farewell to Magnus Mariner, under whom he had served his apprenticeship. He was about to sail as master of the Port-au-Prince, private ship of war. His orders were to cruise for prizes in the Atlantic. If not successful, he was to double Cape Horn and harry enemy shipping in the Pacific, meanwhile filling in the time chasing whales.
Captain Duck’s enthusiasm aroused Will’s desire to go on this voyage. On the spot a position was devised for him, that of captain’s clerk; so that when the Port-au-Prince sailed from Gravesend on Tuesday, February 12, 1805, Will Mariner was aboard.
The privateer Port-au-Prince was a three-masted square-rigger of nearly five hundred tons. She mounted twenty-four long nine-pounders and twelve-pounders, besides eight twelve-pound carronades on the quarter-deck. She was a formidable vessel. The large complement of ninety-six men allowed for the chance that prize crews might have to be released to man captured vessels.
No enemy ships were encountered in the stormy Atlantic, however, and Captain Duck, who was sick part of the time, navigated the Port-au-Prince around Cape Horn and up the west coast of South America. Here some Spanish brigs fell easy prey. The undefended Spanish colonies were likewise ready victims of the loot-hungry crew of the privateer.
For example, one day the privateersmen came upon the Spanish town of Ilo, at the southern extremity of Peru. Ilo was a tiny port at the mouth of a stream which emptied there the sand which it had picked up on its wanderings through the mountains and deserts that separate Lake Titicaca from the sea.
The men of the Port-au-Prince stormed ashore, captured the port and completely sacked Ilo, burning the little city to the ground. The church was plundered and yielded forth a rich booty of silver candlesticks, chalices, incense pans and crucifixes. From Ilo the Port-au-Prince moved northward to the Galapagos Islands, where whales were sought in vain, and thence back to the little town of Tola, at the mouth of the Rio Santiago in modern Ecuador near the Colombian border. The governor of Tola was a man of the world who knew how to put his enemies at their ease, the principal weapon in his artillery being an uncommonly pretty daughter of sixteen, Margarita, who had just completed her education in a nunnery. She spoke fairly good English, and she and Will were able to chat together. He was more than a year younger, but toughened by the life of a privateer. When Margarita heard of the sack of the church at Ilo, her eyes widened with horror. She told Will that, after such sacrilege, his ship would never reach England again.
Unfrightened by a prediction which turned out to be true, Will tried to pass it all off as a joke. When she asked if he had taken part, he said that he had only knocked down as many silver images as he could conveniently reach. When she scolded him, he warned her that in England she would be punished as a witch. For this she boxed his ears.
Later he brought Margarita a fine cheese—a delicacy in that place. In return she gave him some gold buckles for his shoes, but reminded him that according to her prophecy he would not live to wear them very long.
Heading north of the Equator, the Port-au-Prince alternated piracy with whale hunting. Lack of luck caused them to switch to the slaughter of sea elephants at Cedros Island off Lower California. During this massacre, Captain Isaac Duck’s growing illness became acute. He died on Monday, August 11, and two days later was buried ashore on Cedros.
The command now fell upon Mr. James Brown, the whaling master and one of the stupidest men ever to try to take a ship across the Pacific. There is no record of this pathetic man’s age, appearance or previous service, but his performance with Port-au-Prince has made him notorious in maritime annals. On the first afternoon of his command he demonstrated the monumental incompetence that was to mark his career, for less than an hour after his men had buried their beloved captain, he ordered them to the messiest job aboard a whaler: the nauseating work at the try-pots of rendering out oil from sea-elephant carcasses.
At sea the crew found that their ship had sprung a leak in her side, and it was decided that they should head for the Hawaiian Islands and make repairs on her there. At Honolulu the reigning monarch, Kamehameha the Great, who had won fame by uniting all the islands under his vigorous rule, visited the ship. He took a liking to young Will Mariner and asked him to remain there as his secretary.
This was a marvelous offer for a fifteen-year-old lad, but he turned it down. His sense of duty as captain’s clerk made him remain aboard to keep safe the records that would allot the proper share of prize money to each of the crew, including the dead captain’s heirs.
The Port-au-Prince sailed south from Honolulu on October 26, but the leak still persisted. The crew, supplemented by eight Hawaiians, had to man the pumps much of the time. Captain Brown, no navigator, was heading for Sydney, the nearest big port, but in this emergency sought to put in at Tahiti. Because of an adverse current he missed the Society group and had to make for an alternative target, the Friendly Islands. The leak had now increased to a rate of eighteen inches of water every hour, and the pumping required to keep afloat was punishing.
The Friendly Islands that Captain Brown sought are strung out for a distance of about a hundred and eighty miles north and south, with the 20° S. parallel of latitude running through their center. Known today as Tonga, the islands for the most part are flat coral reefs, lifted by volcanic action in ancient times, and surrounded by beautiful fringing reefs. Several of the islands are volcanic cones rising from the centers of lovely atolls. There are three main groups: Vava’u, with one high island, to the north; Tongatapu, with the most substantial island, to the south; and Ha’apai, with no major island but with a multitude of glorious islets, in the middle. Captain Cook had been well received among the low-lying islands of Ha’apai, and Captain Brown steered for the passage there. Toward the end of November, 1806, a month out from Honolulu, the Port-au-Prince dropped anchor off the northern end of Ha’apai’s central island, Lifuka, the very spot where Cook had stopped in the Endeavour thirty years before and had been greeted by these Polynesian people.
The Friendly Islanders lived up to their name. Sending presents in advance, the head chief, Finau, came out in a large canoe and paid a formal call on the captain. His interpreter was a Hawaiian named Kuikui, who had voyaged to Manila in an American whale ship and thence to Tonga. Kuikui, who was to play an infamous role in what was about to transpire, assured Brown repeatedly that the people of Lifuka were all good folk, and that the captain need not worry
if many of the islanders came out to visit the ship, because they had seldom seen such an important vessel there.
While High Chief Finau was politely sipping brandy in the captain’s cabin, Kuikui sought out the eight Hawaiians in the forecastle, and privately slipped them the word that they would be safer if they went ashore for the next few days. The Hawaiians had been well treated aboard the Port-au-Prince and immediately suspected that Kuikui was warning them of an attack. They went at once to Captain Brown on the quarter-deck, advised him to be on his guard, and said that it would be wise not to let too many Tongans on board at any time.
Captain Brown had been charmed by the soft-spoken chiefs, and his dull and stubborn mind simply could not comprehend the possible dangers. He rebuffed the Hawaiians and said that these Tongans were clearly not treacherous, and that their name proved they had always been friendly to white men. He even threatened the Hawaiian spokesman with a flogging. Their advice thus rejected, the Hawaiians went ashore and thereafter pestered Brown no more.
That night all the Tongans left the ship, but the crew had little rest, for the vessel was kept afloat only by pumping continuously. Next morning was Sunday, and Brown’s anxiety was so great that he ordered all the heavy guns to be moved aft, so that the carpenters could get at the bad spots.
The men, tired out and yearning for the delights of the shore now in view, and encouraged by the “pernicious invitations” of the natives, complained bitterly. They marched aft in a mutinous manner, argued that they had always been allowed to go on liberty in port on Sundays, and asked leave to land at once.
Captain Brown came out on the quarter-deck and told them they might all go to hell if they pleased, but not before they had carried out his orders to careen the ship. Then James Kelly rushed to the gangway over the ship’s side waving a dagger looted in South America. “By God, I’ll run through the guts of the first bastard that tries to stop me from leaving this ship!” he shouted. He and three other men jumped into a passing canoe, taking their clothes with them, as if they intended not to return. Soon they were followed by fifteen more mutineers—for that is what they had now become.
The remaining men got to work moving the guns aft, and with the leaking holes in the bow at last exposed, the water stopped pouring in and the labor of pumping was somewhat reduced.
During the day, as the men worked, they noted that more and more natives were boarding the ship, armed with clubs and spears. By afternoon the decks were thronged with Tongans, who acted so threateningly that the crew came aft to report that they suspected an immediate attempt to capture the ship. This was, in fact, true, as was afterward discovered. For the moment, however, the plot was frustrated, unwittingly, by Will Mariner.
He and Captain Brown and Mr. Dixon, the mate, were in the cabin entertaining two young chiefs. Will, bored with trying to talk to natives who did not know English or French, strolled out into the steerage. There he met the sailors coming to warn the captain. He was impressed with their story, and he went back and urged their case so strongly that even Brown’s sluggish mind was aroused to the possibility of an attack. The captain agreed at least to walk out of the cabin and look over the situation. He walked arm in arm with one chief, while Dixon strolled next to the other native. Thus the party marched out on deck.
Accidentally, Will had broken up Chief Finau’s plot, for it was Finau who had sent his two young henchmen to the captain’s cabin. A canoe had been ordered to stop beneath the porthole, and the natives on deck were to go to that side of the ship and shout at those below. The captain and any other white men in the cabin would surely go to look at what was going on. While their backs were turned, the two young chiefs would draw short clubs from beneath their garments and brain the officers. This would be the signal for the natives forward to attack the crew and massacre every white man aboard.
When Will got up and went out of the cabin, the chiefs feared that the plot had been discovered. When they were led out on deck, the natives were even more sure that the tables had been turned and that they faced instant death. Their faces went as pale as their brown skins would allow. Brown asked them to order the crowd of Tongans off the ship. The chiefs did so instantly, and even threw overboard the clubs they had concealed. Obediently all the natives jumped into their canoes and headed for shore.
Brown, with ill-timed delicacy of feeling, realized that the two chiefs, now disarmed, were looking with fear at a rack of boarding pikes, tomahawks and muskets on the quarterdeck. With incredible stupidity, Brown ordered that these weapons be sent below, as a gesture of friendliness.
At dusk Brown committed an even greater act of folly, for he refused the request of the crew spokesmen to post armed sentries and prevent the natives from swarming aboard and interfering with the repair work. Brown, bewitched by words, had it in his stolid head that the Friendly Islanders were truly friendly, and refused to permit even normal precautions.
At dawn on Monday, December 1, 1806, hordes of natives began to come off to the Port-au-Prince. By eight o’clock no less than three hundred men armed with clubs and spears swarmed over the ship. A little later Kuikui, the interpreter, came aboard and invited Captain Brown to pay a visit ashore and enjoy the entertainment which had been arranged by the chiefs there. Brown accepted heartily, stepped into a canoe, and was last seen walking up a path into the fringe of coconut palms.
Now there was to be no more delay. All that remained was for the Tongans to slaughter the crew, and the Port-au-Prince would be theirs, along with her guns and gunpowder, iron and brass metal—untold wealth for a Polynesian tribe.
First to fall was the mate, Dixon. Prudently, he was ordering several canoe loads of natives not to come aboard, as there were too many on the ship already. A club bashed in his skull. There was a wild yell of “Maté! Maté!” and the massacre began. Owing to Captain Brown’s orders, not a single crew member was armed, and not one of those on deck survived the sudden attack.
Young Will Mariner was below, about to begin writing up the daily log from his rough pencil notes. He went to the hatchway to mend his quill in the daylight, and heard the cry of “Kill! Kill!” Looking up, he saw Dixon fall in his blood.
Will dashed for the gun room close by, where he could lock himself in and get a musket from the chest there. Evading a Tongan who clutched at him as he went by, the boy shook clear and dived down the narrow scuttle to the deck below.
Here he found Robert Brown, the ship’s cooper, paralyzed with fear. Will pulled him along to the hatch of the powder magazine, and they jumped down and shut the hatch over them. When the shrieks and groans of the clubbed victims were followed by a deathly silence, Will had time to think.
Since they faced certain death anyway, the boy bravely decided that they should blow up the ship and destroy it, along with the murderous natives. To do this, he had to get to the gun room, where he might find a flintlock musket to fire into a barrel of powder to explode the magazine. Will peeped out, saw the coast was clear, and rushed to the gun room. There, to his dismay, he saw that the hoarding pikes brought down the evening before had been carelessly heaped on the musket chest, and that removing them would make so much noise that he would betray himself.
There was nothing to do but to go back to the magazine and think out some other plan. The cooper was in such a state that he was of no help. Will decided that sooner or later they would be discovered. Better to go out boldly and face fate like a man, he reasoned. It would be easier to get the killing over quickly, while the enemy was still hot with slaughter, rather than to risk later torture.
The cooper agreed, if Will would lead the way. The boy threw open the hatch again, stepped aft to the gun room, and opened the hatch into the captain’s cabin immediately above.
Peering through, he saw the backs of Kuikui and a young chief, who were bending over the captain’s bunk to examine the sword and pistol fastened on the bulkhead. Will jumped into the cabin. When they turned at the sound, he held out his hands to show he was unarmed, and
uttered the Hawaiian greeting he had learned—“Aloha!”
Will then asked Kuikui, in mixed Hawaiian and English, if he would be killed. If so, he was ready to die. Kuikui answered that he would not be hurt, and asked how many more white men lurked below. Will said there was only one, and called up the cooper. The two captives were then led by Kuikui to the upper deck, where Will saw for the first time the results of the massacre.
Seated on the companion hatch was a middle-aged Tongan warrior, naked to the waist. One side of his hideous face was twitching with a convulsive tic, and his eyelids blinked over his bloodshot eyes. Both he and his big ironwood club were spattered with human blood and brains, and over one shoulder was slung a blood-soaked seaman’s jacket. Beyond him were laid out in a neat row on deck the naked bodies of twenty-two of Mariner’s late shipmates. Only two of the battered faces were recognizable.
When the number was reported to the chief in charge, he ordered that the bodies be thrown overboard to the waiting sharks. The only two white men left alive on the Port-au-Prince were the cooper Robert Brown and Will Mariner.
The chief looked over the survivors, ordered that Brown should be left alive on board, and gestured Will to a waiting canoe. On the way to the beach, Will’s guard stripped him of his shirt, leaving most of his body bare to the blistering heat of the tropical sun.
The canoe landed and the boy was led along a path to the village of Koulo. By the path lay the naked, clubbed body of foolish Captain Brown. One of the natives asked by signs if they had done right to kill the captain. When Will could not answer, one of the Tongans lifted a club as if to lay the boy dead on the grass too. But his captor hurried him along and took him aboard a large sailing canoe.
While waiting there, Will saw a small boy wade out to the canoe and point to a fire burning a short distance away under the palms, uttering the word “Maté!” Will, remembering Captain Cook’s stories, feared—mistakenly, as it turned out—that these people were cannibals, and that he had been saved on the ship only to be cooked and eaten on shore.