12905.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
LITICO. 885
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11 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
No. 666.
(NEW SOUTH WALES.)
REPORT, by Mr. ROTHERY, to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury upon the Case of the "Atlantic."
In obedience to your Lordships' commands I have perused and considered the documents herewith returned, consisting of a letter from the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, bearing date the 19th ultimo, with its enclosures, relative to the case of a British vessel called the "Atlantic," which had been detained by the British Consul in the Navigator Islands, on a charge of kidnapping the natives; and the Under Secretary states that Lord Granville would be glad to have my opinion upon the whole case, upon the proceedings of the consul, and as to the proper course to pursue in the
matter.
The present is one of those unhappy cases to which your Lordships' attention was called in the early part of the present year in connexion with a Bill which it was proposed to bring in, and which formed the subject of my report to your Lordships of the 8th of June last. The circumstances of the present case are as follows:-
In the month of September 1869, a captain, W. W. Hayes, whose character seems to have been well known in those seas, was at Apis in Upola, one of the group of the Samoa or Navigator Islands, when he was applied to by a person called Frederick Henry Severight who had then recently arrived from the Fiji Islands, with orders from several planters there to procure labourers for them. Captain Hayes was at that time without a vessel, having lost the ship which he had owned, but he soon afterwards obtained from Messrs. Betham and Moore, an English firm established at Apia, the command of the schooner "Atlantic," in which he sailed on the 12th of October following, with Mr. Severight on board. After touching at various places they, on the 12th of the following month of November, sighted Manik iki, or Humphrey's Island, another of the Samoan group; and there Captain Hayes, a woman who lived with him on board his vessel named Mary Jordan, her brother Joseph Jordan, who acted as interpreter, and Mr. Severight landed.
The same night the "Atlantic" drifted out to sea, and it was eight or ten days before she again fetched the land.
In the meantime Hayes, the Jordans, and Mr. Severight were lodged on shore in the native missionary's house, and having learnt that the islanders were desirous of going to a neighbouring island called Rakahana, or Revison's Island, to carry a quantity of cocoa-nuts, and some hats and mats as presents to the islanders, Captain Hayes proposed to take them over without charge, and to return with them after they had seen their friends. He proposed, too, that the whole settlement should go,-men, women, and children. Before, however, the return of the "Atlantic," Captain Hayes had begun to excite the suspicions of the Islanders by his having deflowered a child of tender years, and by his evident anxiety to get the whole of the female portion of the settlement on board; but it was proposed by the elders, that the women and girls should remain behind and that only the males should go. To this arrangement, however, Captain Hayes strongly objected, telling them that it would not look well to pay their visit unac- companied by their women; but all his efforts to persuade the female portion of the settlement to go on board failed. At length, however, when he had got on board some 20,000 cocoa nuts and a quantity of mats and hats, Captain Hayes seems to have made a last effort to induce the natives to come on board; and with that view he sent the dingy, belonging to the missionary teacher, Taiti, ashore to persuade the people to come and receive payment for their goods. In about an hour or two the dingsturned accompanied by a native boat, in which there were two little girls, eight boys, one middle-aged woman, and several old men. When Captain Hayes found that he could not persuade any more natives to come on board, he told Joseph Jordan to take the two little girls and eight boys down into the cabin, and endeavoured to persuade the elderly natives to return to the shore in the boat. This, however, they seemed very unwilling to do without their children, but at length all the old people were got into the native boat with the exception of the old man named Moete and the woman, both of whom had children on board, and who consequently refused to leave. The vessel thereupon stood out to sea, and Captain Hayes then, for the first time, informed the natives whom he had on board that it was not his intention to go to Rakahana at all, but to the Fiji Islands. A
16278-766. 25.-5/86.