Rabaul and the Papua New Guinea Northern IslandsPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
The places in Papua New Guinea that I favor the most are the northern islands of New Britain and New Ireland. They are breathtakingly beautiful—without many of the diseases found in the south—and the people themselves differ. There is a distinct cultural difference between the natives here and the Papuans living on the mainland mountain range. These islanders are the Tolai of New Guinea, tall, with more delicate features and very dark skin. Some of the women can be strikingly handsome. The Tolai were also the most fearsome cannibals and that wasn’t so long ago. Rabaul on New Britain is their center and main town.
The Germans made Rabaul their headquarters in 1907 and laid out the town. It rapidly flourished with the production of copra. At the start of World War I, the small German command was rapidly overrun by the Australians and the town became the capital of Australia's New Guinea colony.
Rabaul is the center of the most active volcanic region in the South Pacific. In 1936, the spectacular eruptions of Matupit and Vulcan volcanoes in Simpson Harbour did remarkably little damage to the town of Rabaul but drastically changed the contour of the landscape.
The prospect of further eruptions prompted a decision to transfer the New Guinea capital to Lae. World War II halted that project when the Japanese invaded and held the fortress until the end of the war.
During its German period, Rabaul had many Chinese, Filipino, Malay and Ambonese immigrants. Their descendants make Rabaul one of the most cosmopolitan cities in PNG. The Gazelle Peninsula area around Rabaul has an extensive road network and there are many interesting drives.
Air Nuigini serves all the major towns and many of the smaller ones. On the mainland of New Britain there is connecting bus service between the towns and coast ferries serve the islands. You can also travel by rented car, four-wheel drive preferable. As I mentioned last week, you can take a Thai Airways flight to Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore and make a connecting flight with Air Nuigini. Take the spirit of adventure with you and be prepared for the unexpected.
I first arrived in Rabaul aboard my Schooner Third Sea in the mid 1970s and I have returned a dozen times. I have to admit I had fallen in love, not only with the islands of Northern New Guinea but also with a lady. Her name was Emma Coe. She was an attractive lady, half Samoan and half America. She skippered her own schooner throughout the islands after she had been run out of her native Samoa by the missionaries and the society they had created. Now I must ask: Is it possible to fall in love with a woman who had been dead 70 years, as I did when I learned about her? Let me tell you something about Emma Coe.
When Emma was run out of Samoa, she vowed that one day she would return, rich and famous, and make them regret it. She did just that by achieving the improbable. She went into the cannibal islands of the western Pacific and there carved herself an empire out of the disease-ridden jungles and, in time, so vast and so great were her holdings that she became known as Queen Emma. What is so remarkable about her feat is that New Britain was once considered to be inhabited by the world's most fearsome and treacherous cannibals and, for years, the memories of those past days lingered in the minds of many elders. It was here out of this wilderness that Emma built her empire. She paved the way for the Germans, who lost their possessions during World War I, and were followed by the Australians and then the Japanese.
For many years, the stories the old timers had to tell were not only about cannibals and diseases, but also about German plantations and volcanic eruptions that twice destroyed Rabaul, about the Japanese taking Rabaul and holding it during the entire war years, and the return of the Australians.
Still, the story they liked to talk about mostly was about Queen Emma. They told about the ruins of her great house in Ralum, some 30 kilometres south of town. They said it was the most famous house in the Pacific. And if you were to continue to show interest in the story of Queen Emma, they would explain how to find her grave and those of her lovers on a hillock overlooking the harbour.
When I first sailed into Rabaul, I became intrigued by these strange tales of a beautiful Samoan girl who became Queen Emma of the South Seas. I wanted to learn more about her. I read what was available, and talked to those who knew her. I spent many hours at the ruins of her house, and I located her grave, forgotten and jungle covered, on the hillock overlooking the harbour. I delved into the libraries and archives, and with each new discovery, her story intensified. I later sailed my schooner into Samoa where Emma was born, and now the story was complete. Queen Emma died ninety-three years ago, but to me she is very much alive. She is the breath and soul that makes up the dramatic history of the South Seas.
Emma Coe was born in Apia, Samoa, and was eleven when her father sent her to a convent school in Sydney "to save her from growing up" along the untamed waterfront that was Apia in those days.
But all did not go well in Sydney. Emma was "asked" to leave the convent when she was sixteen, for teaching the girls in her class how to dance the licentious and uninhabited Samoan dances. Her father then sent her to live with his brother in San Francisco, where she was put under stern educational training.
But Emma's heart was not in San Francisco; when the she was nineteen she reappeared in Apia, unannounced and unexpected. Imagine the surprise of her father, the American Consul in Apia, when he went out to greet the brigantine Emilie Ann, just in from San Francisco. He looked up from the tender to be greeted by a good-looking young lady standing at the railing. He hardly recognized his daughter but when he did, he went into a rage. He reprimanded the captain and then the shipping office for giving her passage. Emma smiled quietly to herself. She was her father's favourite daughter and she knew well how to handle him. Anyway, there was little he could do now. She was back.
In the South Seas in those days men took what they wanted and when they saw Emma, they wanted her. She loved the attention but her easy manner and flirtatious ways did not rest well with Apia's society and the stern missionaries. Her father was concerned about his daughter's future in the rambunctious town and did the best thing a father could. He married her off to a prominent ship's officer, James Forsayth, a trader and captain of his own ship.
Emma had a natural flair for business which was to contribute to her success later in life. She was content running her husband's business and assisting her father with his duties as consul. But she was also an adventurer with an undying love for the open sea. Whenever she could, she sailed with her husband on trading voyages. She became an accomplished navigator.
A few months before she gave birth to her son, Forsayth sailed on a trading voyage to China and was lost at sea during a typhoon. Emma's life now took a series of turns. Her antics became the gossip about town, but that didn't stop her from doing what she pleased. But things got worse when her father defended an American businessman accused of misappropriating government funds. The case was lost and her father returned to Washington.
With her husband lost at sea, and a new American Consul, Emma was at the mercy of the cruel Apia society. Ridiculed and belittled, she vowed she would make those in Apia who were against her regret their words.
And that she did. She took command of her own schooner and decided to set up a trading post on the island of Mioko in the Duke of York Islands, across from Rabaul. She had an idea. The Germans had set up vast coconut plantations in Samoa. When Europeans first began trading with the natives of the South Seas the common medium of exchange was coconut oil. Oil was obtained from splitting coconuts and drying them in the sun. Getting labourers, from New Guinea to work the plantations was called “backbirding,” a very ugly business in human traffic. Emma reasoned why not set up plantations where there was an ample labour force, such as New Guinea.
One hundred and one years later I sailed my schooner into the harbour at Mioko. Here Queen Emma got her first foothold in the western Pacific. Sitting on our aft deck under an awning, I read the accounts of Emma at Mioko. She had to face cannibals, loneliness, heat, earthquakes and volcanoes. She was willing to take the gamble for she had found a soul mate, Tom Farrell, a man who would stand by her. She and Tom made one last voyage to Apia where she sold the remnants of her estate. Tom sold his commercial hotel and other interests. She was 27 when she sailed westward from Samoa with Tom to start a new life.
I could picture her arrival, standing on the deck of the tossing schooner, wearing high boots and a long skirt, pistol tucked into her belt, watching for the islands to come into view.
At a glance Mioko might have looked like an earthly paradise but in the jungles lived the black savages, the most fearsome and ferocious cannibals known. They dined on shipwrecked sailors who landed on their shores. Trespassers who managed to escape their cooking fires faced disease, malaria, tropical ulcers, and dysentery. Then if it weren't for the diseases, it might be earthquakes and erupting volcanoes.
Mioko was a test of survival. Emma and Tom constructed a high stockade around the post to protect against marauding savages. Tom had to leave Emma alone for weeks on end, while he went to trade and open new posts along the coast. Emma ran the trading store. She went about armed, and took to carrying a whip which the savages feared more than her pistol.
As the trading interests grew and more ships arrived at Mioko, Emma sent off to Samoa for her brothers and cousins to come and help her build up the station. Mioko soon became a Samoan settlement.
When news spread of the trading post at Mioko, run by an attractive half-cast Samoan girl, ships put into the harbour. But now came a threat far worse than black savages—drunken white sailors.
Emma's vision was far beyond the trading post she ran. On New Britain she began buying up land, each contract made legal, a practice learned from her father. At Ralum she built a port with jetties and godowns. Unfortunately, Tom suffered from tuberculosis and had to return to Sydney where he died. He left everything to Emma.
After the death of Tom, Emma put all her interests into building herself a grand house, Gunantambu. It became a landmark that was to dominate the South Seas for more than sixty years—until the Japanese destroyed Ralum and the estate during World War II.
Foreseeing what was to come, a few years before World War l broke out, Emma sold her entire estate, including Gunantambu. With her vast fortune in securities in Australia, she bought a palatial house in Sydney and went on extended tours to the capitals of Europe. She did return for a visit to Samoa, and was received as the Queen that she was. She died in Monte Carlo at the age of 63.
There are other islands I would like to tell readers about, but that’s for another time.
Next week we visit Bali for a look at the changes that have taken place there.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens, Thank you for the article on PNG on the Thai Airways website. As I was born and raised there I read with some degree of nostalgia and appreciation. Thank you! With this in mind, my comments are not intended as criticism merely factual corrections: The currency comment you made is not accurate. The currency has been devalued greatly over the past few years and thus it is not as expensive nor as lucrative for the local population. In fact, travelers heading in with foreign currency would do extremely well. Just thought I would update. Thanks again, Stephen Boush.
A. Dear Stephen, Thank you for your update and I am making the info available to readers. I look forward to your comment on my current story. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
