Knowledge of the initial discovery of the Bismarck Archipelago by whites is wrapped in mysterious darkness for us.

The voyages that were undertaken on the Pacific Ocean shortly after the beginning of the 16th century were most probably not the first of this kind. Even before the birth of Christ, Babylonians and Shebans were trading with Lanka (Ceylon), and from there they ventured as far as the Malayan island world and China. In the north-west of Shantung, in Shansi, Shensi and in Honan, according to Chinese translations, the foreigners had permanent trading settlements. They came in ships in the shape of animals, with two large eyes at the bow. They introduced the Babylonian monetary system, weights and measures, all kinds of sorcery and astrology, the twelve signs of the zodiac, and more of the same, into China. About 140 BC the first traders from Tarsus came to China via Alexandria and Eilat at the northern tip of the Red Sea.

At that time, sea voyages went south from Sumatra and Java, past Timor. It is therefore not improbable that many of the intrepid seafarers in their unsuitably constructed vessels and without present-day nautical aids, lost their way, and were washed up in regions that lay beyond the borders of the then-known world. The large island of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago further to the east were most probably familiar to them, and likewise the coasts of western and northern Australia, although we have no reliable reports. One day, perhaps, it may be possible to draw conclusions on prehistoric immigrations from the collected sagas of the islanders. Many of the characteristic traditions and customs of the present inhabitants might be remnants of an early culture, transplanted into new ground by the original discoverers.

Migrations of people in Europe and Asia destroyed, among other things, trade and communication with the far east. The few accounts that had been brought back by intrepid travellers, bearing the stamp of the miraculous and fabulous, gained attention only in limited circles. The real knowledge of the seafarers and geographers of Greece, Rome and China has never been revealed to us, although classical authors give hints here and there which indicate at least that, many centuries ago, the human mind was already involved with these far-distant regions, whether as a consequence of imaginative speculations or the outcome of universally acknowledged facts.

After Vasco da Gama had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 the door was reopened to maritime discoveries. The courageous, far-sighted seamen of Spain and Portugal, and their successors the Dutch, French and English, whether it be the quest for glory, or for gold and treasure, proceeded to search for distant lands, and luck, accident or calculation must in time have brought to light what was previously hidden.

By 1511, the Portuguese Francisco Serrano had discovered the Moluccas. His friend and countryman, Fernando Magelhaens, after Serrano’s death, endeavoured to persuade the Portuguese administration to outfit an expedition to take possession of the rich islands. Rebuffed by Portugal, he turned to Spain, which agreed to his proposals. Meanwhile, on 25 September 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had gazed from the heights of Darien on the immense sea that was later given the name, ‘Pacific Ocean’. Magelhaens suspected that, south of the new part of the world discovered by Columbus, a sea passage must lead to the Pacific Ocean, and thereby to the Moluccas. Subsequent events showed that his assumptions were correct. Sailing through the Magelhaens Strait he traversed the Pacific Ocean between 28 November 1520 and 6 March 1521, and it is probable that it was on this voyage that he sighted the high land of ‘New Guinea’ (that is, the high mountain range on the island of New Ireland), which at that time, and for many years after, was regarded as part of New Guinea.

Alvaro de Saavedra, who, in 1527, sailed from New Spain across the Pacific Ocean to the Moluccas, again discovered what was then called New Guinea, and anchored on the coast for a whole month.

In 1529, after long struggles, the Spanish had relinquished to Portugal their claims on the 350Moluccas, and not until 1540 did they resume their voyages from New Spain through the Pacific; this time with a view to settling the Philippines, discovered by Magelhaens. These undertakings, about which only brief accounts are available, encountered great difficulties. From Mexico it was, of course, easy to lay a course to the west, with help from the equatorial current and the east trade wind, whereas the return voyage along the same route, against wind and ocean current, caused numerous adversities. On these voyages the east coast of present-day New Ireland was not only sighted but also visited, because Abel Tasman asserts that on the old Spanish sea charts of that period he had seen the ‘Cabo de Santa Maria’ and the adjacent coast, the eastern tip of the present New Ireland.

Finally, in 1565 Andres Urdeneta succeeded in finding a route across the Pacific Ocean from west to east at about the 40˚ North latitude; he took 130 days for the crossing to Acapulco. Thus, the route across the ocean was laid down for seafarers for a long time to come.

The great aim of the Spanish had been achieved. The Moluccas, the Philippines, and the rest of the East Indian Spice Islands could be reached on a route across the Pacific, and linked to the motherland. All the other parts of the ocean not lying on the sea route north of the equator, remained ignored. In actual fact, it appears to have been the policy of the Spanish administration, very early on, to impede all further exploration of the Pacific Ocean. On the American continent, Spain was in possession of an immense empire that was already difficult enough to administer; the gold and silver mines of this empire offered a seemingly neverdiminishing source of wealth, and neither greed nor ambition drove them to take possession of new unknown regions. The Portuguese also had attained their goal in the East Asian Spice Islands, and so it came about that although European settlements on the east coast of Asia and the west coast of America rapidly increased – settlements created as departure points for exploring the unknown Pacific Ocean – all the voyages for a long time passed along a definitively prescribed sea route, which was unfavourable for making new discoveries.

The viceroys in New Spain, however, conducted politics in their own right, and not always in accordance with the government in their homeland. They were besieged by adventurers of all ranks, whose ambition and greed had not been satisfied in the New World, and who for their part were pressing on to new undertakings that would lead to the fame and fortune of the participants. For these people the great southern land, the Terra Australis incognita designated on all the maps of the time, was the goal of all their efforts. Public opinion populated this unknown land with fabulous beings and immeasurable riches, although nobody could state exactly where this wonderful land was.

The Terra Australis incognita of the old cartographers is undoubtedly based on an inaccurate knowledge of present-day Australia, but it was given total reality in consequence of a theory of the learned geographers of that time, according to which, corresponding with the land masses of the northern hemisphere, there had to be an opposing land mass in the southern hemisphere, to maintain equilibrium with the former. In an old 10th-century manuscript by Macrobius there is a map on which the unknown southern land is already depicted. In later centuries it takes on more definite form, and on one map, dated 1536, now in the British Museum, it is called ‘Java la Grande’. On all maps from the same century, particularly on the maps of the French, whose geographers played a leading role at that time, we find not only the coasts of western and northern Australia, but also the islands lying to the north. The English and Dutch geographers, on the other hand, tried to connect facts with the theory at the same time.

At the court of the viceroys, the impetus became stronger year by year. The magnificent southern land could, in everyone’s opinion, not be too far away, and in 1566 the viceroy of the time, Lope Garcia de Castro, outfitted two ships to find the unknown southern land. Overall command was given to Alvaro Mendaña de Neyra, with Hernando Gallego assigned as navigator. Both ships, Almirante and Capitano, left Callao on 19 November 1566, and returned to Peru on 19 June 1568. During the voyage, on 1 February 1567, a group of islands was discovered. This was named ‘Los Bajos de la Candelaria’ (the earlier German Ongtong Java Islands or Lord Howe group). Sailing south from there, on 9 February the two ships anchored off the coast of an island that Mendaña named after his wife, Isabel (previously German, transferred to England a few years ago). Mendaña was thus the discoverer of the Solomon Islands, which he regarded as a part of the southern land. In 1896, the German warship Möwe named the cape first sighted by the expedition not far from their first anchorage, Cape Gallego, in honour of the original discoverer. 351

Mendaña was so convinced of the wealth of the land discovered by him that he pushed for a repeat of the expedition; but he achieved this goal only as an old man. However, on this second voyage, in 1595, he was not able to locate his earlier discovery; in the end, he reached the southerly situated Santa Cruz Islands, like his later follower, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who discovered the northern New Hebrides. Torres, Quiros’s second-in-command, brings us back once more to the neighbourhood of the German South Seas possessions when, after separating from the commander-in-chief, he sailed westwards and discovered the strait between Australia and New Guinea that today bears his name. This significant discovery was kept secret by the Spanish, and only when the English occupied Manila in 1762 was Torres’s report found there in the archives. Likewise, Mendaña’s first journals were kept secret, and the later reporters, Herrera and Figueroa, gave such an incomplete and inaccurate account that the geographers of the time located the Solomon Islands too far to the east and then too far west, and later seafarers who actually sighted the groups were of the opinion that they had discovered new, hitherto unknown island groups. The French geographers Buache in 1781, and Fleurieu in 1790, established finally that the islands discovered by the English and the French at the end of the 18th century were identical to Mendaña’s Solomon Islands.

Mendaña’s discoveries have no significance for our German Solomon Islands of Buka and Bougainville – they were discovered about 200 years later. However, I have not been able to avoid the geographers’ dispute over Mendaña’s discovery because, as we shall see later, it strongly influenced the cartography of the Bismarck Archipelago.

With the beginning of the 17th century we see the power and influence of Spain already on the wane. The Netherlands had shaken off the Spanish yoke, and quickly decided that, if the trading of the hated papists could be hurt, there would be a possibility of winning back the Netherlands’s southern provinces. Geography and hydrography were the subject of ongoing research, and, in Peter Plancius’s nautical school in Amsterdam, they systematically studied how the Spanish and Portuguese possessions could be usurped. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had spent fourteen years in the Portuguese territories and absorbed a wide knowledge, published his observations in Amsterdam in 1618, and fired up his countrymen even further with his accounts.

352In 1602, the Dutch East India Company had been founded, and its ships were soon sailing to seize the trade with Batavia, Bantam, Amboina, Banda and other places. However, at home opposition soon stirred against the company, which sought to monopolise all commerce, and, out of indignation against the rude allegations, Willem Corneliszoon Schouten and Jacob Le Maire fitted out the ships De Eendracht and Hoorn in which they embarked on their voyage in 1616.

This voyage by the two Dutchmen is of significance to our South Sea possessions, since after they had rounded Cape Horn and sailed through the southern tropical zone they sighted low-lying land on 20 June, and sailed close inshore on 21 June. There were three or four small wooded islands with a coral reef stretching to the north-west. Two canoes came alongside, and both Schouten and Le Maire recorded that here, for the first time in the South Seas, they noticed bows and arrows in the hands of the natives. In the evening of the 22nd, they again sighted a number of small low-lying islands, which they named the Marken Islands.

On 24 June they sighted three low-lying islands in the south-west that seemed to be covered in trees; two of them were about 2 miles long, while the third was small. The coasts were steep and without any anchorage. This group was named the ‘Groene Islanden’ (the Sir Charles Hardy Islands or Nissan on the current charts). Sailing on, they discovered two further islands that we designate today as ‘Green Islands’ (Pinepil and Esau). Due to the onset of darkness they did not venture closer to these islands.

Meanwhile, west-a-quarter-north-west a high mountainous island had come into view ahead, and during the night they traversed the island-free gap, which according to Le Maire’s statements was 15 miles (60 nautical miles). The high island was named ‘Sankt Jan’ from the calendar saint of that day.

On the morning of the 25th, they sighted very high land. St John was no longer visible, and they sailed towards the high land that conformed to the then-known profile of the north-eastern tip of New Guinea. We know today that the coastline encountered was the current New Ireland, in the vicinity of Cape Santa Maria.

The wind before and after was east-south-east and they were able to sail close inshore along the coast, but did not find an anchorage. The boats launched to pilot them were attacked by canoes of natives with slingshot stones, and the following day, the 26th, the ships were attacked so that firearms had to be used. Ten of the attackers were killed and three captured, while four canoes were seized and destroyed. Two of the prisoners were released on payment of a ransom, consisting of a pig and a bundle of bananas. The journal adds: ‘They did not seem to be worth more.’ The following day a pig was traded for several iron nails and other trinkets, thereby paving the way for peaceful contact, for on the 28th a beautiful large canoe came alongside with twenty-one natives who marvelled tremendously at the ship. They brought lime and betel, but made no offer to ransom the third prisoner, who was then released.

Only a few years ago, some 250 years later, quite similar events could have been played out on that same coast.

Sailing on, they discovered the offshore islands. However, they did not recognise the insular character of the current New Hanover; they also 353skirted east of the Admiralty Islands, which they designated as ‘Hooch Landt’. Schouten designated the small islands offshore from the eastern end and the southern coast as ‘Fünfundzwanzig Inseln’, whereas contemporary charts frequently give them as ‘Islas de la Magdalena’, probably from accounts of earlier Spanish seafarers.

From here the enterprising seafarers directed their course to the coast of New Guinea, and during the subsequent voyage they did not come into contact with any further islands of the archipelago.

We are again indebted to the Dutch for further exploration of the archipelago. In 1642 the then Dutch governor of the East Indian possession, Anton van Diemen, fitted out two ships to look for the unknown southern land.

The expedition vessels consisted of the yacht Heemskerk, the flagship, and the Zeehaen. The former had a crew of sixty, and the latter fifty, the best seamen that could be recruited at that time in Batavia. Provisioning was reckoned on twelve to eighteen months.

Abel Jansz Tasman was the commander-in-chief; the commander of the Heemskerk was the master mariner Yde T’Jercxzoon Holman, or Holleman, from Jever in the present archduchy of Oldenburg. The Zeehaen was commanded by Gerrit Janszoon of Leiden, and Isaak Gilsemans, the probable draughtsman of the expedition, was on the same ship, as auxiliary. Aboard the Heemskerk, Abraham Coomans acted as Tasman’s secretary. These people, together with the two first mates, formed the ‘grand council’ of the expedition, with Tasman as chairman. The first mate of the Zeehaen was Hendrik Pieterson, while on the Heemskerk, and with the title of ‘pilot-major’ it was Franz Jacobszoon Visscher from Vlissingen, a seafarer who had already made numerous important voyages in the service of the company.

Of the crew, the following are known by name: on the Heemskerk, Crijn Hendrikszoon de Ratte or de Radde from Middelburg, and Carsten Jurriaenszoon; the gunnery officer, Eldert Luytiens; the head carpenter, Pieter Jakobszoon, and his assistant, Jan Joppen; the quartermaster, Jan Pieterszoon, from Meldorf; and seaman Joris Claesen. On the Zeehaen were the second mates, Peter Duijts and Cornelius Roobol; the boatswain, Cornelius Joppen; seamen Pieterszoon from Copenhagen, Jan Tijssen, Tobias Pieterszoon from Delft, Jan Isbrandtszoon, and the ship’s boy Gerrit Gerritszoon. The ships’ surgeon, Hendrik Haalbos, was probably on the Heemskerk.

Although Tasman as an explorer cannot be placed alongside the great Spaniards and the Portuguese of the preceding century, nor the great Englishmen of the following century, he is nevertheless the most prominent personality in this field in the 17th century.

His original log has apparently been lost; a fair copy bearing Tasman’s personal signature is held in the State Archives in the Hague, and was made available to a wider circle by Frederik Muller & Co. in Amsterdam in 1898, in a splendid display of facsimiles. An extract of this follows, as far as the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago are concerned, and covers the period from 22 March until 14 April 1643:

I end the extract from Tasman’s journal here, because from this point on it has no connection with the Bismarck Archipelago. However, if we follow his course, we observe that if on the 14 April he had succeeded in penetrating further south-west, then on this day or, with the same course, on the 15th at least, he would have discovered the straits between New Guinea and New Britain. Seen from the area where he was on the 14th, western New Britain, Rook Island and New Guinea appear to form a connected land mass.

A long pause in discoveries set in, right up until 359the end of the century. English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese were heavily occupied in siphoning off the treasures won in the East Indies and America from one another on the journey home. A form of official piracy, that promised easy pickings, flourished widely, and nobody found time for further exploration. Not until the end of the century did the desire for discovery reawaken, this time in England where the intrepid seafarer William Dampier drew attention by the publication of his adventures in America and the East Indies. The Earl of Oxford, at that time Lord of the Admiralty, was introduced to the well-travelled man, and finally appointed him commander of a South Seas expedition. On 26 January 1699, Dampier left the English coast in the ship Roebuck; we find him again on the west coast of Australia, which he had already visited once before. From here he turned towards Timor, and then steered eastwards between latitudes 2˚and 2.5˚S. About the 149th meridian he steered south, thereby avoiding the ‘Hooch Landt’ of Schouten and Le Maire. However, on 16 February 1700 he encountered St Matthias, and then sailed between this island and Squally Island to the present New Hanover. On his map he indicated a portion of the small islands off the north coast of New Hanover, but he came as little as did his predecessor to the conclusion that New Hanover was an independent island.

From then on he steered a course along the coast, but somewhere between the present Gardner Island and Gerrit Denys Island he came into conflict with the natives, who attacked his ship with slingshots from their canoes. Dampier named the spot Slinger’s Bay, and preferred to put further out to sea. He touched the small offshore islands, and approached the coast again only in the vicinity of Cape Santa Maria. Moving further south he discovered and named Cape St George, and after he had sailed round it he anchored in a fairly large bight stretching northwards; he named it St George’s Bay. In the northern corner of the bay he observed huge clouds of smoke rising from a crater (volcano on the Mother peninsula). According to his map he must also have noticed the present Neulauenburg islands, since in the inner northern corner of his St George’s Bay two small islands are shown in the location of that group.

Thus, William Dampier is the first European documented as having anchored in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Had Dampier arrived at another time of the year, say July, then wind and current would probably have driven him into the so-called St George’s Bay, and he would have made the discovery that remained reserved to his later successor, Carteret, that this was a strait. However, he navigated the coasts of the present-day Neumecklenburg and Neupommern from 16 February until April, and, during this period, a strong current sets out of his assumed bay, due to the prevailing north-west wind. When Dampier left his anchorage, both a favourable wind and a favourable tide carried him along the south coast of New Britain. In Montague Bay, which he named, Dampier again came into contact with natives, of whom he gives a description that is still relevant today. However, he did not stop here but sailed along the coast until he found the Dampier Strait, named after him, between a smaller island that he named Sir George Rook’s Island, and the large main island, that he gave the name of Nova Britannia. His further course led him along the coast of New Guinea and, if we look at his chart we can recognise without difficulty the Ritter, Tupinier, Heyn, Lottin, Long and Crown islands. Thus, Dampier became the discoverer of the Bismarck Archipelago which, up until then, had been regarded as a part of the large island of New Guinea.

360It is interesting that on his special chart of St George’s Bay, and on his depiction of the western shore, Dampier shows a then-active volcano. The position of the volcano is approximately correct, although it has currently been extinct for a long time. It was probably extinct even during the time of Carteret, who does not mention it, even though, during his long stay at the southern end of New Ireland, he would certainly have noticed the volcano opposite, had it been active at that time.

Once more, twenty-two years pass before a seafarer approaches the archipelago. In 1722 the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen sighted the island of Nova Britannia, which he named Neu Zeeland. However, his voyage brings nothing new. On board Roggeveen’s squadron as a sergeant of marines was a German named Karl Friedrich Behrens, a native of Mecklenburg. Behrens published his experiences of the voyage in Leipzig in 1738. He honoured his fatherland by calculating his longitude east and west of the meridian of his homeland, which is somewhat confusing to the reader.

Forty-five years later, in 1767, the Bismarck Archipelago emerges again out of its darkness, to be enriched again by a significant discovery. Between 1764 and 1766 the English administration had despatched the first of those epoch-making voyages of discovery into the South Seas, under Captain Byron, soon followed by the voyage of Captain Wallis and the three voyages of the famous James Cook.

All of these voyages, as well as the almost simultaneous expeditions of the French – Bougainville, Surville, La Perouse and D’Entrecasteaux – supplement our knowledge of the Pacific Ocean, and the current German possessions were also at that time further explored.

First of all, the expedition under Captain Wallis is significant to us. He was in charge of two ships, the frigate Dolphin and the much smaller vessel Swallow which was commanded by Lieutenant Philipp Carteret, who had previously been a member of the Byron expedition in 1764-65.

The Swallow was a so-called ‘sloop of war’ of fourteen cannon, with a crew of ninety men and twenty-two deck officers. She was totally unsuitable for the voyage for, as Carteret himself says, ‘she was an old ship, in service for thirty years already and unfit for a longer voyage’. Besides, the outfitting was inadequate, and even the most essential items were missing. It sounds almost laughable when we read today that Carteret’s formal request to the Admiralty to supply a portable forge and iron, a small boat and other small items that, from experience, he knew were essential, was bluntly refused because ‘the fitting-out for the intended purpose is completely satisfactory’. Even rigging was provided only sparingly, and Carteret was overjoyed when he received 5 metric hundredweight of rope from the commander-in-chief during the voyage. It is small wonder, therefore, that the voyage, which lasted from August 1766 until 20 February 1769, was an almost uninterrupted sequence of all manner of difficulties. At the outlet of the Magelhaen Strait, the badly sailing Swallow lost the Dolphin from view (11 April 1767), and the unruffled Carteret decided to continue the voyage alone. Only rarely did he sight land; on 24 August 1767 he spotted the Carteret Islands, named after him. His description matches the present situation remarkably: ‘The inhabitants are black, and woolly haired like the African negroes; their weapons are bows and arrows, and they own large canoes, which they navigate by means of sails.’

Nissan was sighted the following evening, and on the same day high land was discovered to the south. Carteret named it Winchelsea’s Island in his journal, but on his chart he named it Lord Anson’s Island. This is the first report on the northernmost of the Solomon Islands, the island of Buka. On the 26th, St John’s Island was sighted and, shortly 361after, the raised land of Nova Britannia. They rounded Cape St George, and on 27 August wind and tide drove the ship into Dampier’s St George’s Bay. On the 28th their joy was great when they were able to anchor not far off the small Wallis Island. The crew’s condition was demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of the efforts of the entire crew, they were unable to raise the anchor on the 29th; this was achieved only after renewed effort on the 30th. The Swallow was brought closer inshore and beached in the tiny English Cove to careen the hull, badly damaged by ship worm. They stayed here until 7 September, when they sailed several miles north to Carteret Harbour and anchored between a small island with a stand of coconut palms and the main island.

The voyage was continued on 9 September; outside they found strong east-south-east winds and a strong current from the south-east, which drove the Swallow deeper into St George’s Bay, and Carteret discovered that the assumed bay was actually a broad strait, which he named St George’s Channel. In the evening, they discerned the Duke of York Islands (today Neulauenburg) which Carteret, however, designated on his chart as Man Island, and they observed three high mountains, named the ‘Mother and Daughters’. Carteret reports, ‘The Mother is the middle and highest mountain, and behind it we saw giant clouds of smoke.’ (These would be from the not yet totally extinct volcano, which Carteret could not see from his vantage point.) He named the northern point to his left Cape Stephens, and the current Cape Gazelle ‘Cape Palliser’. Not far from Cape Stephens, he discovered another smaller island that he named Man Island; however, he left it unnamed on his chart. Wind and current took him along the coast of the newly discovered large island, which he named Nova Hibernia. On the 12th he sailed between Nova Hibernia and a small island, and gave the latter the name Sandwich Island. During a calm he received a visit from ten canoes with about 150 natives. They were shy and did not venture aboard. Carteret’s description of the canoes and their crew is appropriate word-for-word today. In the continuation of the voyage they discovered the strait between New Ireland and New Hanover, presented for the first time as an island; the strait is named Byron Straits.

Early on the 13th they sighted the small islands already seen by Tasman, now christened Portland Islands, and on the 14th they had the small eastern islands of the Admiralty group in view. On the 15th, numerous canoes and natives came from the islands. They could not be persuaded to go aboard, behaved in a hostile manner, and finally attacked the ship with their spears. Carteret had to use his ordnance to dissuade them from further attacks. Continuing on, they encountered another group of them; they had to be put to flight, and a canoe containing all kinds of weapons and objects was seized. The hostile demeanour of the natives frustrated a detailed investigation of the islands, which he designated with the name they retain today.

In the evening of 18 September they again saw two small islands; one of them could be seen only from the masthead, and it was named Durour Island. They passed the second island during the night, and a lot of natives were seen running along the beach with torches; he named this island Maty Island (‘Matty’ is a later disfigurement).

With this, the Carteret discoveries in the Bismarck Archipelago came to an end.

The French too were busy in the South Seas at the same time as the English.

On 15 December 1766, Louis Antoine de Bougainville 362put to sea from St Malo with two ships, La Boudeuse and L’Etoile, under orders of the king. After he had discovered the southern border of the Louisiades he sailed north, and on 28 June 1768 he sighted the coast of a long high island to starboard. On the 30th he had come so close to the coast that he attempted to anchor. A boat was launched, which was followed by many heavily manned canoes but was not attacked. However, there appeared to be open sea ahead, and both ships continued their set course. On 1 July the boat was launched again to find an anchorage, and was attacked by ten canoes containing about a hundred natives. The island was named ‘Choiseul’ and the strait they sailed through still bears the name Bougainville.

After passing through the Bougainville Strait, they spied an extensive coast to the west, whose high mountain peaks were hidden in clouds. In the evening of 2 July the northern tip of Choiseul was still visible, but on the morning of the 3rd they saw only the coast of the land discovered the day before, whose height was astonishing. The northern tip of the island was named Cape l’Averdie; while the island itself was named after its discoverer, Bougainville.

Early in the morning of the 4th, they sighted land lying further to the west; the coast was less high, and between the southernmost point of the land and Cape l’Averdie they noticed a wide open stretch which was assumed to be a pass or a broad deep bight. On the far side of the presumed strait, or bight, the peaks of high mountains rose steeply, which led to the conclusion that the land must be an island. I will let Bougainville continue:

They hove-to during the night, but the following morning the island of Buka, which Carteret had named Winchelsea, or Lord Anson, the previous year, was already far to the east and south-east.

In the afternoon of 5 July the high land of New Ireland was discovered and on the 6th they dropped anchor on the western side, not far from the southern tip. The place was christened ‘Baie de Praslin’; the same place that Carteret had named ‘Gower Harbour’ the year before. Here the crew recovered a little, and the journey was then continued along the east coast, since the existence of a strait in the west was then unknown to the French. Bougainville gave new names to the islands already discovered by his predecessors; for example, he changed St John into Bournand, the Caen Islands into ‘Isles d’Oraison’, Gerrit Denys into Bouchaye, Wishart Island into Souzanett, and so on, names that have already long since disappeared from the maps. Sailing on, he sighted Squally Island and St Matthias, and further to the west discovered the Isles des Anachorettes and the Echiquier Islands. His course then led him further along the coast of New Guinea.

In 1781, the Spanish warship Princesa, under Captain Maurelle, fleetingly touched the east coast of New Ireland and the Admiralty Islands and, travelling on, sighted the Hermit Islands.

At this time there arose the previously mentioned argument among the geographers about the position of the Solomon Islands. The French asserted the rediscovery of the group by their seafarers, while the English, on the other hand, laid claim to the fame of their people for having discovered new land, and moved the Solomon Islands, the existence of which, however, could not totally be denied, westward, north of New Guinea, where they were attempting to bring the discoveries of Dampier and Carteret into accord with those of Mendaña.

The Englishman Dalrymple was the principal proponent of this theory, and for further clarification, he presented a map in conjunction with his written evidence. The map is reproduced here. On it he ingeniously combined the islands of the present Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands into an island group that of course does not bear the slightest resemblance to the real situation. On the other hand, the French maps of 3631785 and 1790 give the position and shape of the archipelago and the northern Solomon Islands with reasonable accuracy.

A consequence of this argument was the fitting-out of a further French expedition under Count de la Pérouse, which left its homeland in 1785. La Pérouse visited first the west coast of the Americas and the east coast of Asia, and reached Australia in September 1787, whence he began his second great voyage. However, he went missing in February 1788, and, on the order of Ludwig XVI, the two ships Recherche and Espérance, under the command of Bruny D’Entrecasteaux, were sent out in 1791 to search for the missing people. We are grateful to this expedition for valuable contributions to the knowledge of our archipelago.

It must be mentioned here that the English commodore Hunter, whose ship, Sirius, had stranded on Norfolk Island in 1790, and who was travelling with the Dutch ship Waaksamhed from Sydney to Batavia, on 23 May 1791 put into the small harbour, named Port Hunter after him, on the north coast of Duke of York (Neulauenburg) to take on water. He came into conflict with the natives, which was, however, finally settled, and on his departure as a gift Hunter left two English pointers, which were probably eaten immediately as dainty morsels. From Duke of York, Hunter saw huge volcanic eruptions on New Britain, in the present Blanche Bay. On the continuation of the voyage the Waaksamhed passed the Admiralty Islands, and Hunter thought he saw items of French uniforms on the natives. He had met La Pérouse in Australia and knew that he intended to visit these regions.

The Frenchman’s disappearance without trace was still fresh in his mind, and, from a distance, the white body paint of the natives looked like the white uniform facings of the French marines to the commodore, who assumed that La Pérouse had foundered here. Hunter reported this supposition on his arrival in Batavia, from where it was passed on to the French Governor on Ile de France. The latter immediately despatched a frigate to inform D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition in Cape Town. Hunter was in Cape Town at the same time as the two French ships, and it seems strange that not only did he not pass on his observations to the commander, but on the other hand maintained to friends that he knew nothing of the matter.

Nonetheless, D’Entrecasteaux went directly from Cape Town to Van Diemen’s Land and, via New Caledonia, to the archipelago to carry out an investigation. They sighted the southern end of Bougainville on 10 July 1792, but heavy rain prevented closer investigation until the 13th. On the 14th the small islands at the north-western end of Bougainville were sighted, and on the 15th they were not far from the northern tip of Buka. Canoes of natives came out to the ship, and their description by the naturalist, Labillardière, who was accompanying the expedition, is as apt as if he were describing them today. The contact with the natives was totally friendly.

On the morning of the 16th they passed Nissan, and Cape St George came into view about 1 o’clock. On the 17th they dropped anchor in the tiny Carteret Harbour and stayed there until the 24th without coming into contact with natives. Sailing along the west coast of New Ireland, they found themselves off the small islands between New Ireland and New Hanover on the 26th. Finally, on the 28th they sighted the eastern Admiralty Islands; La Vandola was reached on the 29th 364and they got on peacefully with the islanders, who were, however, very thievish. They navigated the north coast of the main island on the 30th, and on 1 August the group was lost from sight. Contact was friendly everywhere; Labillardière accurately described the natives. However, no trace was found of the missing La Pérouse. Sailing on, they made contact with the inhabitants of the Hermit Islands, and then sailed to New Guinea.

Thus passed the expedition’s first visit to the archipelago. After a voyage among the East Indian islands, along the west coast of Australia, and after visiting a number of new islands, the expedition approached the archipelago a second time, this time along the north coast of New Guinea.

Labillardière writes about this last visit:

Several names of members of this expedition are preserved on current maps: D’Entrecasteaux, Willaumez, Dumerite, Cretin, Giquel, Huon, Kermadec, Riche, Duportail, and so on.

The real discoveries in the Bismarck Archipelago basically conclude with these two voyages by D’Entrecasteaux. The 19th century brought a series of more or less significant, isolated expeditions through which we become more closely acquainted with the coasts as well as with the land and people. Settlement followed only in the last quarter of the century.

After D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition, it was again the French who explored the archipelago. The frigate Coquille, under Duperrey, visited the northern Solomon Islands, New Ireland and New Britain in 1824. Lesson, the naturalist, accompanied the expedition. Then, in 1825, we find the French admiral Dumont d’Urville on his first South Seas expedition, and again, on a second expedition, in 1838.

The Englishmen, Sir Edward Belcher in the Sulphur and Lieutenant Kellett in the Starling, visited New Ireland in 1840. In Carteret Harbour, where their ships anchored, they even met a native who spoke a little English, whom the sailors christened Tom Starling. The latter reported that, from time to time, ships from Australia touched on the coast, and that a certain amount of trading had developed. An American named Jacob Kunde, who visited the South Seas in 1834 aboard the clipper Margaret Oakley, gave his accounts of the contact at that time; however, these were not published until 1844. Captain Morrell of the Margaret Oakley had certainly behaved neither more cruelly nor more humanely in his dealings with the natives than had his contemporaries; however, his contact for the most part consisted of hostile encounters, in which the natives always drew the shorter straw.

Captain Keppel, in the English warship Meander, passed the Purdy Islands on 29 December 1849. On the 30th and 31st he came into contact with the Admiralty Islanders, and, although he described them as excitable and noisy, the contact was nevertheless peaceful. On 4 January 1850 he passed the Sandwich Islands, and sailed along the coast of New Ireland with the intention of visiting Hunter Harbour. This was unsuccessful, and instead, on 6 January they anchored not far away in Makada Harbour. The Meander remained in Carteret Harbour from 8 January until the 12th. Captain Keppel and several of his crew visited a village north of the harbour and admired the carefully laid-out, well-kept gardens. Although the natives seemed peaceful, one had to be very alert. One of the officers, who had gone hunting, allowed two natives to guide him back to the Meander. On the way, they tried to steal his pocket watch, and he threw one of the thieves into the water, and threatened the second with his rifle butt before compelling him to guide him on board. This minor incident is so typical that one would not be surprised today, if something similar were to occur.

The English warship Blanche, Captain Simpson, discovered Blanche Bay in 1872, and anchored in the inner corner behind Matupi in Simpson Harbour.

366At the same time, ships of the Hamburg firm Johann Cäsar Godeffroy & Sohn, established in Samoa, were occasionally visiting the archipelago from the Carolines, and the firm decided to open up the island group to trading. In 1873, the first traders were landed at Nogai at the foot of Mother, not far from Cape Stephens, and on the island of Matupi, by Captain Levison in the brig Iserbrook. The settlement at Nogai had to be abandoned after only four weeks on account of hostile behaviour from the natives, and the trader fled to his colleague on Matupi. Three weeks later, they had to flee from here as well, and seek sanctuary with an Englishman in Port Hunter, who was representing the interests of an English firm there. The following year Levison set up the first permanent German station at Mioko, Duke of York Islands.

The year 1875 greeted two scientific expeditions to the archipelago. The Challenger, commanded by Sir George Nares, with the scientific expedition led by Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, paid a formal visit to the Admiralty Islands from 3 until 10 March 1875. The ship anchored among small islands at the north-western end of the group, and since then the harbour has borne the name Nares Harbour. Contact with the natives was peaceful. The naturalist Moseley, who accompanied this famous expedition, gave comprehensive reliable accounts of conditions there. Our knowledge has not increased significantly since then.

The second scientific expedition was a German one, undertaken on the warship Gazelle, Captain von Schleinitz. It visited parts of New Hanover, New Ireland, the Gazelle Peninsula, and the island of Bougainville. The numerous German names on the map, like Bendemann, Dietert, Strauch, Rittmeyer, Steffen, Hüsker, and so on, stem from that expedition.

The same year also brought Christian missionaries to the archipelago. A Catholic mission had already been founded on Rook Island in 1852, but was abandoned after a brief existence. This time, a permanent station was founded at Hunter Harbour by the Wesleyan mission. The mission ship John Wesley anchored there on 15 August 1875 and, by the 16th, the missionary George Brown was marking out a building site. On 12 October, the first branch station was established at Nodup, at the foot of Mother, on the Gazelle Peninsula, and, several weeks later, two coloured catechists were stationed opposite on the coast of New Ireland.

Eduard Hernsheim founded a trading station at Makada in 1876; however, for health reasons, he transferred it to the small island of Matupi in Blanche Bay. The well-known Russian naturalist, Miklucho Maclay, visited the Admiralty Islands and several of the small western island groups the same year.

From then on warships of the various nations called in frequently, especially the ships of the English Australian squadron. The German warship Ariadne, Captain B. von Werner, made a visit in 1878, and subsequently, visits by German warships on the Australian station took place more and more frequently, to provide forceful backing wherever necessary to the aspiring German trade.

In 1879, the island of New Ireland was the stage for one of the greatest swindles of the century. In France that year, the Marquis de Ray established the colony ‘Nouvelle France’, which comprised all islands of the western Pacific that had not at that time been claimed by any power. The ship Chandernagor brought the first settlers, who landed at the south-east end of New Ireland. This miserable undertaking struggled on until 1882, when suddenly the great bubble burst, and the last of the cheated settlers, swindled out of their money, left the inhospitable coast. Thirteen million francs had been involved in this swindle, and numerous families were ruined.

Catholic priests who had accompanied the expedition and had, over time, seen through the swindle, moved to the Gazelle Peninsula. In 1881, Father Lanuzel set up a Catholic mission at Nodup, but had to abandon his station in 1883 as a result of dissension with the natives, caused by the activities of an Australian recruiting ship. However, the foundation of this station led to the Sacred Heart Missionary Society taking on the task, and proceeding with it.

The first plantation in the Bismarck Archipelago was established by the author in December 1882 at Ralum on the Gazelle Peninsula, and, in conjunction with this, the following year T. Farrell founded the trading and plantation firm which later experienced a significant upswing under the name E.E. Forsayth.

Since 1879, the plantations on various South Sea islands had, to a limited extent, recruited workers in the archipelago. In 1883, the rapidly flourishing sugar plantations, in Fiji and especially in Queensland, brought numerous recruiting ships to the islands, and these reappeared annually until the proclamation of the German protectorate. The labour recruiters did not exactly contribute to the pacification of the natives. Many were taken by force against their will to the distant work sites, and the newspapers of the English colonies continuously reported not only the trespasses and outrages of the recruiters, but also those on the part of the natives, usually leading to the murder of the whites, and the confiscation and destruction of the ships. The system threatened to destroy the fledgling colonisation completely, for native hatred extended gradually towards all whites, whether they were recruiters or traders and planters who had settled various coastal sites. Not a year passed by without a series of murders of whites. English warships, which would have had immediate grounds to step 367in because of the activity of English subjects, were very lenient towards both recruiters and natives. Cases are known where the unmotivated murder of English traders was regarded as compensated for, on the order of English warship captains, by forfeit of a few sacks of yams and several pigs, and the English press in Australia pointed with indignation to the behaviour of the warships sent out to protect colonial trade. However, the powerful Exeter Hall Party in England, which championed the natives in every case, exerted such an influence on the administration that public opinion could achieve nothing against it. Sydney newspapers of the period, although not otherwise favourably disposed towards the Germans, pointed with satisfaction to the energetic intervention of the German navy, which not only protected German life and property in those distant regions, but also extended its protection to English people and citizens of other nations, when there was no established administration. As a consequence of the situation described above, the attention of European politics was directed more and more on the South Seas. Australia and New Zealand made various proposals to their domestic governments to seize possession of various groups, against which, strangely enough, the English statesmen of the time reacted coldly. The imperialism that blossomed so exuberantly later existed already among the people, but had not yet infected government circles. At the end of the 1870s, interest in overseas colonies had begun to stir in Germany too, and in the Reichstag the government introduced the Samoa bill, as a first tentative step; its intent was the seizure of the Samoan islands. At the time, England and America fully concurred that Germany should declare sovereignty over an island group where it demonstrably had the greatest and most extensive interests. How much humiliation, how much loss of human life, ships, and territory might the German nation have been spared if the short-sighted politics of a parliamentary party of the time, whose main driving force was opposition to the government in all things, had not caused the bill to fail. In subsequent years, it appears that the German statesmen had abandoned all further attempts to establish colonies. It was not revealed until 1884 that Prince Bismarck had deferred the matter, but not cancelled it.

On 19 August 1884, the German government ordered its general consulate in Sydney to have the German flag raised over the archipelago of New Britain and New Guinea. In November, the German corvette Elisabeth, Captain Schering, arrived at the archipelago from Sydney, and on 3 November 1884, the German flag was unfurled at Matupi and in subsequent days at Mioko and various places on the Gazelle Peninsula, after which both vessels, Elisabeth and Hyäne, set out on a voyage to the coast of New Guinea, to take possession of this as well for the German empire.

The English warship Swinger which had arrived at the archipelago to shadow the Elisabeth, took news of these events to Australia as fast as possible. Although it might certainly be assumed that Germany and England had made certain agreements in advance, since the south coast of New Guinea had been proclaimed an English protectorate on 6 November, there nevertheless developed an amusing hunt between both powers over who could validate their claims the fastest; on England’s part also to appease public opinion, which regarded the occupation of the archipelago and part of New Guinea by the evil Germans as an added insult to the English empire. Germany unfurled its flag at various places as far as the east cape of New Guinea. England did nothing about this, but raised her banner over the same stretch as far as Cape King William, and the coast with its bright decoration of flags offered a muddle of various claims. On 29 April 1885 an exchange of notes over boundary regulations took place between the two states, and on 6 April 1886 they combined in an agreement over the boundaries of German and English spheres of influence in the western Pacific Ocean.

As a consequence of this demarcation, on 28 October of the same year, by order and in the name of His Majesty the Kaiser of Germany, the German flag was unfurled on the island of Choiseul by Captain von Wietersheim, commander of the cruiser Adler; and all islands of the Solomons group lying north of the designated line of demarcation were proclaimed as German protectorate. The islands of Isabel, Choiseul, the Shortland group, Bougainville and Buka, as well as various smaller groups lying to the north and north-east, were thereby incorporated into the protectorate.

On 17 March 1885, His Majesty the Kaiser bestowed an imperial letter of safe-conduct on a German company that had been constituted in Berlin on 26 May 1884 under the name of ‘Neuguinea Kompanie’, and, in the person of Dr Finsch, had travelled in the steamer Samoa and reported on the New Guinea coast between October 1884 and May 1885. Besides sovereignty, this letter guaranteed extensive privileges to the society. The first head of the protectorate, Admiral von Schleinitz, arrived at Finschhafen on 10 June 1886.

These events led generally to the expectation that development of the occupied lands would be rapid. However, it was subsequently shown that this expectation was incorrect.

On the Bismarck Archipelago (the new official name of the archipelago of New Britain), an imperial magistrate was installed soon after the arrival of the administrator, and the company installed a station manager to look after its rights. However, the island of Kerawara in the Neulauenburg group, 368which was designated as the seat of these officials, soon showed that it was in every way unsuitable as the seat of administration and, grudgingly, in 1889 the company resolved to transfer the station to the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula opposite. On 3 January 1890, General Director Arnold selected the site of the future settlement, and, on turning the first sod, christened it with the name Herbertshöhe. In February of the same year, the author of this book began breaking up the station on Kerawara and transferring it to Herbertshöhe. At the same time, the plantation was begun there, the first permanent settlement of the company in the Bismarck Archipelago.

It lies beyond the bounds of these brief sketches to recount the events in the archipelago at the time of the sovereignty of the New Guinea Company in detail. It is well known, that the company was in no way equal to the task set before it. Its own undertakings progressed only slowly. Many of them, after costly preparations, were abandoned as rapidly as they had been brought into existence. Foreign undertakings, if not made totally unfeasible, were restricted wherever possible by obstacles being placed in their path. In the Bismarck Archipelago in particular, where trading firms and settlers had been involved and had laid solid foundations for further development even before the constitution of the New Guinea Company, complaints increased daily, especially about inadequate protection of individuals and property. In most instances, imperial warships had to take over the police work that had been incumbent on the company, and many a settler was grateful to the willing and determined action of the commanders of those warships, enabling him to continue on in his hard-won post.

As the complaints about the company’s administration increased, the company gradually came to realise that it was faced with a task whose resolution was beyond its capability. Negotiations were started with the German government, leading, after many difficulties, to the government assuming administration on 1 April 1899. The imperial safe-conduct letter of 17 May [sic] 1885 was rescinded, and the New Guinea Company received a settlement of 4 million Marks in compensation, payable in ten annual instalments; in addition, extensive land and mining privileges in Kaiser Wilhelmsland were granted to the company.

On his arrival, the first imperial governor, Herr von Bennigsen, chose Herbertshöhe as the future seat of the imperial authorities and the administration.

Attempts have recently been made to transfer the seat of the governor to the inner corner of Blanche Bay, Simpson Harbour. Wide-ranging objections were raised from many quarters against the practicality of this transfer, chiefly on account of the unhealthiness of the site and the total lack of a hinterland. The future will show whether these misgivings are justified.

In the last decade, the cartography of the Bismarck Archipelago has been advanced to an extraordinary degree by the undertakings of the officers of HIMS Möwe. A four-sheet, 1:100,000 scale map includes the Gazelle Peninsula and the coast of Neumecklenburg opposite, with St George’s Channel and the Neulauenburg group in between. Also, a great part of northern Neumecklenburg is laid out in the same careful manner.

When this vast undertaking of mapping is completed, the Bismarck Archipelago will be ahead of all other island groups in the Pacific Ocean with regard to the precision of its coastal charting, and it is no more than fair that a picture of the small Möwe, the officers of which have given themselves a lasting memorial by this surveying, is added to this section.

For orientation of the reader, an overview map and several specific maps are appended to this work, designed by Dr M. Groll in Berlin based on the map in Sprigade and Moisel’s Grosser Deutscher kolonialatlas. It would be highly desirable if, through local authority negotiations, perhaps through one of their appointed commissions, the names on the map of the Kolonialatlas were to be comprehensively revised. Not only would many place-names of coastal sites be able to be omitted without detriment to the whole work, but, above all, a correct style of writing 369would have to be chosen. Thereby, one should operate universally by the definitive rules for writing such names: wherever a literary language already exists, as, for example, on the Gazelle Peninsula and on Neumecklenburg; a single rule cannot be imposed for our entire protectorate. Centuries-old names could, out of respect for the old seafarers whose names are thus revered, be quietly allowed to stand. Only in cases where no local designation exists, which is often enough the case, a new name must of course be chosen; otherwise it would be desirable for the local names to retain their prominence. 370