Part 2. What was blackbirding?

In 1875 HMS Pearl was the Royal Navy's flag ship in the seas around Australia, New Zealand and the Solomon Isles.  One of its main tasks was the fight against blackbirding. 

The American civil war had disrupted cotton supplies to the cotton mills of Northern England and so other areas of production grew up, in Fiji, Eastern Australia and the islands in between. This had made the local islanders hostile towards any visiting white men.

Blackbirding

Cotton production was soon joined by sugar plantations, all of which depended on cheap labour.  Unscrupulous sea captains soon began making a fortune by tricking or coercing island natives to board their ships, on which they would be transported to the plantations, and used as forced labour. In some cases islanders were being transported as far a Chile to work in guano mines. The practice was known as blackbirding.

Captain Goodenough decided to track down the blackbirders and build better relations with the islanders. He sailed the Pearl around the islands and came to the Santa Cruz Group, where the inhabitants had been particularly hostile towards white men. He did not want to visit Nakapu as he thought the risk too great, but he was particularly anxious to visit Carlisle Bay, now called Nendo, where an English warship had been attacked some months before. Goodenough felt that there was a considerable risk in landing and before leaving the ship he finished a letter to his wife in the event of an accident.
At first the Captain intended taking Pearl into the Bay, but finding that there was insufficient water, took three boats in instead. After landing on Thursday, 20th August 1875, Goodenough gave away some calico, bargaining at the same time with a knife or two for some matting. Gradually the natives seemed less timid and one man came up with a present of some yams. The natives seemed friendly enough and invited Goodenough and his men to accompany them to another village. After three hundred yards or so, however, he decided to visit the village by boat and turned back.

‘Casting my eyes to the left I saw a man with a gleaming pair of black eyes fitting an arrow to a string, and in an instant, just as I was thinking it must be a sham menace, and stared him in the face, thud came an arrow into my left side. I felt astounded. I shouted, ‘To the boats!’ pulled the arrow out, and threw it away (for which I am sorry), and leapt down the beach, hearing a flight of arrows pass . . . and while . . . (shoving off the whaler) . . . another arrow hit my head a good sharp rap leaving an inch and a half of its bone head sticking in my hat.’

Although the Captain ordered retaliatory fire, it was restricted to firing over the natives’ heads. Six of Pearl’s ship’s company were wounded by the poisoned arrows in the brief exchange. In the whaler, Goodenough was faint from the pain of his wounds, but soon revived and came up the side of the ship briskly. He ordered that the wounded should be attended to immediately, the boats hoisted and sail set. As no provocation had been offered by his party, he thought it right to mark his displeasure by burning a few of the natives’ huts.

For the first four days after the incident Goodenough slept a great deal. He realised that death was imminent and asked the Chaplain to give thanks at the Sunday service, so that he and the others had time to prepare. On the Tuesday he wrote what were to be his last words. While writing this letter, someone came into his cabin and he put it down with an unfinished sentence.

Early on the Wednesday afternoon the Commodore was told that tetanus had undoubtedly set in. Despite the severe spasms wracking his body, he calmly asked how much longer he had to live. By the Thursday the spasms were more intense and so he had all of his officers assemble in his cabin where he took a cheery farewell of each one. He then wished to address the ship’s company and despite the Doctor’s protests was carried out and laid on a bed placed on the quarterdeck. With his saddened crew gathered around him. Commodore Goodenough begged the men to smile for although he was dying, he had had a very happy life.

After addressing the ship’s company for more than twenty minutes and shaking hands with all his petty officers, the Commodore was carried back to his cabin. He fell asleep and his strength never returned although twenty four hours passed before the end came. He constantly asked after the other wounded men; he knew that Edward Rayner and Ferdinand Smales also had tetanus, but was not told that Rayner had died on the Thursday night. Smales lived only two days longer – both were only seventeen years of age.

‘I HAVE KEPT THE POSSIBILITY STEADILY BEFORE ME, so as to be prepared; it is very good to be brought to look upon a near death as more than usually probable... The weather is lovely, and entirely favourable to the little wounds, which are absurdly small. My only trouble is a pain in the small of my back, which is a little against my sleeping... I can only imagine the motive to have been plunder or a sort of running-a-muck. I don’t feel...’

And so were recorded the last written words of Commodore James Graham Goodenough, as he lay in his cabin, the Flagship of the Australian Squadron. On 20th August 1875 he died of tetanus, the result of the poisoned arrow wounds received in the Santa Cruz Islands eight days earlier. He spoke very little after Friday morning and died at a quarter past five that afternoon. On 23rd August HMS Pearl steamed into Sydney Harbour with the ensign and broad pennant at half mast. The funeral of the three men took place the following day on Sydney’s North Shore.

Daily Southern Cross - Newspaper

In Sydney in December 1875, Richard joined the schooner, HMS Beagle, (A later ship with name of  Darwin's vessel) and in August 1876 he joined HMS Sappho just for two months. He then returned to HMS Pearl in Oct 1877 and returned to Portsmouth.  After two more years aboard HMS Asia he left the Navy with a pension.

In 1881 Richard Henry was living on his naval pension with his father and Emma, his stepsister and her family, in the Kings Road, Chelsea. In 1901 Richard was living alone, unmarried in Sun Court Chelsea. His father, Richard the tailor lived in the King's Road, with his daughter, Emma, whose husband was a photographer and, after several bouts in Chelsea workhouse infirmary, Richard senior died around February 1903. Richard the sailor died in 1909 aged 68.



[Information for this post has been gathered from a number of sources; Census returns (1841 -1901), Birth, marriage and death records and Richard Henry Shepherd's naval records. The rest has been gleaned from sources on the internet.]