Sailing to levuka: The cultural significance of the island schooners in the late 19th century

Abstract

the increased tempo of economic exploitation to which these communities gave rise, was a function of the small fore and aft rigged sailing vessel.l Such craft reached their highest degree of efficiency and versatility as a means of deep water transport of both goods and people in the last third of the 19th century, and it was in the decade between the end of the alluvial gold rushes in Australia and the establishment of regular trans-Pacific steam services in 1874, that the Southwest Pacific provided an environment which gave maximum encourage ment to the development of what was to become an icon of Pacific culture and literature: the Island Schooner. Winds had always been steady, but now both Islanders and settlers were on the move in large numbers. Settler societies produced bulk cargoes of cotton and copra in addition to the staples of the island trade such as coconut oil, candle nuts, turtle shell and beche-de-mer. They also provided markets for liquor, hardware, timber, firearms and groceries so that holds were rarely empty either way between the Australasian colonies and the islands. In the islands themselves, the absence of port development created a need for craft which combined the seaworthiness of the ocean passage-maker with the handiness required for nego tiating reef passages and shallow lagoons and the windward ability to keep off a lee shore or to tack out of an exposed anchorage. It was a combination of opportunity and challenge to which colonial ship builders (and their island contemporaries and successors) responded by devel oping vessels which were a highly successful combination of beauty and efficiency. Their role in the labour trade and the copra trade has been amply documented, but if we ignore the aesthetics and the romance of the schooners, cutters, ketches and brigantines (but mostly schooners) of the islands, we ignore a central aspect of contemporary experience. It is as difficult to comprehend 19th century life in the Southwest Pacific without an appreciation of the small sailing vessel as it would be to understand modern urban society without an appreciation of the motor car.