HTf 
 
 I nc 
 
 Peace 
 
 BY BASIL MATAEWS 
 
 London Missionary Society 
 16 New Bridge Street, London EC.
 

 
 for collecting the sum of 
 
 for the 
 NEW YEAR OFFERING FOR SHIPS 
 
 THE SOCIETY'S FLEET consists of the following vessels: 
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS (Steam- 
 ship). Headquarters, Sydney. 
 Serves the South Sea Islands 
 and Papua. 
 
 On the Papuan Coast 
 PURARI Motor Launch. 
 MAURI 
 DABA 
 MARU 
 
 Papuan Coast (?/.) 
 TAMATE Motor Launch. 
 MAMARI 
 AINAUIA 
 ADA 
 PIETI 
 
 On the Ganges (North India). 
 MARDIE River Boat.
 
 r 
 
 1823O2S
 
 Frontispiece
 
 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 BY 
 
 BASIL MATHEWS 
 
 LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY 
 
 16 NEW BRIDGE STREET, LONDON, E.G. 4 
 
 1919
 
 ' Never again will I call those men warriors who 
 fight on the shore ; the English only, who battle with 
 the winds and waves of the ocean, are worthy of that 
 name! 
 
 THE KING OF RAROTONGA, 
 after his voyage in the 
 Messenger of Peace.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE .... 5 
 
 II. TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') . . 22 
 
 III. THE MESSENGER OF PEACE . . -37 
 
 IV. A MESSAGE TO SAMOA .... 48 
 V. THE CAMDEN ... . . 58 
 
 VI. JOHN WILLIAMS I 73 
 
 VII. Two SAILING SHIPS 87 
 
 VIII. THE ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE . 97 
 
 IX. SMALL CRAFT no 
 
 X. JOHN WILLIAMS IV 124 
 
 THE STEAMER'S VOYAGES 133 
 
 PRINCIPAL SHIPS OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY 
 
 SOCIETY 134 
 
 A 2
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The children's steamship John Williams . Frontispiece 
 The arrival of the Z?^"at Tahiti . . . Facing page 13 
 
 The Messenger of Peace launched 41 
 
 The Camden leaving the river Thames . . Facing page 59 
 
 The first John Williams 75 
 
 The second John Williams .89 
 
 The third John Williams 95 
 
 Elikana looking for the land . . . Facing page 103 
 How the Morning Star went to Central Africa 113 
 A motor launch off the Papuan coast . 120 
 
 Map of the Pacific Islands . Bet-ween pages 132 and 133
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 
 
 I 
 
 BEFORE daybreak on Monday morning, July 5, 
 1742, a boy apprentice rolled quietly out from his 
 cramped bed under the counter in his master's shop. 
 Softly unlatching the door, he stepped out into the 
 road by the tiny harbour. 
 
 The soft ' hush-hush' of the incoming tide, which 
 would be full that morning at 6 o'clock, spoke to 
 him as he strode quickly away from Staithes, climb- 
 ing the hill to the cliff, and walked away southward 
 for nine miles till the grey walls of Whitby Abbey 
 loomed ahead of him across the harbour. He 
 dropped down the hill to the town and was soon 
 by the harbour side. 
 
 As James Cook climbed aboard his chosen ship 
 the outlines of the grey abbey stood up above the 
 cliffs, catching the light of the morning sun. 
 
 The walls of Whitby Abbey had been the last 
 glimpse of home for many sturdy Yorkshire boys 
 running away from home to sea. But the walls 
 had never in all the centuries said farewell to a boy 
 who was to have such multitudes of adventure and 
 hair-breadth escapes as this apprentice ; nor wel- 
 comed back any man who was to bring such glory
 
 6 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 to his native town, and open up such pathways 
 across the ocean to islands of wonder on the other 
 side of the world. 
 
 For James Cook, from that day through years 
 and years of heroic voyages as a man, sailed round 
 the world and found adventure in every ocean. 
 From Whitby, Quebec, and Newfoundland to the 
 Cape of Good Hope, the icebergs of the Antarctic 
 and the coral islands of the South Pacific he sailed 
 with his bold men the finest navigator that the 
 world has ever seen. 
 
 Unafraid of the spears or the arrows or the clubs 
 of savage cannibals, undaunted by hurricane or 
 hidden reef or ice-floe, frozen by the biting gales 
 from the South Pole, scorched by the equatorial 
 sun, threatened by waterspouts, sailing often in peril 
 of fog in uncharted waters, his face never showed 
 fear and his heart never quailed. 
 
 So Captain Cook with his good three-masted 
 ship Resolution and her companion Adventure dis- 
 covered scores of islands in the South Seas on 
 which no white man had ever set foot the New 
 Hebrides,NewCaledonia,and the Sandwich Islands, 
 explored the coasts of New Zealand, Australia, the 
 Antarctic, and America. 
 
 When he came home the tales that he told of 
 his adventures made the eyes of the boys who 
 heard them grow round with amazement, and even 
 grown men were lost in wonder at the stories that
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 7 
 
 seemed too amazing to be real, and yet were true 
 in every detail. 
 
 At last, in 1779, Captain Cook was killed by the 
 natives on the Sandwich Islands. The stories of 
 his life were written down in wonderful books with 
 pictures that showed how Captain Cook landed on 
 islands in the face of savages. There were maps 
 in the books that told exactly where the islands 
 lay in the far-off ocean across the world. 
 
 II 
 
 Men who had in their minds the firm belief that 
 Jesus Christ came into the world to bring men of 
 every race to worship the Father Who made them 
 all, read these adventures of Captain Cook. They 
 were as enthralled by the story as any boy so 
 fascinated that there came into their minds an idea 
 that was the beginning of new adventures as won- 
 derful as those of Captain Cook himself. 
 
 These men wondered what they could do. They 
 knew that in their own land of Britain their fore- 
 fathers (and ours) had been savages in the days 
 long past. They knew that men had come to our 
 wild forefathers, and had taught them of the God 
 of Love who is the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The early missionaries to the Saxons and Angles 
 of the North Sea Islands of Britain had brought 
 the knowledge of the love of Jesus to England.
 
 8 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Now was the time, these men argued, to begin to 
 pay back. They had ' freely received ' ; it was only 
 fair and right that they should ' freely give '. So 
 they decided to send the Good News (' the Gospel ', 
 as we call it) of Jesus Christ from the North Sea 
 Islands of Britain to the South Sea Islands. 
 This is what they said : 
 
 ' Modern discoveries in geography have perhaps 
 contributed to enlarge the desires of Christians in 
 this respect. Captain Cook and others have tra- 
 versed the globe, almost from pole to pole, and 
 have presented to us, as it were, a new world, 
 a worm of islands in the vast Pacific Ocean some 
 of them as promising in the disposition of the 
 people as in the appearance of the country. May 
 we not reasonably hope that a well-planned and 
 well-conducted mission to one or more of .these, 
 seconded with the earnest prayers of thousands of 
 British Christians, will be attended with the bless- 
 ing of God, and issue in the conversion of many 
 souls ? ' 
 
 In those days men would form ' Companies ' to 
 buy ships, and to sail them out to India or America 
 to buy spices, or silks, or coffee, or mahogany. So 
 these Christian men decided to form a company, 
 and to buy a ship, and send it sailing across the 
 world not to buy and sell goods, but to carry 
 missionaries who would teach the people of the 
 South Seas to love God and one another. 
 
 The Company that they formed on September 
 21, 1795, tnev called 'The Missionary Society'.
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 9 
 
 Afterwards, because several other missionary 
 societies were formed, it came to be called the 
 1 London Missionary Society ', because London 
 was its home. They decided to gather together 
 missionaries, and buy a ship in which to take them 
 round the world to Tahiti. 
 
 Who should be captain of this ship ? He must 
 be a brave and yet careful navigator, who loved 
 Jesus Christ so much that he would gladly risk his 
 life among the tempests of the Atlantic and Pacific 
 Oceans and among the savages of the Islands. 
 
 Where was such a man to be found ? 
 
 There was a man who had had many thrilling 
 adventures and hairbreadth escapes, named Captain 
 Wilson. He had started in life as a sailor, but 
 gave it up to join the British Army in America. 
 He there fought in the battles of Bunker's Hill and 
 Long Island. Afterwards he enlisted in a regiment 
 in India, was captured by the French, escaped by 
 swimming across a river infested with alligators, 
 was recaptured, and after nearly two years' im- 
 prisonment was released, and returned to England. 
 
 Captain Wilson had learned to love Jesus Christ, 
 and was wondering how he could serve Him best. 
 
 One day he was reading a magazine when to 
 his amazement and delight his eye was suddenly 
 caught by the announcement that it was proposed 
 to form a Missionary Society to send the Gospel 
 to the Islands of the Pacific which Captain Cook
 
 io THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 had discovered. Here was the most unexpected 
 opening for using his courage and his skill as a 
 sea-captain in a great adventure for God. Captain 
 Wilson went to the men who had formed the Mis- 
 sionary Society and offered to command the ship 
 that the Missionary Society would use. Nor would 
 he receive any salary. On June 27, 1796, he bought 
 the good ship Duff } 'the first-rate vessel of her 
 burden in the river ', as he described her, ' river- 
 built, two years old, copper-bottomed and fastened, 
 and a complete vessel for her purpose '. She cost 
 5,000. 
 
 At last on August io, 1796, all was ready. Soon 
 after dawn at six o'clock the Duff weighed anchor 
 off Blackwall. Her flag was hoisted at the mizen 
 top-gallant masthead. It was a flag that had never 
 been flown before : ' three doves argent, on a purple 
 field, bearing olive branches in their bills.' The 
 doves of love carrying the olive branch of peace 
 round the world. 
 
 So the first Ship of Peace of the Missionary 
 Society crept down the river on an ebb tide on 
 her first voyage. Crew and passengers alike 
 sang as she moved down the river, 'Jesus, at Thy 
 Command we launch into the deep '. 
 
 At Gravesend Captain Wilson came aboard. 
 
 As the Duff was slipping from the river down 
 the estuary a challenge rang across the water. 
 Britain was at war with France and all ships were
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE n 
 
 closely watched. Besides, smuggling was the trade 
 of men on all the coasts. 
 
 ' What ship is that ? ' came the voice. 
 
 ' The Duff', the answer sang out. 
 
 ' Whither bound ? ' came the call from the man- 
 o'-war. 
 
 ' Otaheite ', came the answer a reply that would 
 indeed startle the Government officer, for he knew 
 that Tahiti (as we now call it) was on the other side 
 of the world, and the Duff was a little sailing 
 ship. 
 
 ' What cargo ? ' the challenge came again. 
 
 ' Missionaries and provisions ', was the reply. 
 
 The man-o'-war's captain was naturally puzzled. 
 No cargo of missionaries had sailed down the 
 Thames in the history of man. 
 
 There was an order, and a boat was let down 
 from the Government ship. Half a dozen sailors 
 tumbled into her and rowed across the water to 
 the Duff. 
 
 What did the officers find aboard the Duff in 
 addition to its captain and crew? He found six 
 carpenters, two shoemakers, two bricklayers, two 
 sailors, two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, 
 a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, a 
 draper, a harness maker, a tin worker, a butcher, 
 and four ministers. But they were all of them 
 missionaries. With them were six children. 
 
 They were all missionaries because the Directors
 
 12 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 of the Society were wise enough to know that, if 
 they taught the South Sea Island savages not to 
 kill one another with clubs, and bows and arrows, 
 and spears, they must also teach them to use their 
 hands in other ways by making doors and bricks 
 for building houses, by constructing boats, by mak- 
 ing furniture, and in a hundred other ways. 
 
 All up and down the English Channel French 
 frigates sailed like hawks waiting to pounce upon 
 their prey. So for five weary weeks the Duff 
 anchored in the roadstead off Spithead till, as one 
 of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels, she could sail under 
 convoy down the channel and across the Bay of 
 Biscay protected by British men-o'-war. Safely 
 clear of the French cruisers, the Duff" held on alone 
 till the green heights of the Madeira Isles hove in 
 sight. 
 
 Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention 
 was to sail round South America into the Pacific. 
 But on trying to round the Cape Horn the Duff 
 met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned 
 her in her tracks and headed back across the 
 Atlantic for the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 Week after week for thousands and thousands 
 of miles she sailed. She had travelled from Rio de 
 Janeiro over 10,000 miles and had only sighted 
 a single sail a longer journey than any ship had 
 ever sailed without seeing land. 
 
 'Shall we see the island to-day?' the boys on
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 13 
 
 board would ask Captain Wilson. Day after day 
 he shook his head. But one night he said : 
 
 ' If the wind holds good to-night we shall see an 
 island in the morning, but not the island where we 
 shall stop.' 
 
 'Land ho!' shouted a sailor from the masthead 
 in the morning, and, sure enough, they saw away 
 on the horizon, like a cloud on the edge of the sea, 
 the island of Toobonai. 1 
 
 As they passed Toobonai the wind rose and 
 howled through the rigging. It tore at the sails 
 of the Duff, and the great Pacific waves rolled 
 swiftly by, rushing and hissing along the sides of 
 the little ship and tossing her on their foaming 
 crests. But she weathered the storm. As the 
 wind dropped and they looked ahead they saw, 
 cutting into the sky-line, the mountain tops of 
 Tahiti. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was Saturday night when the island came in 
 sight. Early on the Sunday morning, by seven 
 o'clock, the Duff swung round under a gentle 
 breeze into Matavai 2 Bay and dropped anchor. 
 But before she could even anchor the whole bay 
 had become alive with Tahitians. They thronged 
 the beach, and, leaping into canoes, sent them 
 skimming across the bay to the ship. 
 
 1 Too-bo-na-ee. 3 Ma-ta-va-ee.
 
 14 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Captain Wilson, scanning the canoes swiftly and 
 anxiously, saw with relief that the men were not 
 armed. But the missionaries were startled when 
 the savages climbed up the sides of the ship, and 
 with wondering eyes rolling in their wild heads 
 peered over the rail of the deck. They then leapt 
 on board and began dancing like mad on the deck 
 with their bare feet. From the canoes the Tahitians 
 hauled up pigs, fowl, fish, bananas, and held them 
 for the white men to buy. But Captain Wilson 
 and all his company would not buy on that day, 
 for it was Sunday. 
 
 The missionaries gathered together on deck 
 to hold their Sunday morning service. The 
 Tahitians stopped dancing and looked on with 
 amazement, as the company of white men with 
 their children knelt to pray and then read from 
 the Bible. 
 
 The Tahitians could not understand this strange 
 worship, with no god that could be seen. But 
 when the white fathers and mothers and children 
 sang, the savages stood around with wonder and 
 delight on their faces as they listened to the strange 
 and beautiful sounds. 
 
 But the startling events of the day were not over. 
 For out from the beach came a canoe across the 
 bay, and in it two Swedish sailors, named, like some 
 fishermen of long ago, Peter and Andrew. These 
 white men knew some English. They lived how-
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 15 
 
 ever, not as Christians, but after the customs of the 
 natives. 
 
 After them came a great and aged chief named 
 Haamanemane. This great chief went up to the 
 1 chief of the ship, Captain Wilson, and called out 
 to him ' Taio V 
 
 They did not know what this meant till Peter the 
 Swede explained that Haamanemane wished to be 
 the brother the troth-friend of Captain Wilson. 
 They were even to change names. Captain Wilson 
 would be called Haamanemane, and Haamanemane 
 would be called Wilson. 
 
 So Captain Wilson said ' Taio ', and he and the 
 chief, who was also high priest of the gods of 
 Tahiti, were brothers. 
 
 Captain Wilson said to Haamanemane, through 
 Peter, who translated each to the other : 
 
 ' We wish to come and live in this island/ 
 
 Haamanemane said that he would speak to the 
 king and queen of Tahiti about it. So he got down 
 again over the side of the vessel into the canoe, 
 and the paddles of his boatmen flashed as they 
 swept along over the breakers to the beach to tell 
 the king of the great white chief who had come to 
 visit them. 
 
 All these things happened on the Sunday. On 
 Tuesday word came that the king and the queen 
 would receive them. So Captain Wilson and his 
 1 Ta-ee-o.
 
 16 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 missionaries got into the whale-boat and pulled 
 for the shore. The natives rushed into the water, 
 seized the boat, and hauled her aground out of 
 reach of the great waves. 
 
 At that place, under the palm trees of Tahiti, 
 with the beating of the surf on the shore before 
 them, and the great mountain forests behind, these 
 brown islanders of the South Seas gave a part of 
 their land to Captain Wilson and his men that they 
 nnght five there. 
 
 From Tahiti Captain Wilson set sail for the 
 Friendly Isles, and sighted Tonga on April g, 1797. 
 Here he left some more of his ' cargo ' of mission- 
 aries, and again sailed off to the Marquesas Isles. 
 Driven and tossed by wild storms that threatened 
 to sink her, and escaping by a hair's breadth from 
 shipwreck on rocks, they at last reached Ohitahio 1 
 on June 5, where another missionary was landed 
 alone among the islanders, who received him 
 dancing with joy. 
 
 The captain then returned to Tahiti and Tonga 
 Taboo to see how his missionaries were faring, 
 and sailed for home. He called at Canton on the 
 coast of China on the way home, and shipped a 
 cargo of tea. The sailors in the port at Canton 
 scoffed at the good lives of die crew of the Duff, 
 and, in fun, re-christened her The Ten Command- 
 ments. 
 
 > Ohee-tah-hee-o.
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 17 
 
 Sailing from Macao 1 on January 5, 1798, with 
 other ships under the escort of British frigates, 
 they touched at Malacca on January 16, at Table 
 Bay, Capetown, on March 16, at St. Helena on 
 April 15, and at Cork on June 24, coming to anchor 
 once more in the Thames on July n, 1798, having 
 been absent for just under two years. The Duff 
 had sailed nearly 50,000 miles, or twice the cir- 
 cumference of the world, with, as Captain Wilson 
 proudly said, ' Not a mast sprung, not a yard lost, 
 not a sail split, not an anchor left behind/ 
 
 IV 
 
 All over Britain people rejoiced at the safe return 
 of the Duff. It was decided at once to send her 
 out again as quickly as possible. 
 
 Captain Wilson was too ill to sail again, and 
 Captain Robson, who had been one of the officers 
 of the ship on the first voyage, took his place. 8 
 On December 17, 1798, the Duff, under the convoy 
 of the frigate Amphion, set sail from Spithead. 
 Driven back up the channel to Weymouth by 
 tempest she sailed again on December 23. All 
 Christmas Day she tossed in the tempest, but by 
 New Year's Day the weather had cleared and she 
 made her course westward. 
 
 1 Mah-kah-o. 
 
 * For the full life of Captain Wilson see Captain James 
 Wilson, by Herbert Stead (L.M.S.). 
 
 B
 
 i8 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 A fortnight later the Amphion left her, and the 
 Duff sailed on alone. Her captain knew that 
 French warships were cruising in search of British 
 ships. All on board kept a sharp watch. On 
 January 30, 1799, a French man-o'-war was sighted 
 on the horizon. She turned in her course and 
 began to give chase. Captain Robson immediately 
 trimmed his ship, crowded on all sail, strengthen- 
 ing her masts and yards to carry every possible 
 inch of canvas. For hour after hour the chase 
 went on. All eyes were turned aft to the French 
 ship trying to find out which was gaining in the 
 race. Were they going to be captured and taken 
 off as miserable prisoners of war into France? 
 Once they were certain the Frenchman was gain- 
 ing ; then they believed he was losing. For nine 
 hours the two ships flew on through the seas. But 
 at last the man-o'-war, seeing that the race was 
 hopeless, turned in her course and gave up the chase. 
 
 Within a few days they sighted the coast of 
 South America. Rio de Janeiro was, on the morn- 
 ing of February 19, within a few hours' sail. Lffider 
 a light breeze the Duff crept through the water. 
 The missionaries sat writing letters to be posted 
 at Rio ; the children playing on the deck ; the wives 
 sewing or reading. In the bright light of the moon 
 they watched the white sails of another ship that 
 was also making for Rio. Then, after family 
 prayers, they went below to sleep.
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 19 
 
 As they lay in their bunks a sudden squall of 
 wind and rain smote the Duff. Suddenly there 
 came the boom of a gun, then another, and the 
 men on deck heard the cannon ball sing past their 
 heads. The flash of a third gun came, followed 
 by the sound of a harsh voice calling from the 
 stranger through a speaking trumpet. 
 
 'What ship? Whence come? Whither bound?' 
 
 1 Send a boat alongside with the ship's papers/ 
 shouted the stranger, as the answer reached him. 
 Four sailors and the mate tumbled into a boat. In 
 a few minutes the dreaded order, yelled through 
 the hated trumpet, shattered the silence. 
 
 ' Send all the passengers on board.' 
 
 The strange ship was a French privateer the 
 Buonaparte. 
 
 A boat's crew came from the Frenchman aboard 
 the Duff, all armed with ferocious-looking cutlasses 
 and pistols. Springing on deck they seized the 
 ship and her cargo. The missionaries were torn 
 away from their wives and driven at the sword's 
 point down the side of the Duff, to be rowed across 
 to the Buonaparte as prisoners of war, followed 
 by Captain Robson and the crew. The ship's 
 doctor of the Duff alone was allowed to stay on 
 her with the wives and children. 
 
 At dawn next day the missionaries came on deck, 
 only to see the Duff being sailed off in an opposite 
 direction. The boys and girls on the Duff were 
 
 B 2
 
 20 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 thus carried off from their fathers across the seas 
 to an unknown port as prisoners. For three 
 months the Buonaparte cruised about capturing 
 other ships. At last they turned and sailed for 
 Monte Video, the port at the mouth of the River 
 Plate on the South American coast in what is now 
 the Republic of Uruguay. 
 
 As the Buonaparte sailed into harbour the 
 missionaries discovered with joy the familiar out- 
 line of the ship they knew so well, the Duff. Early 
 on the following morning they were put into the 
 ship's boat and pulled through the mist to the side 
 of the Duff, and climbing aboard surprised and 
 rejoiced their wives and children by suddenly and 
 unexpectedly appearing on deck. 
 
 The Duff was now as a prize of war the 
 property of the French. Captain Robson and the 
 missionaries tried to buy her back, but the French 
 refused. So the missionaries got passages aboard 
 a French brig sailing to Rio de Janeiro. Storms 
 drove down upon the vessel, but she held her 
 course, and at last came almost within sight of 
 Rio, when on the horizon they saw a fleet of ships 
 sailing toward them. 
 
 The French captain saw that the fleet was 
 Portuguese. Portugal was the ally of England and 
 the enemy of France. But it was hopeless to try 
 to escape. The ship was seized. The tables were 
 turned. The French captors had become pri-
 
 THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 21 
 
 soners ; the British prisoners were free men once 
 more. 
 
 They sailed across the Atlantic back to Europe, 
 sighted the heights of Lisbon and her towers, 
 sailed into the harbour full of jostling ships of 
 Portugal, and at last set sail from Lisbon to 
 Falmouth, where they landed safely after their 
 war-adventures on October 13, 1799. 
 
 The first ship of peace, the Duff, had ended as 
 a captured ship in the hands of the French. Yet 
 she had done immortal deeds. For the men whom 
 she had carried on her stout decks across the world 
 to the South Seas were changing the life of the 
 wild savages behind the still lagoons on islands of 
 coral and rock. The Duff began the work that has 
 never ceased for an hour from that first day when 
 she flew the flag of the 'Three Doves' even till 
 to-day.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TE MAT AMU A ('The Beginning') 
 
 I 
 
 IN the year when the Duff sailed out to the South 
 Seas a baby boy was born in Tottenham, in those 
 days a village six miles north of London. 1 
 
 His name was John Williams. 
 
 When he was a boy his sisters Elizabeth, Char- 
 lotte, and Mary and his young brother William, 
 whenever they could not make some game or other, 
 would say, 
 
 ' Oh, John can do it.' 
 
 They said this because he was very strong and 
 nimble with his hands. He could handle cleverly 
 cord and pole or hammer and nail, or build up 
 a ' make-believe ' boat or coach. And on his way 
 back from school he was very fond of watching the 
 blacksmith at work. 
 
 When he was fourteen years old his father said 
 to him one day : 
 
 ' We are all going to leave Tottenham and move 
 into London, and you, John, will be an apprentice 
 in an ironmonger's shop.' 
 
 So the Williams's moved to their new home among 
 
 1 John Williams, born June 29, 1796.
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 23 
 
 the streets on the north side of London. 1 Then 
 John was taken to the shop where he was to work. 2 
 It was full of hammers, and chisels, screwdrivers, 
 hinges, chains, knives, hatchets all the things that 
 John loved to handle. But what fascinated him 
 most of all was the sound of a hammer ringing upon 
 the anvil in the forge behind the shop. 
 
 At night when the shop was shut John went into 
 the workshop, put on the smith's leather apron, 
 swung the hammer, and pounded the glowing iron. 
 
 One Sunday evening he went into the Whitefield 
 Tabernacle, Finsbury, where he listened to the. 
 minister 3 as he preached a sermon on 'What is 
 a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and 
 lose his own soul?' 
 
 As he listened John made the decision that 
 launched him on the oceans of adventure tha*. 
 carried him through the whole of his life. He 
 made up his mind to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Some time after that John, already in his twentieth 
 year, heard the minister of the Tabernacle (Matthew 
 Wilks) speaking about the savage people on the 
 islands that Captain Cook had discovered. Slowly 
 he worked out his wish to go to those islands. 
 He offered his services to the Missionary Society, 
 passed the examination that they set him, and was 
 
 1 Spencer Street, Goswell Road. 
 
 2 Mr. Tonkins, 12 City Road. 
 ' The Rev. Timothy East.
 
 24 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 accepted in July 1816 as a missionary. He loved 
 a girl named Mary Chauner; and she loved him, 
 and the work that he was going to do, so much 
 that she was ready to travel round the world to 
 live among the savage islanders, which was heroic 
 in a girl of nineteen. They were married a short 
 time before the Harriet set sail from Gravesend. 
 Together they sailed across the Atlantic to South 
 America, and thence round Cape Horn to Sydney. 
 There they changed into another ship, the Active, 
 and turned eastward toward Tahiti, where they 
 landed in November 1817. On the following day 
 they crossed to Eimeo, a smaller island with green 
 valleys divided by splintered peaks of dark volcanic 
 rock. 
 
 All through the journey John had examined 
 the beams and ribs, the rudder, planks and masts, 
 the yards and sails and ropes of the ship so that 
 he should know how to build a ship himself. 
 
 There he saw on the beach the ribs and keel of 
 a little ship that the missionaries on the island had 
 begun but could not finish. Within three days 
 John had them all at work, and within eight days 
 of beginning work the little sailing vessel was ready 
 to be launched into the sea. 
 
 King Pomare christened the ship the Haweis in 
 memory of Dr. Haweis who had been one of the 
 greatest leaders in founding the Missionary Society. 
 Many willing natives hauled the Haweis down the
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 25 
 
 beach into the sea. She sailed across the ocean to 
 Sydney, and after a journey or two the missionaries 
 presented her to King Pomare for his own. 
 
 There is a beautiful island north-west of Tahiti 
 called Raiatea, 1 whose king, named Tamatoa, 2 came 
 and asked John Williams to come to his island 
 where they worshipped Oro the bloodthirsty god 
 of war. So John Williams sailed there, taught the 
 people both to love Jesus Christ, in place of the cruel 
 Oro on whose altar there little children had been 
 killed for hundreds of years, and to build houses 
 and make furniture. 
 
 When he had done this he felt that he must 
 sail to other islands where they still worshipped 
 the gods of cruelty. But he had no ship. He and 
 his colleagues had already sent teachers (Papeiha 
 and Vahapata) to Aitutaki, but could only send 
 or go to them when a sailing ship happened to be 
 passing that way, which was very rare. 
 
 At night by the light of a coco-nut lamp he pored 
 over Captain Cook's old charts of the Pacific. He 
 wrote home to the Directors of the Missionary 
 Society : 
 
 ' To visit and keep up frequent intercourse with 
 the adjacent islands we only want a fine schooner 
 of about twenty to twenty-five tons.' So Williams 
 worked and wrote and planned for a Ship of Peace. 
 
 At this time a deep-water sailing ship on the way 
 1 Rah-ee-ah-tee-ah. * Tah-mah-toh-ah.
 
 26 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 to Sydney called at the island, and Williams went 
 aboard her and sailed to Australia. 
 
 There he bought a ship for the Missionary 
 Society, a fine new ninety-ton schooner, the 
 Endeavour. 
 
 John Williams sailed back to Raiatea in a trading 
 ship, while the Endeavour loaded her cargo and 
 followed. 
 
 When she arrived Tamatoa, the King of Raiatea, 
 was very proud indeed of her. John Williams had 
 taught the king to write, and so Tamatoa, without 
 telling Williams what he was doing, wrote a letter 
 to the Directors of the Missionary Society, which 
 tells exactly what is the use of a ship in the work 
 of carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ among 
 the islands. 
 
 This is what the King of Raiatea wrote : 
 
 ' Raiatea, 
 
 'July 9, 1822. 
 'DEAR FRIENDS, 
 
 ' May you have health and peace, brethren, 
 through Jesus Christ our true Lord. 
 
 ' This is my speech to you, brethren. Don't think 
 of your money (spent on the ship) that it is lost. 
 We are collecting property to purchase the money 
 that has been consumed : and when sufficient 
 property is collected, we will return the money to 
 you to whom the money belongs. . . . 
 
 'A ship is good; for it means useful property 
 will come to our lands, and our bodies be covered 
 with decent cloth. But this is another use of the
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 27 
 
 ship, when we compassionate the little lands near 
 to us, and desire to send two from among us to 
 those lands to teach them the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, the good word of the Kingdom. 
 
 ' Behold ! two of our number here are gone to 
 Rurutu ; and at Aitutaki are two others belonging 
 to us. They are teaching the word of God to 
 those lands that did not know the name of Jesus 
 Christ, and they are showing to them the path of 
 salvation. 
 
 ' We have received all the deceitful, lying gods 
 from Rurutu. They are now in our possession, 
 and the Rurutuans are worshipping Jesus Christ, 
 the true God. . . . 
 
 ' There is another good thing of our ship. When 
 we desire to see their faces again (i. e. of the 
 teachers on Rurutu and Aitutaki), or to send little 
 properties to them, we have the means. Letters 
 will also reach them, by which they will hear and 
 know the good word we are hearing; and, by 
 means of this ship, they will learn from us all the 
 good customs, and how to act. . . . 
 
 ' May you have health and peace in your dwell- 
 ing in Beritani (Britain), through Jesus Christ! 
 
 'TAMATOA, King of Raiatea.' 
 
 II 
 
 ' Far away over the edge of the sea ', a grey- 
 haired old Raiatean told John Williams, ' there is 
 an island called Rarotonga. It used to be close to 
 Raiatea, but the gods carried it away,' and he 
 pointed to the south-west. 
 
 The missionaries decided that John Williams,
 
 28 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 with Bourne, one of his fellow-workers, should sail 
 first to Aitutaki, 1 where two splendid Raiatean 
 Christians, Papeiha 2 and Vahapata, were teaching 
 the people the love of Jesus, and then cruise 
 southward in search of the mysterious island of 
 Rarotonga. 
 
 The schooner was re-christened by the Raiateans ; 
 they called her Te Matamua 3 (' The Beginning'). 
 The beach was crowded with brown men and 
 women and boys and girls who waved to the 
 little ship as she started gaily on her long journey 
 over the ocean. 
 
 She sailed for five days and nights without 
 tempest or rain till she sighted the hills of Aitutaki, 
 made the western entrance through the reef, and 
 dropped anchor in the lagoon. 
 
 Scores of canoes came dashing across the water 
 toward the ship. 
 
 'The Good Word has taken root in Aitutaki,' 
 they shouted, 'Good is the Word of God. It is 
 now well with Aitutaki.' 
 
 Papeiha and Vahapata came aboard with beaming 
 faces to tell Viriamu (their name for Williams) how 
 they had made bonfires of the old idols, and had 
 built a lovely church, 200 feet long, of wood and 
 white cement (made of coral rock). 
 
 So they left new teachers at Aitutaki, and 
 
 1 I-too-tah-kee. z Pah-pay-ee-hah. 
 
 3 Mah-tah-moo-ah.
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 29 
 
 Papeiha sailed with Viriamu in search of the 
 mysterious island of Rarotonga, with its ferocious, 
 treacherous, cannibal savages. They sailed first to 
 the island of Mangaia, but the people there had 
 been made so suspicious and angry by the cruelty 
 of a white trader, that, though Papeiha heroically 
 swam ashore, they were obliged to come away 
 without leaving any teachers. 1 
 
 Te Matamua now headed northward for the 
 island of Atiu, to which the missionaries had just 
 sent two other brown island-teachers from Raiatea. 
 
 One morning they sighted the low island fringed 
 with the green of the wormwood trees, and crowned 
 with a flat-topped hill. From the shore a canoe 
 came bearing two thin desponding men with ragged 
 clothes hanging loose on their lean bodies. John 
 Williams could hardly recognize in them the strong 
 smiling teachers whom he had sent from Raiatea. 
 
 The savage people of the island had robbed them 
 of all that they had and kept them without food. 
 
 Then a great double canoe came, and, on the 
 platform between the two canoes, the strong com- 
 manding figure of the tall fierce chief, Roma-tane. 
 He climbed aboard, and to his astonishment found 
 himself face to face with the chief of Aitutaki, who 
 took him by the hand, led him aside, and told him 
 how the idols of Aitutaki were all burned or put 
 
 * For the exciting adventures that happened on this journey 
 see John Williams the Shipbuilder, Chapters IX-X.
 
 3 o THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 down in the hull of Te Matamua like logs of 
 timber. 
 
 On the following day, Sunday, John Williams 
 read to them, in their own language, the words that 
 show how mad it is to think that a tree that a man 
 uses as firewood can also be a god. 1 It was like 
 a blaze of sunshine in the dark cavern of Roma- 
 tane's mind. He could not sleep for excitement. 
 He wanted to buy an axe to go and cut down 
 trees to build a house for the worship of the true 
 invisible God. 
 
 Now Roma-tane was overlord of two other islands, 
 Mitiaro and Mauki, where the people trembled at 
 the very sight of him, for he had been horribly 
 cruel to them. 
 
 So Roma-tane sailed with John Williams on 
 Te Matamua to see his little islands Mitiaro and 
 Mauki. The chief of Mitiaro, when he saw his 
 king, Roma-tane, on the great canoe with the white 
 sails, trembled, for he knew of the fierce cruelty 
 of this cannibal king. So the chief could hardly 
 believe his ears when, as he stepped on deck, he 
 heard his king say : 
 
 ' I am come to call you to burn the maraes, 2 and 
 abandon the worship of your gods. I will leave 
 with you a man who will tell you of the one true 
 God whom all men should worship.' 
 
 1 He read the parts of Isaiah xliv and Psalm cxxxv that 
 tell about this. ' Altars to the savage gods.
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 31 
 
 'What!* cried the chief and those with him, 
 ' destroy the maraes ? The gods will be furious. 
 Will they not strangle us ? ' 
 
 ' No/ answered King Roma-tane, ' it is out of the 
 power of a piece of wood that we have put orna- 
 ments upon and called a god to kill us.' 
 
 4 But/ asked one, ' must we give up Tarianui 
 (Great Ears) ? ' 
 
 ' Yes/ answered the king, without a second's 
 hesitation, ' cease to worship him and all the other 
 evil spirits. I am going to leave Tauna, a teacher, 
 with you. Treat him well ; give him a house to 
 live in, and food to eat ; and listen to his words.' 
 
 They sailed away from Mitiaro to Mauki, and 
 there again the people caught their breath in aston- 
 ishment, as they heard the king daring to urge 
 them to throw into the fire the gods before whom 
 even he had always trembled. At last, when they 
 had recovered themselves a little, they said : 
 
 ' You say to us that it is a good Word and brings 
 power to save. We will receive it, and will sit at 
 the feet of the teacher.' 
 
 As the ship turned back from Mauki to carry 
 Roma-tane to his chief island, Atiu, John Williams 
 asked him about the mysterious island. 
 
 ' Do you/ said John Williams, ' know an island 
 named Rarotonga?' 
 
 ' Yes/ replied Roma-tane, ' it is only a day and 
 a night's sail from Atiu.'
 
 32 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 So John Williams said ' Farewell ' to Roma-tane, 
 and turned the bow of his boat towards Rarotonga. 
 As he sailed away south-west there was a strange 
 wonder in John Williams's heart that, within a week, 
 a remorseless and ferocious cannibal king had 
 begun to know the love of God, and had swept 
 away from his islands the worship of spirits that 
 had held them in thrall ever since, in the dawn of 
 the world, the first man had been blown on to those 
 shores. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Baffled by contrary winds Te Matamua tacked 
 east and west, and swung away from the line for 
 Rarotonga. Day after day passed, provisions on 
 board were nearly all eaten, starvation on the open 
 ocean stared them in the face. The captain turned 
 round and went to John Williams saying : ' We 
 must give up the search or we shall all be starved.' 
 John Williams knew this was true ; yet he hated 
 the thought of going back. He was a scout ex- 
 ploring at the head of God's navy. 
 
 It was seven o'clock when the captain told John 
 Williams that they must give up the search. 
 
 ' In an hour's time,' said Williams, ' we will turn 
 back if we have not sighted Rarotonga.' 
 
 So they sailed on. The sun climbed the sky, 
 the cool dawn was giving way to the heat of day. 
 
 ' Go up the mast and look ahead/ said Williams
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 33 
 
 to a South Sea Island native. Then he paced the 
 deck, hoping to hear the cry of ' Land', but nothing 
 could the native see. 
 
 ' Go up again/ cried Williams a little later. And 
 again there was nothing. Four times the man 
 climbed the mast, and four times he reported only 
 sea and sky and cloud. Then there came a sudden 
 cry from the masthead : 
 
 ' Teie teie, taua fenua, nei ! ' * 
 
 (' Here, here is the land we have been seeking.') 
 
 All rushed to the bows. As the ship sailed on 
 and they came nearer, they saw a lovely island. 
 Mountains, towering peak on peak, with deep green 
 valleys between brown rocky heights hung with 
 vines, and the great ocean breakers, booming in 
 one white line of foaming surf on the reef of living 
 coral, made it look like a vision of fairyland. 
 
 They had discovered Rarotonga. 
 
 The call came, ' Who will go ashore ? ' and 
 a canoe was let down from the ship's side ; two 
 men, Papeiha and his friend Vahineino, leapt into 
 it. Those two fearlessly paddled towards the 
 shore, which was now one brown stretch of 
 Rarotongans. 
 
 Papeiha and Vahineino, who knew the ways of 
 
 the water from babyhood and could swim before 
 
 they could walk, waited for a great Pacific breaker, 
 
 and then swept in on her foaming crest. The canoe 
 
 1 Tay-ee-ay : ta-oo-a : fay-noo-a : nay-ee. 
 
 c
 
 34 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 grated on the shore. They walked up the beach 
 under the shade of a grove of trees and said to the 
 Rarotongan king, Makea, and his people : 
 
 'We have come to tell you that many of the 
 islands of the sea have burned their idols. Once 
 we in those islands pierced each other with spears 
 and beat each other to death with clubs ; we brutally 
 treated our women, and the children taken in war 
 were strung together by their ears like fish on 
 a line. To-day we come before you have de- 
 stroyed each other altogether in your wars to tell 
 you of the great God, our Father, who through 
 His Son Jesus Christ has taught us how to live as 
 brothers.' 
 
 King Makea said he was pleased to hear these 
 things, and came in his canoe to the ship to take 
 the other native teachers on shore with him. 
 
 Papeiha and his brown friends, with their wives, 
 went ashore. Night fell, and they were preparing 
 to sleep, when above the thud and hiss of the waves 
 they heard the noise of approaching crowds. The 
 footsteps and the talking came nearer, while the 
 little group of Christians listened intently. At last 
 a chief, carried by his warriors, came near. He 
 was the fiercest and most powerful chief on the 
 island. 
 
 When he came close to Papeiha and his friends, 
 the chief demanded that the wife of one of the 
 Christian teachers should be given to him, so that
 
 TE MATAMUA ('THE BEGINNING') 35 
 
 he might take her away with him as his twen- 
 tieth wife. The teachers argued with the chief, 
 the woman wept ; but he ordered her to be 
 seized and taken off. She resisted, as did the 
 others. Their clothes were torn to tatters by the 
 ferocious Rarotongans. All would have been over 
 with the Christians had not Tapairu, a brave 
 Rarotongan woman and the cousin of the king, 
 opposed the chiefs and even fought with her hands 
 to save the teacher's wife. At last the fierce chief 
 gave in, and Papeiha and his friends, before the 
 sun had risen, hurried to the beach, leapt into their 
 canoe, and paddled swiftly to the ship. 
 
 ' We must wait and come to this island another 
 day when the people are more friendly,' said every 
 one except Papeiha, who never would turn back. 
 ' Let me stay with them,' said he. 
 
 He knew that he might be slain and eaten by the 
 savage cannibals on the island. But leaving every- 
 thing he had upon the ship except his clothes and 
 his native Testament, he dropped into his canoe, 
 seized the paddle, and drove the canoe skimming 
 over the rolling waves till it leapt upon the shore. 
 
 The savages came jostling and waving spears 
 and clubs as they crowded round him. 
 
 ' Let us take him to Makea.' 
 
 So Papeiha was led to the chief. As he walked 
 he heard them shouting to one another, ' I'll have 
 his hat/ ' I'll have his jacket,' ' I'll have his shirt.' 
 
 c 2
 
 36 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 At length he reached the chief, who looked and 
 said, ' Speak to us, O man, that we may know why 
 you persist in coming.' 
 
 ' I come/ he answered, looking round on all the 
 people, ' so that you may all learn of the true God, 
 and that you, like all the people in the far-off 
 islands of the sea, may take your gods made of 
 wood, of birds' feathers, and of cloth, and burn 
 them/ 
 
 A roar of anger and horror burst from the people. 
 ' What ! ' they cried, ' burn the gods ! What gods 
 shall we then have? What shall we do without the 
 gods?' 
 
 They were angry, but there was something in 
 the bold face of Papeiha that kept them from slay- 
 ing him. They allowed him to stay, and did not 
 kill him. 
 
 The islanders soon began to wonder whether, 
 after all, the God of Papeiha was not the true God. 
 When John Williams sailed back to Rarotonga he 
 found that the island people had got together 
 hundreds of their wooden idols, and had burned 
 them in enormous bonfires which flamed on the 
 beach and lighted up the dark background of trees. 
 Those bonfires could be seen far out across the 
 Pacific Ocean, like a beacon light. 
 
 John Williams then settled on the island for 
 a long time to teach the people fully about Jesus 
 Christ.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE MESSENGER OF PEACE 
 
 As John Williams sat on the shore of Rarotonga 
 and watched the foaming breakers crashing on 
 the barrier reef, the longing came over him to go 
 on to other islands. For, while the ancient gods 
 of war of Rarotonga had been made into bonfires 
 and the people had learned to worship the Father 
 God, John Williams knew that there were many 
 other islands in which men still slew and ate one 
 another, and even buried their little babies alive 
 because they believed that it pleased the cruel 
 gods. 
 
 He could not reach these islands without a ship. 
 For month after month his eyes swept the sea 
 from east to west in search of the gleam of a sail, 
 but he never saw one. He knew he would need 
 a seventy-ton ship to face the thousands of miles 
 of the trackless ocean over which he must sail to 
 the other islands, so he determined to build such 
 a ship. 
 
 It seemed to be an impossible thing to determine 
 to do. There were trees growing upon the island, 
 but no saw to divide them into planks. There was 
 no iron in the rocks for the inner supports of a 
 ship and to make an anchor. Williams had no
 
 38 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 canvas for sails, nor rope for rigging. There was 
 no machinery for making the great ribs of wood 
 that a ship must have, or for curving the stout 
 planks to the shape of the hull. Williams had 
 never even seen a ship built, nor had any Raro- 
 tongan knowledge of how to do more than hack 
 a canoe out of a tree with a hatchet. 
 
 Yet on that island Williams set himself to build 
 a seventy- or eighty-ton ship fit for ocean vo3^ages. 
 
 On the beach lay an old chain cable which a 
 ship's company had left there years before when 
 they had tried to land and had been forced to fly 
 in terror from the savages. John also had a few 
 tools, with a pick-axe, a hoe, an adze, some hatchets 
 and hammers. 
 
 The chain cable might be hammered into nails 
 and bolts. But to mould the iron a forge was 
 needed. He had no anvil, nor coal for a forge fire, 
 nor had he the necessary bellows. But he set to 
 work. 1 The rats ate the leather with which he was 
 going to make the bellows, so he constructed out 
 of wood such a box-bellows 'as was never seen 
 before. In place of coal he used charcoal made 
 from the trees. His anvil was a big stone. He 
 made the piece of chain iron quite hot in the fire 
 to mould it as he wished. He sent the Rarotongans 
 into the woods in search of branches of trees 
 curved in the shape of the hull of the ship. These 
 
 1 For full description see John Williams the Shipbuilder.
 
 THE MESSENGER OF PEACE 39 
 
 branches he split into two halves to be used one on 
 each side of the ship. He made large wooden 
 pins to use as nails, and fixed the curved ribs made 
 from the split branches to the wooden keel which 
 he laid down. Then he showed the Rarotongans 
 how to split and smooth branches till they made 
 planks, and the planks were nailed to the ribs. So 
 the hull of the vessel was made ; but they had no 
 cord or sails, so John Williams invented a rope- 
 making machine, and taught the people to twist 
 the fibres of the hibiscus tree into strong rope. 
 Native mats, like those on which the Rarotongans 
 slept at night, he took and strengthened for sails. 
 
 To raise and furl sail the ship must have blocks 
 (with little grooved wheels, called sheaves, in them) 
 through which the ropes could run. Williams 
 could only make the sh'eaves to these blocks pro- 
 perly if he had a lathe. He therefore set to work 
 to make a turning lathe. Then he took a pick-axe, 
 a cooper's adze, and a large hoe, and out of these 
 made on the anvil strong iron pintles on which the 
 rudder could swing. The anchor was a crate of 
 wood filled with stones. 
 
 John Williams named his ship The Messenger 
 of Peace, and she flew the flag of the Doves of 
 Peace. His ambition for her was that she should 
 carry the message of ' Peace on earth ' to islands 
 which now were fighting tribe against tribe and 
 island against island.
 
 4 o THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 The wonderful ship was finished, and was pulled 
 into the lagoon from the shore by hundreds of 
 excited brown Rarotongans with shoutings of joy. 
 John Williams, proud to feel the deck of his own 
 ship under his feet, sailed her on a trial trip, but, 
 because his Rarotongan sailors had never managed 
 such a ship before, they nearly wrecked her and 
 smashed her foremast. This, however, was quickly 
 mended. King Makea of Rarotonga then sailed 
 away with John Williams on The Messenger of 
 Peace to the island of Aitutaki to see how the 
 Christian people there were faring. The Aitu- 
 takians were rejoiced to see the face of John 
 Williams again. They loaded up The Messenger 
 of Peace with coco-nuts to plant in Rarotonga, and 
 with pigs, and cats to rid the island of the thou- 
 sands upon thousands of audacious rats. When 
 ' All aboard ' was called and the ship weighed 
 anchor to leave Aitutaki for home, she found her- 
 self with a head-wind against her. Williams was 
 obliged to tack, taking his observations with the 
 quadrant and keeping his direction by compass. 
 "Three days and two nights passed, and King Makea 
 began to get restless for his beloved Rarotonga. 
 ' Have we not missed my island ? ' he asked. ' We 
 are sailing " i te tareva kaua " into wide, gaping 
 space.' 
 
 At last the sun set on the third evening. ' I shall 
 never see Rarotonga again,' wailed the despairing
 
 T3 
 
 w 
 
 I 
 
 3
 
 42 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 king. ' Go down and go to sleep now/ said 
 Williams. ' When the moon rises above the edge 
 of the sea I will call you up, and you shall see the 
 island.' 
 
 1 Ka moe ia e tama ' 'Can I sleep, friend ? ' asked 
 King Makea. ' Nay, I will stay on deck and watch.' 
 At last the silver threads of the light of the moon 
 crept over the edge of the sea. She rose, and the 
 gloomy wastes of the sea sparkled and threw back 
 a myriad diamonds of light. 
 
 King Makea went to the bow and, shading his 
 eyes with his hand, looked southward. There he 
 saw a thin white line, the foam of the surf in the 
 rays of the moon, and behind it, in dark relief, the 
 wild mountains that he knew so well. He leapt 
 with jo^ and clapped his hands. Then his eyes 
 sparkled with wonder. ' How do you tell just when 
 the island will come over the edge of the sea ? ' 
 he asked ; and everything that Williams could ex- 
 plain about compasses and sextants only made his 
 amazement deeper. 
 
 When The Messenger of Peace ran safely into the 
 harbourage of Rarotonga again King Makea, point- 
 ing to John Williams, said to his subjects : ' Never 
 again will I call those men warriors who fight on 
 the shore ; the English only, who battle w r ith the 
 winds and waves of the ocean, are worthy of that 
 name.' 
 
 Soon after this The Messenger of \ Peace, with
 
 THE MESSENGER OF PEACE 43 
 
 John and his wife Mary aboard, sailed eastward 
 toward Tahiti, where the crews of the vessels at 
 anchor looked with amazement at this strange ship 
 with its curving masts, quaint rigging, mat sails, 
 and rough timbers. 
 
 The Hon. Captain Waldegrave, of H.M.S. 
 Seringapatam, which was in the harbour of Pa- 
 peete, gave John Williams enough green paint to 
 cover his ship. At Tahiti he got some proper 
 masts and rigging and sails, and after a visit to 
 Raistea, he set out on May 24, 1830, on the long 
 ocean trail to the West. 
 
 The first part of this new journey was to be 
 among islands to which Williams had already 
 sailed, the latter part to shores which he had 
 never seen before. Five nights later the ship 
 swung round the promontory at the western point 
 of Mangaia, and Davida the teacher, whom he 
 had left there some time before, and all the Chris- 
 tian people came down to the shore and welcomed 
 Williams and his new colleague BarfT, who was on 
 the ship with him. The islanders showed them 
 the large white church made of coral concrete, 
 and gave them a feast spread upon a tablecloth 
 of green leaves. From Mangaia The Messenger of 
 Peace sailed north-west to the island of Roma-tane, 
 where they were just in time to join in the festivities 
 of the king's marriage to the daughter of the chief 
 of Mauki. Here Williams and BarfF opened a great
 
 44 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 new church that the people had built in place of 
 their idol altars ; it held 1,500 people. 
 
 Then the missionaries sailed away in The 
 Messenger of Peace to Mauki and Mitiaro, the 
 smaller islands over which Roma-tane was king. 
 There they found a people with fires burning at 
 the foot of great trees, waiting and waiting until 
 each tree, being burned away at the foot, fell with 
 a crash. Then they burned away the branches and 
 lighted fires under the tree at different places, 
 which burned it into lengths. 
 
 ' What are you doing ? ' asked Williams. 
 
 ' We are building a temple for Jehovah, the true 
 God/ they replied. 'We have only a few axes, 
 so we fell our trees by fire, and by fire lop them, 
 and divide them into lengths.' 
 
 Some friends living in Birmingham had sent to 
 Williams a good supply of axes and saws, hinges, 
 and other tools and ironmongery. He, therefore, 
 gave a good supply of these to the brown people 
 of Mauki and Mitiaro, to hew down and to shape 
 the trees for building their church. 
 
 They then sailed away to the south-west, and at 
 the end of two days sighted the lovely island of 
 Rarotonga, where they found that a dreadful disease 
 had spread over the island, making many people ill, 
 while hundreds had died. Williams did all he could 
 to comfort them and then sailed on to Aitutaki,where 
 the people amazed him by putting into his hands 
 103 in money.
 
 THE MESSENGER OF PEACE 45 
 
 ' This/ they said, ' is to cause the Word of God 
 to grow in other lands.' 
 
 Now Williams knew that they had never before 
 had any money in their hands. How had this great 
 wealth come to them ? Then he remembered a 
 conversation that he had had with the Aitutaki 
 people on his last visit to them. 
 
 ' How are you able to come here and bring this 
 message to us ? ' the people had asked. 
 
 ' Men and women and boys and girls in the far- 
 off islands of Beritani (Britain) collect money in 
 order to send missionaries to you/ he had replied. 
 
 ' What is money ? ' they had asked. In the 
 islands then there was no such thing; all buying 
 and selling were by exchange say, of a tomahawk 
 for coco-nuts. 
 
 When Williams had explained money to them, 
 they had exclaimed : 
 
 ' What a pity that we have no money to help the 
 good work of causing the Word of God to grow ! ' 
 
 ' You can buy money with your hogs/ he replied. 
 ' Let every family set aside a pig for the purposes 
 of making the Word grow.' 
 
 Early next morning he had been awakened by 
 the piercing squeals of a hundred pigs all along 
 the beach. The people were busy cutting a nick 
 in the ears of the selected pigs, marking them out 
 to be sold for the sake of the Word. 
 
 Now they had sold all the marked pigs to a
 
 46 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 captain who anchored off the island. He had paid 
 ;io3 for them. Every farthing of this great sum, 
 the first money that the people of Aitutaki had ever 
 handled, was given to help to spread the Good 
 News which had come to them. 
 
 With a joyful heart Williams went aboard, and 
 hoisting the flag of peace, sailed into the unknown 
 west for five days, till at last they reached the rocky 
 place called Savage Island by Captain Cook, who 
 had found its inhabitants so ferocious that he sailed 
 away without landing. It is now called Niue, and 
 is a part of the British Empire. Missionaries of 
 the London Missionary Society are at work there. 
 
 As the boat of The Messenger of Peace was lowered 
 and pulled for the shore, they saw the Savage 
 Islanders drawn up in battle array on the beach. 
 Each man had three or four spears, and a. belt full 
 of fighting-stones. The teachers in the boat at last 
 persuaded the islanders to put out in canoes and 
 paddle cautiously toward The Messenger of Peace. 
 One wild old chief, his tall body smeared with 
 charcoal, his long grey hair and matted beard 
 plaited and twisted like whipcord, came aboard 
 and began to leap about, shaking his spear and 
 howling horribly, gnashing his teeth, thrusting 
 his long grey beard into his mouth and gnawing it 
 savagely, and then leaping overboard was rowed 
 back to the shore. After repeated attempts it 
 seemed clear that the islanders were too savage
 
 THE MESSENGER OF PEACE 47 
 
 and wild to make it possible to leave any teachers 
 with them. 
 
 Williams therefore, with difficulty, persuaded 
 two young Savage Islanders, named Uea and 
 Niumanga, to sail with them. 
 
 When the ship swung out to sea again the 
 young islanders began to yell and tear their hair 
 in fear. For three days they neither ate nor drank 
 nor slept, fearing that they were to be killed and 
 eaten. But at last they realized that John Williams 
 was their friend, and began to talk with him, and to 
 learn the reason why he sailed among the islands 
 of the seas.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 
 
 ONE morning they sailed into a narrow channel 
 among lovely islets, which gradually brought them 
 nearer a wide flat island, called Tongatabu, where 
 they discovered two Wesleyan Methodist mis- 
 sionaries busily at work. The bows of The 
 Messenger of Peace were turned northward toward 
 the Samoan Islands. As they started, they took 
 aboard a man named Fauea. 
 
 ' I am a chief of the Samoan Islands,' he said, 
 1 but for eleven years I have been away from my 
 home and know not how to return, if you will 
 not take me. I will tell the people there to receive 
 you well.' 
 
 Tupou, the king of Tongatabu, told Williams 
 that what Fauea said was true; and that his wife 
 was a Christian, and he, though not a declared 
 worshipper of our Lord, was friendly to the new 
 religion. 
 
 1 We will take you and your wife and family to 
 the islands,' said Williams, to Fauea's great delight. 
 After a difficult voyage, they at last heard the man 
 at the look-out shout ' Land ho! ' But a great gale 
 caught the ship, tearing the sails into tatters, and 
 straining The Messenger of Peace in every timber.
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 49 
 
 She held on, however, gamely, and at last got round 
 to the leeward of the island into comparative shelter. 
 It was the farthest west of the islands of Samoa, 
 called Savaii. John Williams wished to land at 
 Sapapalii, a village on this island where the great 
 chief Malietoa lived. For day after day the ship beat 
 up against a violent head-wind. Sunday came, but 
 the wind still held. With torn sails and battered 
 hull they crept into bay after bay seeking anchorage. 
 At last they found good soundings and dropped 
 anchor, to get rest and repair damages. 
 
 All hope of quiet was shattered, however, for 
 canoes came shooting out from the shore to bring 
 goods for barter. 
 
 Fauea leaned over the rail and shouted : ' This 
 is e vaa lotu (a praying ship), and this is le aso so 
 (a sacred day). Bring food and goods to-morrow.' 
 He then gathered some of the savages on the 
 quarter-deck. 
 
 ' Tahiti, Rarotonga, Tongatabu,' he said, ' have 
 burned their gods and have turned to the worship 
 of the God who made all things. These white 
 men have come to bring you knowledge which will 
 end your wars. Can the religion of these wonder- 
 ful papalangi (foreigners) be anything but wise and 
 good?' he said, pointing to Williams and Barff. 
 'Their heads are covered, ours are open to the 
 heat of the sun and the wet of the rain ; their bodies 
 are covered with beautiful cloth, we have nothing 
 
 D
 
 5 o THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 but a girdle of leaves ; they have clothes on their 
 very feet, while ours are naked like a dog's.' 
 
 The wind and the waves still rose and were so 
 strong that the anchor began to drag. The ship 
 was driven toward the sea until she had paid out 
 forty fathoms of chain. All on board toiled at the 
 chain, but it took hours of labour before the anchor 
 swung clear and the ship to set sail to sea. 
 
 Sunrise on the second morning found the ship 
 entering the narrow waters between the lovely 
 Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu. The Mes- 
 senger of Peace hove to in front of the village of 
 Sapapalii, the home of the chief Malietoa. The 
 Samoans came out in their canoes and swarmed 
 aboard. Malietoa the chief, John Williams found, 
 had crossed to Upolu and was fighting in a war 
 there. The mountains and the shore were wrapped 
 in flames and smoke, where the savage chief was 
 burning the houses and plantations, and even 
 throwing the bodies of the women and children 
 and old men into the fire. The brown apostles 
 from The Messenger of Peace found war facing 
 them. 
 
 Malietoa came aboard, and John Williams pleaded 
 with him to cease fighting in that war. ' They 
 killed Tamafainga,'he replied, stoutly. ' Tamafainga 
 was related to me. We must avenge his death. If 
 I did not fight and break down my enemies I should 
 be spat upon. When it is finished, I will place my-
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 51 
 
 self under your teachers.' Malietoa left the ship, 
 promising to come with his largest canoe in the 
 morning to bring Williams ashore. 
 
 A dead calm fell upon the sea. In the morning 
 it was impossible for Malietoa to get his canoe out 
 to them, for they, in the night, had drifted twelve 
 miles away, the sea being too deep for anchorage. 
 
 So Williams and Barff let down the ship's boat 
 and tugged at the oars for hour after hour through 
 the morning and afternoon until darkness fell. The 
 boat was leaking, and they had difficulty in keeping 
 her afloat. Malietoa sent out a canoe to help, for 
 they were now in sight of the shore, and lighted 
 by a huge beacon fire on the beach, they were 
 brought safely to the landing-place, where amid 
 a tremendous torchlight procession through the 
 groves of palm-trees, Williams and Barff were led 
 to the chief's village, and each with his head on 
 a bundle of dried grass, slept through the night. 
 
 Williams talked with the chief and with his 
 people in the days that followed. Then, having 
 left brown teachers with their wives and children 
 on the island, he went once more aboard The 
 Messenger of Peace, and sailed away towards 
 Savage Island, to take back the two wfld young 
 warriors who were still aboard. 
 
 For fourteen days Williams sailed with contrary 
 winds broken by calm, and still he was 200 miles 
 west of Savage Island, while provisions were 
 
 D2
 
 52 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 running short. They must reach port with all 
 speed, or starve on the ocean. Then strangely 
 enough the wind veered and sprang up from the 
 west and blew towards Rarotonga, which lay 
 800 miles to the east. The west wind held for a 
 week, when they sighted the mountains of Raro- 
 tonga, where hundreds of people crowded along 
 the white beach, waving their hands and shouting 
 'Welcome'. At four o'clock that afternoon they 
 dropped anchor off Avarua village, where King 
 Makea and all the people greeted them with glad 
 smiles of welcome. 
 
 Three days later they sailed again, calling at 
 Mangaia and Rurutu on their way to Tahiti, which 
 they reached in forty-eight hours from Rurutu. 
 With this wonderful wind from the west, in an ocean 
 where it nearly always blows from the east, The 
 Messenger of Peace had actually sailed 1,800 miles 
 in fifteen days. 
 
 From Tahiti Williams visited Eimeo and then 
 sailed for Huahine. At last The Messenger of Peace 
 proudly ran once more into the familiar lagoon 
 under the shelter of the towering peaks of Raiatea. 
 
 John Williams had now in this wonderful ship 
 of his voyaged for thousands of miles and lighted 
 beacon fires of the gospel of peace from Rurutu 
 to Rarotonga, from Aitutaki to the far Samoan 
 island of Savaii. 
 
 Sailing back to his old island of Raiatea, Williams
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 53 
 
 stayed for six months there. Then he and his 
 wife Mary, with their boys John and Samuel, went 
 aboard the ship and sailed away again to Raro- 
 tonga. There Williams planned a cruise with 
 his new colleague, Aaron Buzacott, and King 
 Makea round the islands of Aitutaki, Mangaia, 
 Atiu, and Mauki. 
 
 After this circular journey around the islands, 
 Williams, with greater daring than ever, planned 
 to take a long voyage farther west than he had 
 ever been before. With iron and copper and other 
 materials sent from Britain, he lengthened and 
 strengthened the sturdy old Messenger of Peace. 
 
 One day, as the ship lay in harbour, there came 
 a deathly stillness and then a dense pall over the 
 whole sky that blotted out the horizon. A terrible 
 flash of lightning blazed across the ocean, and 
 thunder rolled wildly in the sky. Darkness, borne 
 on the hurricane, rushed across the ocean. All 
 through the night and into Sunday the wind roared 
 and howled, giant trees were snapped like twigs, 
 and cottages swept away like houses of cards. 
 
 Before the cold dawn on Monday, Williams was 
 out and on his way to the harbourage. He tried 
 to take the sea-path, but the screaming hurricane 
 strangled him and would not let him move. He 
 turned to the forest road, and though trees fell 
 crashing across the road before him and behind, 
 he escaped without harm.
 
 54 
 
 At the moment of the most awful intensity, when 
 wind, sea, and sky raved, the wind shifted. As if 
 by magic the storm was hushed and the sun shone 
 out. 
 
 What of the ship ? She had disappeared, leaving 
 not a spar behind. 
 
 Then a shout came from inland : ' The ship, the 
 ship ! ' And there, among the trees, driven a 
 quarter of a mile inland by the enormous waves, 
 in a grove of chestnut trees, lay The Messenger 
 of Peace unharmed. 
 
 How could they move her? It seemed impos- 
 sible, for she was set deep in mud. But Williams 
 prepared mighty levers of wood and raised first 
 her bow and then her stern, until she was out of 
 the mud. Then he placed tree-trunks as rollers 
 in front of her, and many hundreds of Rarotongans 
 together, with faces quivering and sinews strained, 
 tugged at ropes until the ship slid along the rollers 
 and down the beach into the water again. 
 
 With sails hoisted and anchor weighed, and with 
 King Makea as well as Williams aboard, she sailed 
 out into the west. For five days the wind held, 
 and then, having sailed 800 miles, she reached 
 Manua, the most easterly Samoan island, which, 
 as Williams knew, no white missiona^r had ever 
 visited. 
 
 In Manua, Williams was delighted and surprised 
 to find a number of Christian people who had
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 55 
 
 learned of Jesus from brown teachers. He sailed 
 on to Tutuila, where in a lovely bay he discovered 
 many Christians. There too, they had become, as 
 they said, ' Sons of the Word,' and had built a church 
 all through the teaching of brown apostles, who 
 had themselves been taught by the men whom 
 Williams had left on the island of Savaii with King 
 Malietoa. They now sailed to Savaii. 
 
 After some adventures with the chiefs of the 
 Samoan islands, 1 The Messenger of Peace turned 
 her bows south towards the little island of Niua- 
 tabutabu, and thence towards the Fiji Islands. 
 
 As Williams lay asleep one night, the mate of 
 the ship ran down the companion-ladder and awoke 
 him, calling out: 'You must get up at once, sir; 
 the ship has sprung a leak. She is half-full of 
 water, and is sinking fast.' 
 
 Williams ran on deck at once. There was already 
 water four feet deep in the hold. They must pump 
 or sink. For an hour they worked, and then dis- 
 covered they had reduced the water in the hold by 
 six inches. When they looked into the hold they 
 discovered the sea pouring in. So all through the 
 night and day they pumped. For seven days the 
 pumping had to go on, until at Tonga they found 
 two British ships riding at anchor, and by the 
 advice of their captains and with the help of the 
 
 1 For full details see John Williams the Shipbuilder.
 
 56 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 islanders, they beached and careened l The Mes- 
 senger of Peace. They mended her hull, and then, 
 taut and trim as ever, she sailed east, back to the 
 familiar mountain-tops of Rarotonga. 
 
 It was now many years since Mary and John 
 Williams had come across the world from London 
 to the islands, so they decided to go home to Britain 
 with their children for a furlough. 
 
 Williams sent off his beloved Messenger of Peace 
 to Tahiti to be sold, thinking that he could follow 
 in another ship which he expected would call at 
 Rarotonga. But no ship came. 
 
 Williams was just beginning to think of building 
 another ship to carry them to Tahiti, when he found 
 that a trader, who had landed on the island, had 
 tried to build a ship, but had not been able to finish 
 her. Williams paid the trader for the hull as it 
 stood, set to work with forge and anvil, saw and 
 hammer, and swiftly completed the little ship. 
 
 But he was not yet home, and perils lay between 
 him and Britain. They sailed away to Tahiti and 
 Eimeo its sister island. Here Williams found a 
 British weaver named Armitage, who had been 
 sent out by the Missionary Society to teach the 
 people to weave. So Williams turned the ship 
 and sailed back to Rarotonga, calling at Atiu on 
 the way. Williams and Armitage landed, and 
 during the night a gale rose and the little ship 
 1 Heaved her on her side, to show the keel.
 
 A MESSAGE TO SAMOA 57 
 
 was obliged to run out to sea for safety. In the 
 morning she was out of sight. 
 
 Weeks passed, and at last a little boy ran to 
 Williams, just at dusk, and said : ' There is a speck 
 on the edge of the sea.' They ran to look, but 
 already the sun had gone, and the surface of the 
 sea was dark. 
 
 Williams woke long before the sun rose next 
 morning and climbed to the edge of the hill. As 
 the first faint rays of pink light flushed the sky 
 and lighted the sea, he looked out over the water 
 and, to his joy, saw their little ship approaching the 
 island. 
 
 Without any delay they went aboard, amid the 
 weeping of the Atiuans, who were disappointed 
 that the ship had come back to take away their 
 white friends. From Atiu he sailed to Rarotonga, 
 where King Makea and all the people clustered 
 round him as he landed with Armitage, the master- 
 weaver ; and so back to Tahiti and Raiatea. 
 
 Williams now really started to go home to 
 Britain, which he had not seen for seventeen years. 
 When he reached Britain he told his adventures 
 to the people, and called on the British boys and 
 girls and men and women to give to the London 
 Missionary Society a new and more splendid ship 
 than any he had had for carrying the gospel to the 
 people of the South Seas.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE CAMDEN 
 
 1 HE spoke as a messenger of Fairyland/ said 
 a great orator of John Williams after he had heard 
 the stories of his adventures. ' He told such tales 
 as no man ever told before, and every sentence 
 bore the deep impress of truth.' 
 
 As men and women and children heard him, 
 they would laugh and sob and then break into 
 great cheering ; they felt that they would do and 
 give anything to help this glorious work of carry- 
 ing to the peoples in the South Seas the Good 
 News of Jesus Christ. 
 
 While John Williams was going about the 
 country speaking to people, he also wrote a book 
 about all his adventures, with the long title A Nar- 
 rative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea 
 Islands, with Remarks upon the Natural History of 
 the Islands, Origin, Languages, Traditions, and 
 Usages of the Inhabitants. Men said that nothing 
 so exciting and wonderful had been written since 
 Captain Cook published his voyages. 
 
 John Williams all this time was dreaming of 
 a ship that would be stronger and sail faster than 
 the stout old Messenger of Peace. In this ship he

 
 THE CAMDEN 59 
 
 wanted specially to go on to farther islands where 
 the cannibals lived in the Western Pacific. 
 
 In all parts of Britain he spoke of his plan ; and 
 at length men had given enough money to buy 
 a fine brig, the Camden f for the London Missionary 
 Society, in which Williams and sixteen other mis- 
 sionaries were to sail from the Thames to the 
 South Seas. 
 
 A ship's pilot came one day, saying, ' I wish to 
 have the privilege of piloting the Camden out of 
 port for nothing.' 
 
 The regular pilot's fee for this was from 20 
 to 25. 
 
 Another man, who made his living by supplying 
 ships with pure, filtered water for long voyages, 
 after he had put twenty tons of water on the 
 Camden, refused to be paid. Her captain was to 
 be Captain Morgan, a Christian mariner who knew 
 the South Pacific as no other sailor did. 
 
 One early spring morning a steamship, The City 
 of Canterbury, threw off her moorings from London 
 Bridge with 400 friends on board, including John 
 Williams and other missionaries. Williams stayed 
 on the platform and waved to the thousands of 
 people on London Bridge, who fluttered their 
 handkerchiefs in response. They steamed down 
 to Gravesend and ran alongside the Camden. 
 
 John and Mary Williams and their little boy 
 Willie, with their eldest son John and his wife,
 
 60 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 went on board the Camden. Their son Samuel, 
 who was to stay in England, waved his handker- 
 chief from the City of Canterbury, and then looked 
 for the last time on the face of his father. 
 
 Next day the Camden, having anchored over- 
 night off Margate, put out of Deal, having dropped 
 the friendly pilot who had conducted the ship past 
 the treacherous and shifting Goodwin Sands. 
 
 Williams was in high spirits. He wrote home 
 to his sisters in London : 
 
 ' We are gliding down the Channel most delight- 
 fully with a fine breeze and a smooth sea. The 
 bleating of the sheep, the quacking of the ducks, 
 the crowing of the cocks, and the singing of John's 
 canaries, make us think that we are still on shore, 
 though I cannot persuade our sea-sick folks that 
 such is the case. The vessel is the most perfect 
 we could have obtained.' 
 
 Williams loved a fast ship, and he exulted as the 
 Camden outdistanced other craft. He wrote, on 
 the next day, as they were passing the Isle ol 
 Wight: 
 
 ' Our vessel is gliding splendidly past every ship 
 she sees, even those double her size. The weather 
 is beautiful, and the wind veering round just as we 
 require it.' 
 
 So the Camden ran down the Channel, having to 
 put into Dartmouth Harbour for four days to 
 escape a contrary gale, and then out again down 
 past the coast of Africa to Simon's Bay.
 
 THE CAMDEN 61 
 
 On July 9, 1838, the Camden again set all sail 
 and ran triumphantly through a violent gale until 
 she reached Sydney Harbour. 
 
 In October the Camden unfurled her sails and 
 ran out from Sydney into the open sea. For four 
 weeks she ran eastward with all sails set, till she 
 sighted the green heights of Tutuila and dropped 
 anchor in the lovely bay of Pagopago. 
 
 As Williams put ashore and went up to a new 
 church which the people had just built, an old 
 chief, his voice trembling with excitement, pointed 
 to Williams and said, ' This is the great white chief 
 who was to come from beyond the edge where the 
 sky meets the sea. This is he who has brought 
 the new Word. Hold fast to all that he teaches 
 you.' 
 
 From Pagopago they sailed again round to 
 Leone Bay, where the Christian chief Amoamo 
 feasted John Williams and listened to his words. 
 
 The Camden then swung out on to the ocean 
 again and bore up for the next island, Upolu. As 
 they came near to the harbour of Apia they saw, 
 gleaming between the brown trunks of the trees, 
 the new white coral-plaster churches of the differ- 
 ent villages under the dark rich green of the palm 
 fronds. 
 
 On board were three missionaries intended for 
 this great island. As they landed the news spread 
 like a forest-fire over the hills and mountains.
 
 62 . THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Chiefs came hurrying down from distant parts of 
 the island to plead for one of the ' papalangi ' to 
 settle with his tribe. 
 
 John Williams then went round the island to 
 a place called Fasetootai, where he thought he 
 might settle with his wife, where King Malietoa of 
 Sapapalii had conquered the Upoluans. As 
 Williams and his wife stopped to look around, 
 two fine, tall, young chiefs came to John and 
 Mary. 
 
 ' Stay with us. Live with us,' they pleaded. ' It 
 is because of the Word that we are here and can 
 lie down and sleep in peace at night without the 
 dread of the slaying-club of the warriors. Only 
 one thing we lack. If you would come and live 
 among us we should never cease rejoicing for the 
 whole of our lives ! ' 
 
 Williams did not have to say that he would. He 
 had only got as far as nodding his assent when 
 they jumped for joy, and ran to the village, shouting 
 to the people. Over five hundred of them ran as 
 hard as they could through the woods. They ran 
 for twenty miles till they came to Apia, where they 
 knew all the luggage of their beloved ' Viliamu ', 
 as they called Williams, had been left. 
 
 Some of them had already learned the shape of 
 a letter W. Running in and out among the lug- 
 gage, wherever they came on a package labelled 
 with Williams's initial they shouted with joy and
 
 THE CAMDEN 63 
 
 picked it up. At last they had found every box 
 that he owned. 
 
 They formed up in single file along the shore, 
 and started off home again with bundles, boxes, 
 crates on their heads, shouting, laughing, and 
 when the bundle was not too heavy, dancing for 
 
 joy- 
 Songs were made up, which they sang as they 
 marched along between the surf and the palms. 
 The chorus which all the five hundred thundered 
 out at the top of their voices was : 
 
 Viliamu is coming, is coming, is coming ; 
 He is bringing the ' lotu ' l to Fasetootai. 
 
 At Fasetootai John Williams and Mary and their 
 son had strange adventures. 2 
 
 But the old yearning came on him to see his 
 beloved island-peoples of the eastern ocean once 
 more, and then to sail still farther west. So the brig 
 weighed anchor and set her sails for Rarotonga. 
 For over a fortnight they tacked eastward, and at 
 last the green forests and brown peak of Rarotonga, 
 which Williams had not seen for over five years, 
 rose over the edge of the sea. 
 
 As they sailed past the beach, above which the 
 white cottages and church glittered in the sunshine, 
 the cannon aboard the Camden boomed out a salute. 
 
 1 The true religion. 
 
 1 See John Williams the Shipbuilder, Chapters XXIV, XXV.
 
 64 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Canoes were soon shooting out from the shore. 
 The Rarotongans in the canoes saw the face that 
 they knew so well, and, turning, shouted with joy 
 to their friends : 
 
 ' Viliamu has come ! It is Viliamu ! ' 
 
 The people on the shore danced for joy, and in 
 a few moments the whole village was thrilling with 
 the excitement of the news. The ship sailed on, 
 and half an hour later the cannon boomed out 
 again in salute of the royal village of Avarua. 
 
 John Williams ordered some great boxes to be 
 hoisted from the hold. 
 
 ' Take care/ he shouted, as these were let down 
 over the side. They were, in his view, the most 
 precious freight that any of his ships had ever 
 carried 5,000 Rarotongan New Testaments. 
 
 As the boxes were opened the people crowded 
 round to secure one of these priceless treasures. 
 Every one was eager to buy a copy. One man, as 
 he secured his, hugged the book in ecstasy ; another 
 and another kissed it ; others held them up and 
 waved them in the air. 
 
 One night a great wind arose. In the morning 
 the Camden had completely disappeared. No one 
 knew what had happened to her. But, at last, 
 weeks later, she hove in sight one morning, and on 
 the next day they all went on board. They sailed 
 away to Tahiti, and thence to Huahine, where 
 Williams opened a dainty little Christian church
 
 THE CAMDEN 65 
 
 on the very spot where there had stood an altar on 
 which men, women, and children had been sacri- 
 ficed to the gods. 
 
 Viliamu then sailed on the Camden to Raiatea, 
 and thence to Borabora and Atiu. Here, as he was 
 landing, Williams was hurled into the sea by a 
 wave which turned the canoe upside down. The 
 ship's boat was close by ; the receding wave swung 
 Williams out to sea, and half a dozen hands reached 
 out to grasp him and pull him aboard. This 
 was the seventh time that he had escaped being 
 drowned. 
 
 When the Camden had run down again to Raro- 
 tonga and up to Aitutaki, Williams had seen most of 
 the islands in which he had been the pioneer-apostle. 
 In all of them he spoke to the listening people of 
 the great dark islands of the western ocean, where 
 none had heard of the Word and mothers still 
 slew their babies to please the loathsome gods of 
 blood, just as they had done in Raiatea and the 
 islands of the Eastern Pacific before the. coming of 
 the Good News of the Kingdom. 
 
 As the bow of the Camden was turned westward 
 again, and she sailed toward Samoa, Williams, 
 gazing back at Rarotonga, took his last look of the 
 lovely island. Then he turned, untired and un- 
 daunted, to the new perils of the savage islands, 
 where man rarely dared to land. 
 
 At last he was back on the Samoan Islands at
 
 66 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Upolu, and the Camden sailed off on another 
 journey to return with an Englishman on board, 
 who wished to give himself to the great work which 
 he saw that Williams and the other missionaries 
 were doing. 
 
 Williams gathered all his people together in the 
 church, and spoke to them of ' the great voyage ' 
 that he was to take on the morrow. And he read 
 to them these words : 
 
 And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, 
 and prayed with them all, 
 
 And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, 
 and kissed him, 
 
 Sorrowing most of all for the word which he 
 had spoken, that they should behold his face no 
 more. 
 
 And they brought him on his way unto the ship. 
 
 It was more than the Upoluans, who loved their 
 Tama Viliamu, could stand. Strong, hardened 
 warriors, who could face death without flinching, 
 bowed their heads, and tears ran down their brown 
 cheeks. 
 
 Williams went out into the darkening twilight, 
 and he himself was weeping. His wife had never, 
 in all his life of peril and adventure, seen him so 
 sad. At midnight he said farewell to her and to 
 John and Carrie, and he took up little William and 
 kissed him. 
 
 ' Do not, do not land on Erromanga,' said Mary 
 Williams.
 
 THE CAMDEN 67 
 
 With those words in his ears John passed from 
 her, and went down to the harbour at Apia. 
 
 When dawn came up, Williams, Harris, Cunning- 
 ham (British Vice-Consul in the Pacific), and Captain 
 Morgan went aboard the Camden. With them were 
 twelve brown teachers for the unknown islands of 
 the west. The brig's sails were spread and her 
 course set westward. She ran like a deer on the 
 plain along the great ocean. By the Tuesday she 
 had run 600 miles in less than three days, and 
 sighted Rotuma. 
 
 They were now only 60 miles from the nearest 
 of the Hebrides. They sailed through the night 
 and at dawn found themselves close to Fotuna 
 Island. They made friends with the sooty-coloured 
 savages, smeared with red, who belonged to the 
 island, and then sailed on through the night till 
 by dawn the Camden was off another island called 
 Tanna. 
 
 The ship's boat put off and took ashore three of 
 the brown teachers from Samoa. 
 
 ' These,' said Williams to the three Tanna chiefs 
 Lalolago, Salamea, and Mose, who came to greet 
 them, ' are the chiefs of God who are come to live 
 with you and to teach you,' and he pointed to the 
 three teachers. 
 
 The Tanna chiefs smiled delightedly at this, but 
 in the evening, tribes had arrived from other parts 
 of the island howling for fish-hooks and for gifts. 
 
 2
 
 68 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 They refused to let Williams and Morgan and 
 Harris go back to the ship. A hundred of them 
 surrounded the boat, but a friendly chief argued 
 with the savages. At last they left their hold 
 of the little boat, and Williams and his friends 
 went back to the ship for the night. The next 
 day the brig stood northward for Erromanga the 
 island from whose shore even Captain Cook had 
 turned away, pursued by spears and stones and 
 arrows. 
 
 Cunningham and Williams at dawn watched the 
 grey stone-covered beach, and behind the beach 
 the dense bush and the waving fronds of palms. 
 Williams was strangely excited. He felt that he 
 was entering on a new adventure. He had lived 
 for so many years among the brown Polynesians of 
 the Eastern Pacific, now he was in the New Hebrides, 
 among the fierce and black cannibal islanders of the 
 Western Pacific. If he won here, a thousand islands 
 were open to him. 
 
 They were treacherous and violent savages who 
 would smash a skull by one blow with a great club ; 
 or leaping on a man from behind, would cut through 
 his spine with a single stroke of their tomahawks, 
 and then drag him off to their cannibal oven. 
 
 ' Let down the whale-boat.' His voice rang out 
 without tremor of fear. His eyes were on the 
 canoe in which three black Erromangans were 
 paddling across the bay. As the boat touched the
 
 THE CAMDEN 69 
 
 water, he and the crew of four dropped into her 
 with Captain Morgan and the two friends, Harris 
 and Cunningham. 
 
 The oars dipped and flashed in the morning sun 
 as the whale-boat flew along towards the canoe. 
 When they reached it Williams spoke in the dia- 
 lects of the other islands, but none could the three 
 savages in the canoe understand. So he gave them 
 some beads and fish-hooks as a present to show 
 that he was a friend ; and again his boat shot away 
 toward the beach. 
 
 They pulled to a creek where a brook ran down 
 in a lovely valley between two mountains. 
 
 Picking up a bucket from the boat, Williams held 
 it out to the chief who was on the beach, and made 
 signs to show that he wished for water from the 
 brook. The chief took the bucket, and turning, 
 ran up the beach and disappeared. For a quarter 
 of an hour they waited, and for half an hour. At 
 last, when the sun was now high in the sky, the 
 chief returned with the water. 
 
 Williams drank from the water to show his 
 friendliness. Then his friend Harris, getting over 
 the side of the boat, waded ashore through the 
 cool, sparkling, shallow water and sat down. The 
 natives ran away, but soon came back with coco- 
 nuts and opened them for him to drink. 
 
 Williams now waded ashore and Cunningham 
 followed. Captain Morgan stopped to throw out
 
 70 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 the anchor of his little boat and then stepped 
 out and went ashore, leaving his crew of four 
 brown islanders resting on their oars. 
 
 Williams and his two companions scrambled up 
 the stony beach, over the grey stones and boulders 
 alongside the tumbling brook, for over a hundred 
 yards. Turning to the right they were lost to 
 sight from the water's edge. Captain Morgan was 
 just following them when he heard a terrified yell 
 from the crew in the boat. 
 
 Williams and his friends had gone into the bush 
 Harris in front, Cunningham next, and Williams 
 last. Suddenly Harris, who had disappeared in 
 the bush, rushed out, followed by yelling savages 
 with clubs. Harris rushed down the bank of the 
 brook, stumbled, and fell in. The water dashed 
 over him, and the Erromangans, with the red fury 
 of slaughter in their eyes, leapt in and beat in his 
 skull with clubs. 
 
 Cunningham, with a native at his heels with 
 lifted club, stooped, picked up a great pebble, and 
 hurled it full in the face of the savage who was 
 pursuing him ; the man was stunned. Turning 
 again, Cunningham leapt safely into the boat. 
 
 Williams, leaving the brook, had rushed down 
 the beach to leap into the sea. Reaching the edge 
 of the water, where the beach falls steeply into 
 the sea, he slipped on a pebble and fell into the 
 water.
 
 THE CAMDEN 71 
 
 Cunningham, from the boat, hurled stones at the 
 natives, who rushed at Williams as he lay prostrate 
 in the water with a savage over him with uplifted 
 club. The club fell, and other Erromangans, rush- 
 ing in, beat John Williams with their clubs and 
 shot at him with their arrows. Boys rushed down 
 and beat his body with stones until the ripples of 
 the beach ran red with his blood. 
 
 The hero of a hundred islands was dead the 
 first martyr of Erromanga. 
 
 Captain Morgan, knowing that to recover Wil- 
 liams's body was impossible, sailed the Camden to 
 Sydney. From Sydney a ship-of-war, H.M.S. 
 Favourite, was commissioned to sail for Erromanga. 
 
 When the Favourite sailed on to Samoa scores 
 of canoes put out to meet her. A brown Samoan 
 guided the first canoe. 
 
 1 Missi Viliamu/ he shouted. 
 
 ' He is dead/ came the answer. 
 
 The man stood as though stunned. He dropped 
 his paddle, he drooped his head, and great tears 
 welled out from the eyes of this dark islander and 
 ran down his cheeks. 
 
 1 Aue, Viliamu ! aue, Tama ! ' he wailed. ' Alas, 
 Williams! alas, our father! ' 
 
 It was at dead of night when a panting messen- 
 ger reached Fasetootai, and awakened Mary 
 Williams from her quiet sleep to break to her the 
 tidings.
 
 72 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 She could not weep ; she sat stunned with an 
 agony of sorrow, speechless, tearless. 
 
 Then, in the growing morning twilight, came 
 cries of anguish. Chiefs, teachers, and multitudes 
 of Samoans came gathering round the house, cry- 
 ing ' Aue, Viliamu ! aue, Tama ! ' 
 
 The brig Camden was sailed back to Britain, 
 where people throughout the land mourned greatly 
 that such a hero was dead. They talked together 
 and worked out a plan for carrying on his work 
 and keeping his name alive for evermore.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 
 
 ONE day, just after mid-summer in 1843, the 
 Camden sailed into a British port, having gone 
 across the world to the South Seas, sailed 
 from island to island for five years, and now re- 
 turned home. They took her into dry-dock, and 
 examined her keel to see whether she was fit for 
 another voyage. Her hull was battered, and her 
 decks and masts had been damaged by the storms 
 of the years. 
 
 'N o/ said the experts who examined her, ' it will 
 cost a great deal of money to fit her for another 
 voyage, and if a ship is to sail from island to island 
 right across the South Pacific, she really ought to 
 be larger than the Camden is.' 
 
 ' How/ said the directors of the Missionary 
 Society to one another, ' are we to raise the money 
 for a new ship ? Let us ask the boys and girls 
 who care about the work that John Williams did if 
 they can secure the money for us.' 
 
 So the story of how John Williams had sailed 
 through the South Seas and had died to carry 
 the news of Jesus Christ to the savage islands 
 was told to the boys and girls. They knew that
 
 74 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 they, too, could do some of this wonderful work 
 themselves, simply by helping to build a great ship 
 in which others might go. So with a will the boys 
 and girls went to work. 
 
 Many of them were ready to give up anything 
 that they could in order to help. Two poor Sunday 
 School girls who worked at a mill raised 155. for 
 the ship by giving up their dinner hour for several 
 days and selling a loaf of bread which they needed 
 for themselves. For the same object some boys 
 earned 15. each after labouring through the day, by 
 working all night in a coal-pit. One little girl sold 
 her favourite doll and devoted the produce, 45., to 
 the good cause. Another, who had just before 
 become for the first time in her life the possessor 
 of a piece of gold, gave it heartily to the ship. 
 
 Two little boys who had each 25. 6d., and a third 
 who had only 15., devoted their all to the same 
 object. Two Irish girls who had received los. for 
 toys acted in the same spirit. A little boy who for 
 nine years had hoarded up half-a-crown, which was 
 new and glittering when he first received it, cheer- 
 fully drew the favourite piece of money from his 
 purse. 
 
 The directors asked the children for 4,000 to 
 buy a new ship, but the boys and girls were so 
 enthusiastic that they actually raised 6,237. While 
 the boys and girls were collecting the money a 
 ship was being built at Harwich on the east coast
 
 The first John Williatns
 
 76 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 of England. When she was finished she weighed 
 297 tons ; she was 103 feet long, 24 feet 8 inches 
 broad, and 16 feet deep. 
 
 In the early spring of 1844, on March 20, she was 
 launched into the water and christened with the 
 name of the great missionary shipbuilder himself, 
 John Williams. 
 
 From Harwich she sailed round to the mouth of 
 the Thames and up into the West India Docks. 
 And then on a beautiful sunny summer morn- 
 ing, June 5, 1844, the missionaries went on board 
 her at Green Hythe; the sails were unfurled, and 
 she ran out into the open sea. Forward she went 
 week after week, across the equator and down to 
 Table Bay, Cape Town, and so on eastward round 
 the coast of Australia to Hobart Town and Sydney, 
 where she was moored to the quay-side on Octo- 
 ber 27. 
 
 When the John Williams was bought, letters had 
 been sent out to the missionaries of the South Seas 
 to say she was coming, and the island peoples were 
 filled with excitement at the thought of the splendid 
 ship which was to come and sail among them, carry- 
 ing the good news. 
 
 So, when the glint of her sails across the blue 
 sea was seen by some of the brown people on 
 Huahine Island, they dashed down to the beach, 
 dancing with joy and singing ; but suddenly a shiver 
 ran through the hearts of the people there on the
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 77 
 
 beach, for they saw their beloved new ship run 
 aground close to the cruel, jagged, death-dealing 
 coral reef. For half an hour she hung there, and 
 if any storm had risen she would have been 
 dashed to pieces, but the tide rose quietly and 
 lifted her from the rock, and she sailed into the 
 blue lagoon. 
 
 From Huahine she set sail again across the 
 waters eastward to Rarotonga, where the people 
 among whom John Williams himself had lived for 
 so long a time went wild with delight at seeing the 
 ship that bore his name come to anchor off their 
 island One day, as she lay there, suddenly dark 
 storm-clouds came racing across the sky and lashed 
 the sea into roaring breakers. 
 
 The raging gale drove the tormented boat out to 
 sea, wrenching at her groaning masts and making 
 her reel and sway in the trough of the mountainous 
 waves. 
 
 A snap and a crash and a wild flapping of canvas 
 the storm had broken some of her spars, and 
 even the brown island sailormen were hard put to 
 it to trim her remaining sails and keep her from 
 becoming a wreck. 
 
 At last, however, the storm grew quiet, and after 
 a week she sailed back, battered but triumphant, to 
 Rarotonga. From Rarotonga she sailed northward 
 to Aitutaki. 
 
 One of the missionaries, Mr. Heath, was going
 
 78 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 ashore in the ship's boat, but the breakers, catching 
 the boat, swung it up and turned it upside down, 
 throwing Mr. Heath into the water. A young 
 Aitutakian standing on the beach leapt forward, 
 dashed into the foam and turmoil of the waves, 
 with the breakers bursting over him, and at the 
 risk of his own life rescued the drowning mis- 
 sionary. 
 
 Then the ship ran westward and came within 
 sight of the island of Savaii in the Samoan group. 
 Mr. Harbutt, one of the missionaries, was out in a 
 whale-boat with brown Samoan oarsmen, and they 
 gazed intently at this big vessel. ' Look,' he said, 
 'perhaps that is the missionary ship.' Resting upon 
 their oars, they said what a fine ship she was, but were 
 sure that she was a man-of-war. She sailed nearer, 
 and at last they could see the noble purple flag with 
 the three doves. ' It is, it is the John Williams ', they 
 cried. ' Ua, sau le vaa, ua, sau le vaa.' ' Has come 
 the ship ! Has come the ship ! ' With all their 
 strength they strained at the oars to pull their boat 
 as quickly as possible alongside the ship, and then 
 climbed aboard, laughing and weeping and shaking 
 hands, and singing the praise of the boys and girls 
 in England who had with their offerings built and 
 sent out the ship. 
 
 As the ship sailed proudly into the beautiful 
 harbour of Apia, with the green palms fringing the 
 beach and the lovely mountains behind, the water
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 79 
 
 of the whole port was almost churned into foam by 
 hundreds of canoes and thousands of paddles. 
 
 It seemed as though the whole island were shout- 
 ing welcome to the ship, whose decks were now 
 covered with brown Samoans bringing presents for 
 the missionaries. 
 
 The boys and girls of Samoa heard with excite- 
 ment the story of how the boys and girls of Britain 
 had bought and sent out the John Williams. They 
 wondered what they could do. Then they heard 
 that fifteen of their own Samoan young men were 
 going to sail in the ship as missionary teachers to 
 other islands. They knew that when the missionary 
 teachers arrived at the islands they would need to 
 have canoes in which to travel round the coast ; so 
 they set to work at once to collect all that they 
 could, and with the money they bought twenty-nine 
 canoes. The boys and girls thronged down in hun- 
 dreds upon the shore of Apia harbour and danced 
 with joy as the canoes were launched into the bay, 
 paddled out to the John Williams, then hoisted on 
 to her deck. Soon after this, with sails set, and 
 with the beach brown with cheering Samoans, she 
 set sail into the seas. To and fro she went from 
 island to island, east and west, and north and south, 
 carrying teachers and bearing letters and books. 
 Wherever she went, all the people boys and girls 
 and men and women loved her, and shouted with 
 joy when her sails came in view over the edge of
 
 8o THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 the sea. Then the natives of the islands loaded her 
 up with arrowroot, coconut-oil, and other good 
 things, and she turned her bows homeward to 
 Britain, having paid 125 visits to thirty-seven 
 islands and having sailed 100,000 miles in the 
 three years. The ship arrived in the Thames in 
 May 1847. While she lay there great crates 
 were hoisted aboard and put in her hold. They 
 contained books in strange languages. There were 
 5,000 copies of the Bible in the language of 
 the people of Tahiti, and 4,000 copies of the 
 Pilgrim's Progress. There was also a whole chapel 
 made of iron plates, and a printing press and type 
 for setting up and making books ; also iron tanks, 
 into which the coconut-oil from the islands could 
 be poured, as gifts from the natives for the work of 
 the Missionary Society. 
 
 Then on October 18, 1847, the John Williams 
 sailed once more for the South Seas, and in the 
 following April the Bibles and copies of the Pil- 
 grim's Progress were hoisted out of the hull, and 
 sold to the eager Tahitians. 
 
 From Tahiti she sailed to the island of Aneityum 
 and to Vate. There the wind suddenly died away 
 into complete calm. The unfathomable sea was so 
 deep that there was no anchorage, though the rocks 
 of the coast were close. Suddenly the Captain dis- 
 covered that a swift current was carrying the ship 
 steadily towards the rocks. ' Lower the boats ',
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 81 
 
 shouted the Captain, and the men began to lower 
 away so that the people on board could escape 
 when the ship was wrecked ; but, even as they did 
 so, a gentle breeze began to blow, every stitch of 
 sail was spread, and, although the breeze could 
 hardly be felt, it was just enough to waft the John 
 Williams away from the cruel ridge of rocks that 
 would have utterly destroyed her. 
 
 In the next year, the good ship sailed north and 
 south and east and west, from Rarotonga and her 
 sister islands in the east, to the new Hebrides on 
 the west. 
 
 On this voyage the John Williams carried a cow 
 who lived in the jolly-boat. 
 
 On many of the islands the biggest animal that 
 they had ever seen was a pig ; so when they came 
 on board and saw the cow their eyes opened 
 with astonishment. They roared with laughter 
 as the horned pig, as they called her, popped her 
 head above the gunwale of the boat in which she 
 lived, and took from their hands the fruit and the 
 vegetables that they had brought for her to eat. 
 
 Again the John Williams turned her bows home- 
 ward, and jn May 1850 she went into the West 
 India Docks, having sailed 200,000 miles. 
 
 After all the batter of oceans she needed to be 
 repaired throughout ; so the boys and girls raised 
 over 3,000 to fit her out thoroughly, and many of
 
 82 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 them went on board. In July she set sail again, 
 her hull once more crammed with Bibles and other 
 books for the islanders, to visit the pearls of the 
 Pacific. 
 
 Calling at Tahiti, she sailed on to Rarotonga, 
 where the natives were so full of joy at seeing 
 her and the missionaries, as they came across the 
 lagoon in the boat, that they rushed into the water, 
 lifted them, boat and all, on their shoulders, and 
 carried them a good way over the island before 
 they set them down. 
 
 Many islands she sailed to, till on April 28, 1852, 
 she was being steered into the harbour of Bora- 
 bora. She steered steadily toward the opening 
 from the fringing reef when suddenly the wind 
 failed her, and the current drew her swiftly on to the 
 rocks, over which the sea was bursting with great 
 fury. With all speed they threw three anchors from 
 the stern to drag her off the rocks, but the cables 
 lay across sharp rocks, which cut first one and then 
 another like giant saws. 
 
 Darkness fell: the remaining anchor was their 
 only hope. The cable of this anchor, unlike the 
 others, was not rope, but chain. The crew pulled 
 on the cable for six hours to try to drag the ship 
 off the rocks, but she did not move ; then many of 
 the natives of the island came aboard, and they also 
 tugged, but without result. It was now eleven 
 o'clock in the morning all hope seemed lost, and
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 83 
 
 with heavy hearts they were getting ready to leave 
 the ship. 
 
 The captain then ordered the water-casks to be 
 emptied into the sea to lighten the ship, and all the 
 ballast was taken out of the hold and thrown over- 
 board. The tide was at the same time rising, and 
 the combined effect of the lift of the tide and the 
 mounting of the ship and the pulling on the anchor 
 by the sailors and the natives lifted and moved 
 her, so that they felt her keel graze on the rocks. 
 ' She moves ! she moves ! ' everybody cried. With 
 strong sinew and quivering nerve every one pulled 
 on the cable, and, in a few minutes more, the 
 John Williams floated off again into deep water. 
 
 They sailed on to Samoa, where the natives, on 
 hearing of the peril in which their ship had been, 
 cried out in great pity for her sufferings and said, 
 ' What should we have done if the " Light of the 
 Seas " had been lost ? How could the good news 
 have been carried to heathen islands ? ' 
 
 In Apia harbour they were able to examine her 
 keel, and discovered that the copper was so much 
 injured by the cruel rocks that she must sail at 
 once to Sydney to be repaired. On this voyage 
 the ship called at Dillon's Bay, on the shore of 
 Erromanga, where the missionaries landed and 
 went to the spot where John Williams had been 
 murdered. 
 
 The man who had himself killed John Williams 
 F 2
 
 84 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 came and asked for a teacher to tell him about the 
 good news of Jesus Christ. 
 
 After she was repaired, the John Williams con- 
 tinued sailing among the islands of the South Seas, 
 and then, after four years absence, steered home- 
 ward, sailing into port in England on June 10, 1855. 
 
 The boys and girls of England a second time 
 put out their strength to repair their beloved ship, 
 so that she should be fit to keep on with her great 
 work, and raised over 3,600. Captain Morgan, 
 who had sailed her through all her voyage, was 
 now too ill to go on with his work, and he was 
 succeeded by Captain Williams. 
 
 She sailed away, suffering a terrific gale off the 
 Cape of Good Hope, which smashed her bowsprit 
 and almost tore her foremast away bodily. Having 
 reached Sydney, she started again on her work, 
 carrying the missionaries and island teachers from 
 group to group, and giving joy by her coming to 
 boys and girls and men and women of the islands. 
 
 So she went from group to group through the 
 years, having many adventures, sailing homeward 
 again by the end of June 1860, where again the 
 children raised over 5,000 for her repairs and 
 outfit. 
 
 In November of the same year she was once 
 more with all sails set heading for the Pacific. In 
 1864, on May 16, John Williams sighted Danger 
 Island. The Captain hoped to be able to land that
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS I 85 
 
 night, but the winds and the currents made it im- 
 possible to get ashore. At midnight, while most 
 of those on board were sleeping, the breeze fell to 
 a dead calm. It was found that a strong current 
 was swiftly carrying the ship toward the shore. 
 There were no soundings ; there was no anchorage; 
 the current was running at four miles an hour 
 directly toward the reef. 
 
 The Captain shouted orders to lower a large 
 boat which was manned by the sturdy sailors, who 
 tried to tow the John Williams against the current, 
 but they could do little. There was a slight 
 momentary breeze which filled their hearts with 
 hope, but again the heavy canvas flapped dully 
 against the masts. The air was still as death. At 
 four o'clock in the morning they were close in 
 upon the reef; the long breakers, that had come 
 sweeping over a hundred leagues of ocean, curved 
 and crashed with terrific bellowing and dreadful 
 power upon the rocks. 
 
 Each wave as it rose covered the reef, but as it 
 fell back the jagged teeth of the rocks showed out 
 above the water. They ran out a sounding line 
 to 90 fathoms deep, but no bottom could be dis- 
 covered. 
 
 Then, suddenly, with a sickening thud and a 
 grinding and terrible crash, the ship, stern fore- 
 most, struck upon the reef. The wave receding 
 sucked her back again, but the next breaker lifted
 
 86 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 her like a feather, and drove her with a frightful 
 crash upon the rocks ; the rudder was smashed. 
 Three boats were put out, and those aboard managed 
 to clamber into them. At last the cruel reef broke 
 her sturdy keel, the stern remaining fixed upon the 
 rocks while the bow fell into the sea. 
 
 The natives had not come out to the rescue, 
 fearing the ship was a slaver. Two island men 
 swam ashore and told the people what ship it was. 
 The moment they heard that it was the beloved 
 John Williams they ran to the beach, and leaping 
 into their canoes sent the spray dashing from their 
 bows as they paddled out to rescue the shipwrecked 
 missionaries from the reef. The last of the sailors 
 had but for a few minutes come out of the ship when, 
 breaking from the reef, with a headlong plunge she 
 sank in fathomless water, never to be seen again. 
 
 There they were, marooned on a distant island 
 out of the track of the ships of the South Seas, 
 but the courageous chief officer, Roger Turpie, 
 volunteered to sail a small boat across 400 miles of 
 ocean to Samoa. There the son of John Williams 
 himself, Mr. J. C. Williams, the British Consul, 
 chartered a small ship which sailed across to 
 Danger Island, and rescued the shipwrecked crew 
 and missionaries.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 TWO SAILING SHIPS 
 
 ' THE John Williams has been wrecked ! ' 
 
 In thousands of homes in England, when the 
 boys and girls heard those words, they felt almost 
 as though they had lost a boat of their very own, 
 for they had collected the money with which she 
 was bought, and very many of them had actually, 
 before she first sailed from England, walked on her 
 decks. 
 
 Worst of all, when the gallant ship was wrecked, 
 the work among the islands of the seas needed 
 her help more than ever. On dozens of islands, 
 scattered over the broad ocean like stars in the 
 sky, many brown Christian islanders worshipped 
 God the Father in their white churches built of 
 coral-concrete. They needed very much guidance, 
 for they were like little child churches who did 
 not know how to walk alone, so it was neces- 
 sary that the missionaries should be able to sail 
 from island to island, and that new brown teachers 
 whom the missionaries had trained should be able 
 to leave their own islands and go as missionaries 
 to others. 
 
 1 We must have another ship,' said everybody 
 who cared about this great work. So the children
 
 88 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 of Great Britain and Ireland set to work with a will, 
 and collected ^"11,190 35. id., to buy and fit and 
 supply a new John Williams. She was designed 
 and built by Messrs. Hall of Aberdeen. From Aber- 
 deen she sailed down the North Sea to the Thames 
 where 2,000 visitors came aboard to see her. 
 
 One day the chief officer of the ship, Captain 
 Turpie, saw some boy-visitors climbing about on 
 the polished furniture. He went up and told them 
 that he could not allow them to do that, and they 
 stopped ; but as he was walking away, Captain 
 Turpie heard one boy say to the other, ' Who is 
 he ? ' ' Oh/ said the other, ' that 's the mate/ ' The 
 mate/ said the third, who was listening ; ' never 
 mind him, we are the owners ! ' So the boys and 
 girls came to feel that they really owned this 
 beautiful three-masted sailing-ship of just 300 tons, 
 which had been bought by the L.M.S. with the 
 money that they had collected. 
 
 In the new year of 1866 the John Williams sailed 
 out from the Thames on her first voyage. No one 
 on board expected that her first would be her only 
 voyage. As she swung round into the English 
 Channel and was sailing near the Sussex coast, she 
 met a terrific gale. The masts creaked and groaned; 
 the racing waves crashed against her bows, and 
 swept her slippery decks. It was, indeed, one of 
 the most awful gales known for man}' years. Spars 
 were carried away, and the rigging was strained,
 
 The second John Williams
 
 go THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 so the captain ordered her to be run into the 
 shelter of Portland Roads, where, only a few days 
 after she had sailed from London all new and spick 
 and span, she needed to be repaired. 
 
 Again she started, but all through the passage 
 of no days sailing before she reached Adelaide, in 
 South Australia, she faced boisterous weather. 
 Having visited Melbourne, Hobart, and Sydney, 
 she sailed north-east towards the New Hebrides. 
 She was putting into the harbour at Aneityum 
 and had passed the outer reef when suddenly a 
 grinding crash was heard, and a shiver went 
 through the hull. She had run on the inner reef! 
 
 Through the day and night, in spite of the rise 
 of the tide, she stuck fast. Day and night all hands 
 were busy hoisting the cargo from the hold, and 
 sending it ashore to lighten her. She had sprung 
 a leak, and the water poured into her hold, so that 
 as fast as the cargo was taken out, the water poured 
 in. The brown islanders of Aneityum, who can 
 swim like porpoises, dived under her hold and 
 managed to stop the leak for the time being with 
 blankets quilted and soaked in tar, which they 
 nailed over the damaged part. She was then got 
 off. Leaving all her cargo and her passengers on 
 the shore of the island, she sailed back to Sydney 
 to be repaired, and then made again for Aneityum, 
 and got her cargo and her passengers aboard once 
 more.
 
 TWO SAILING SHIPS 91 
 
 She sailed down to the Loyalty Islands, and 
 with her bows turned east, ran past the Fiji Islands 
 to Niue, south of the Samoan group. She sighted 
 Niufc in the new year, exactly a year after she had 
 left England. 
 
 The weather was stormy at first, but grew 
 settled, and they started to land the cargo. Niue 
 has no port, nor is there any anchorage, so the 
 ship was obliged to 'lay off'. 1 
 
 The captain, on January 8th, with all the pas- 
 sengers went ashore in the morning and spent the 
 day there. As night drew near many returned to 
 the ship, though some remained ashore. Night 
 fell; the breeze dropped to a calm, in which the 
 John Williams lay on the sea quite still ; 
 
 Nor breath nor motion; 
 As idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean. 
 
 She lay there some two miles and a half from the 
 shore, on which the smooth, league-long Pacific 
 breakers curled and crashed. The captain, who 
 was by this time aboard, saw that the current set 
 shoreward. He ordered the men to tumble into 
 two of the boats, and with ropes fastened to the 
 ship to row their hardest in order to tow her out to 
 
 1 This was done by setting the sails so that each counter- 
 acted the effect of the other. One sail pulled the ship in 
 this direction, the other in that direction, and so between 
 them she stood still.
 
 92 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 sea. Then a third boat was let down, and fourteen 
 oars dipped and pulled to save the vessel. Clouds 
 hung over the sky, and across the land thunder 
 rolled above the boom of the breakers. Lightning 
 lit up the inky sky with blinding flashes. At 
 nine o'clock the captain set lights blazing on the 
 deck to show those ashore where the ship lay. 
 The terrible current irresistibly carried the ship 
 nearer and nearer to the overhanging cliffs. Again 
 and again the lead was thrown over, but the 
 depths of the ocean were unfathomable. The 
 mate whistled one boat alongside at 11.30, and all 
 the missionaries' wives and their children were 
 placed in her. Then the other boats were brought 
 alongside, and all on board were put into them. 
 
 The ship now swung broadside on to the shore. 
 She lay, rolling and tossing on the swell of the 
 tremendous breakers, within her own length of 
 the surf. The last boat cleared from her with the 
 last passenger just before a tremendous wave, 
 lifting her 300 tons as though she were a cork, 
 flung her cruelly upon the rugged reef, where 
 breaker after breaker pounded the beautiful vessel 
 into a helpless and shattered wreck. 
 
 The boats, so full of men and women that they 
 were in danger of shipping seas every moment, 
 rowed carefully three miles along the shore, to 
 the landing-place near the home of the missionary 
 who lived there. The boats lay to outside the surf,
 
 TWO SAILING SHIPS 93 
 
 across which they could see the yellow glare of 
 the blazing torches lighting up the beach. The 
 Niuean natives leapt into canoes, paddled them out 
 daringly through the darkness across the raging 
 surf, and brought off one by one every person in 
 the boats. 
 
 When the news reached Australia and Britain, 
 a wail of consternation came from all who had 
 helped to build the John Williams by their 
 gifts. The ship had been insured, and the pay- 
 ment of the insurance money went a long way 
 towards buying a third John Williams, which was 
 launched in October 1868. She sailed out, a grace- 
 ful barque of 186 tons, with ' Peace on Earth ' on 
 the starboard bow, and on the port bow ' Goodwill 
 to Men ', and flying the ensign of the Dove of Peace. 
 She was a lively ship that rolled and pitched, and 
 although not quite such a racer as the second 
 John Williams, used to make her nine knots an 
 hour with a fair wind and put up her 220 knots 
 in a day. The brown sailors aboard her were 
 mostly Aitutakian men, who were as much at home 
 battling with the sea as toiling on the land men 
 'A ho could swim like sharks, and swarm up rigging 
 with incredible speed. Her crew numbered sixteen, 
 including the captain and his first and second 
 mates, the steward and his boy, the cook, four 
 seamen, a sailmaker, and five boatmen. As she 
 ran from island to island in the South Seas bearing 
 missionaries and teachers and a cargo of all sorts
 
 94 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 of provisions, there would usually be in all some 
 fifty or sixty people aboard. 
 
 Instead of asking her to sail the long trail round 
 the world from England to Australia, and then 
 across the Pacific and back home to Britain, the 
 Missionary Society decided that she should make 
 Sydney her headquarters instead of London. So 
 through all her quarter of a century of service for 
 the London Missionary Society she never returned 
 to England. Neither did she sail in her later days 
 to many of the islands where the old ships had 
 gone, though many other islands were added. 
 The New Hebrides on the extreme west, and the 
 Society Islands with Tahiti on the extreme east, 
 were taken over by other Missionary Societies ; 
 but the Samoan islands became the starting-point 
 of a great journey to out-stations running north- 
 west through the Tokelau, the Ellice, and the 
 Gilbert Islands. 1 
 
 Greater still, however, was the wonderful work 
 among the wild brown savage tribes of Papua 
 (British New Guinea). Perilous stations were 
 opened there by heroes like Lawes and Chalmers, 2 
 so that when she had finished her run from Sydney 
 through the Cook islands and past Niue to Samoa 
 and all her out-stations, the brave ship would turn 
 
 1 See Map. 
 
 2 See Greatheart of Papua, by W. P. Nairne (Oxford 
 University Press) ; Chalmers the Peace Scout, by Mabel 
 Link ; and Yarns on South Sea Pioneers.
 
 The third John Williams
 
 96 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 her nose westward, and with young South Sea 
 Island teachers aboard, sail away to the western 
 fringes of the Pacific to Papua. 
 
 For three weeks in fair weather and storm the 
 John Williams III would beat her way through 
 the foaming seas till she sighted the long tawny 
 shores and the green mountains and the steaming 
 swamps of Papua. The trade winds would usually 
 send her careering along from Samoa to New 
 Guinea, but to get back to Samoa she usually had 
 to beat to windward, thrashing her way along and 
 taking some six weeks before she would drop 
 anchor again in the glorious green-fringed spacious 
 waters of Apia harbour in Samoa. 
 
 The good ship came to the end of her missionary 
 history in 1895, when a trading firm bought her for 
 ;6oo, and she came to the end of her career alto- 
 gether on her first voyage under the new owners, 
 for she was never heard of again. 
 
 This sudden end to her splendid history was all 
 the more astonishing because in her twenty-six 
 years of service for the Missionary Society there 
 had never once been a claim upon the insurance 
 company for damage or loss, although every such 
 risk was covered. 
 
 Mr. Louis Becke wrote, in the Sydney Evening 
 News, ' This is a record that Captain Turpie may 
 well feel proud of when the dangers to navigation 
 from the erratic currents and countless reefs of the 
 Pacific are taken into consideration/
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 
 WHILE our ships of peace have been doing the 
 King's ' business in great waters ', strange adven- 
 tures have come to brown islanders who have 
 declared the love of Jesus to their own people. 1 
 Among these adventures on the ocean one of the 
 most wonderful was that of Elikana of Rakahanga 
 and his friends. This is the story. 
 
 Manihiki Island looked like a small anchored 
 canoe far away across the Pacific, as Elikana 
 glanced back from his place at the tiller. He 
 sang, meantime, quietly to himself an air that still 
 rang in his ears, the tune that he and his brother 
 islanders had sung in praise of the Power and 
 Providence of God at the services on Manihiki. 
 For the Christian people of the Penrhyn group 
 of South Sea Islands had come together in April 
 1861 for their yearly meeting, paddling from the 
 
 1 For the stories of Papeiha, Ruatoka, and others, see 
 Yarns of South Sea Pioneers, John Williams the Shipbuilder, 
 and Chalmers the Peace Scout.
 
 98 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 different islands in their canoes through the white 
 surge of the breakers that thunder day and night 
 round the coasts. 
 
 Elikana looked ahead to where his own island 
 of Rakahanga grew clearer every moment on the 
 skyline ahead of him, though each time his craft 
 dropped into the trough of the sea between the 
 green curves of the league-long ocean rollers the 
 island was lost from sight. 
 
 He and his eight companions were sailing back 
 over the thirty miles between Manihiki and Raka- 
 hanga, two of the many little lonely ocean islands 
 that stud the Pacific like stars. They sailed a 
 strange craft, for it cannot be called raft or canoe 
 or hut. It was all these and yet was neither. Two 
 canoes, forty-eight feet long, sailed side by side. 
 Between the canoes were spars, stretching across 
 from one to the other, lashed to each boat and 
 making a platform between them six feet wide. 
 On this was built a hut, roofed with the beautiful 
 braided leaves of the coco-nut palm. Overhead 
 stretched the infinite sky. Underneath lay thou- 
 sands of fathoms of blue-green ocean, whose cold, 
 hidden deeps among the mountains and valleys of 
 the awful ocean under-world held strange goblin 
 fish-shapes. And on the surface this hut of leaves 
 and bamboo swung dizzily between sky and ocean 
 on the frail canoes. And in the canoes and the 
 hut were six brown Rakahangan men, two women,
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 99 
 
 and a chubby, dark-eyed child, who sat contented 
 and tired, being lapped to sleep by the swaying 
 waters 
 
 Above them the great sail, made of matting of 
 fibre, strained in the breeze that drove them nearer 
 to the haven where they would be. Already they 
 could see the gleam of the Rakahanga beach and 
 the rim of silver where the waves broke into foam. 
 Then the breeze dropped. The fibre-sail flapped 
 uneasily against the mast, while the two little 
 canvas sails hung loosely, as the wind, with little 
 warning, swung round, and smiting them in the 
 face began to drive them back into the ocean 
 again. 
 
 Elikana and his friends knew the sea almost like 
 fish, from the time they were babies. And they 
 were little troubled by the turn of the breeze, save 
 that it would delay their homecoming. They tried 
 in vain to make headway. Slowly but surely they 
 were driven back from land, till they could see that 
 there was no other thing but just to turn about and 
 let her run back to Manihiki. In the canoes were 
 enough coconuts to feed them for days if need be, 
 and two large calabashes of water. 
 
 The swift night fell, but the wind held strong, 
 and one man sat at the tiller while two others baled 
 out the water that leaked into the canoes. They 
 kept a keen watch, expecting to sight Manihiki; 
 but when the dawn flashed out of the sky in the 
 
 G 2
 
 ioo THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 East, where the island should have been, there was 
 neither Manihiki nor any other land at all. They 
 had no chart or compass ; north and south and east 
 and west stretched the wastes of the Pacific for 
 hundreds of leagues. Only here and there in the 
 ocean, and all unseen to them, like little clumps 
 of mushrooms in a limitless meadow, lay groups of 
 islets. They might, indeed, sail for a year without 
 ever sighting any land ; and one storm-driven wave 
 of the great ocean would smite their little egg-shell 
 craft to the bottom of the sea. 
 
 They gathered together in the hut and with 
 anxious faces talked of what they might do. They 
 knew that far off to the south-west lay the islands 
 of Samoa and Rarotonga. So they set the bows 
 of their craft southward. Morning grew to blazing 
 noon and fell to evening and night, and nothing 
 did they see save the glittering, sparkling waters 
 of the uncharted ocean, cut here and there by the 
 cruel fin of a waiting shark. It was Saturday when 
 they started ; and night fell seven times while their 
 wonderful hut boat crept southward along the 
 water, till the following Friday. Then the wind 
 changed, and, springing up from the south, drove 
 them wearily back once more in their tracks, and 
 then bore them eastward. 
 
 For another week they drove before the breeze, 
 feeding on the coconuts. But the water in the 
 calabashes was gone. Then on the morning of
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 101 
 
 the second Friday, the fourteenth day of their 
 sea-wandering, just when the sun in mid heaven 
 was blazing its noon-heat upon them and most of 
 the little crew were lying under the shade of the 
 hut and the sail to doze away the hours of tedious 
 hunger, they heard the cry of Land! ' and leaping 
 to their feet gazed ahead at the welcome sight. 
 With sail and paddle they urged the craft on 
 toward the island. 
 
 Then night fell and with it squalls of wind and 
 rain came and buffeted them till they had to forsake 
 the paddles for the baling-vessels to keep the boat 
 afloat. Taking down the sails they spread them 
 flat to catch the pouring rain, and then poured this 
 precious fresh water true water of life to them 
 into their calabashes. But when morning came 
 no land could be seen anywhere. It was as though 
 the island had been a land of enchantment and 
 mirage, and now had faded away. Yet hope sprang 
 in them erect and glad next day when land was 
 sighted again ; but the sea and the wind, as though 
 driven by the spirit of contrariness, smote them 
 back. 
 
 For two more days they guided the canoe with 
 the tiller and tried to set her in one steady direc- 
 tion. Then, tired and out of heart, after sixteen 
 days of ceaseless and useless effort, they gave it 
 up and let her drift, for the winds and currents to 
 take her where they would.
 
 102 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 At night each man stood in his canoe almost 
 starving and parched with thirst, with aching back, 
 stooping to dip the water from the canoe and rising 
 to pour it over the side. For hour after hour, while 
 the calm moon slowly climbed the sky, each slaved 
 at his dull task. Lulled by the heave and fall of 
 the long-backed rollers as they slid under the keels 
 of the canoes, the men nearly dropped asleep where 
 they stood. The quiet waters crooned to them like 
 a mother singing an old lullaby crooned and called, 
 till a voice deep within them said, ' It is better to lie 
 down and sleep and die than to live and fight and 
 starve.' 
 
 Then a moan from the sleeping child, or a sight 
 of a streaming ray of moonlight on the face of its 
 mother would send that nameless voice shivering 
 back to its deep hiding-place and the man would 
 stoop and bale again. 
 
 Each evening as it fell saw their anxious eyes 
 looking west and north and south for land, and 
 always there was only the weary waste of waters. 
 And as the sun rose, they hardly dared open their 
 eyes to the unbroken rim of blue-grey that circled 
 them like a steel prison. They saw the thin edge 
 of the moon grow to full blaze and then fade to 
 a corn sickle again as day and night grew to weeks 
 and a whole month had passed. 
 
 Every morning, as the pearl-grey sea turned to 
 pink and then to gleaming blue, they knelt on the
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 103 
 
 raft between the canoes and turned their faces up 
 to their Father in prayer, and never did the sun 
 sink behind the rim of waters without the sound of 
 their voices rising into the limitless sky with thanks 
 for safe keeping. 
 
 Slowly the pile of coconuts lessened. Each 
 one of them with its sweet milk and flesh was 
 more precious to them than a golden chalice set 
 with rubies. The drops of milk that dripped from 
 them were more than ropes of pearls. 
 
 At last eight Sundays had followed one upon 
 another ; and now at the end of the day there was 
 only the half of one coconut remaining. When 
 that was gone all would be over. So they knelt 
 down under the cloudless sky on a calm and beauti- 
 ful evening. They were on that invisible line in 
 the great Pacific where the day ends and begins. 
 Those seven on the tiny craft were, indeed, we 
 cannot but believe, the last worshippers in all the 
 great world-house of God as Sunday drew to its 
 end just where they were. Was it to be the last 
 time that they would pray to God in this life ? 
 
 Prayer ended; night was falling. Elikana the 
 leader, who had kept their spirits from utterly 
 failing, stood up and gazed out with great anxious 
 eyes before the last light should fail. 
 
 ' Look, there upon the edge of the sea where 
 
 the sun sets. Is it ' He could hardly dare 
 
 to believe that it was not the mirage of his weary
 
 104 
 
 brain. But one and another and then all peered 
 out through the swiftly waning light and saw that 
 indeed it was land. 
 
 Then a squall of wind sprang up, blowing them 
 away from the land. Was this last hope, by a fine 
 ecstasy of torture, to be dangled before them and 
 then snatched away? But with the danger came 
 the help ; with the wind came the rain ; cool, sweet, 
 refreshing, life-giving water. Then the squall of 
 wind dropped and changed. They hoisted the 
 one sail that had not blown to tatters, and drove 
 for land. 
 
 Yet their most awful danger still lay before them. 
 The roar of the breakers on the cruel coral reef 
 caught their ears. But there was nothing for it 
 but to risk the peril. They were among the 
 breakers which caught and tossed them on like 
 egg-shells. The scourge of the surf swept them ; 
 a woman, a man, even the child, were torn from 
 them and ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral. 
 Five were swept over with the craft into the still, 
 blue lagoon, and landing they fell prone upon the 
 shore, just breathing and no more, after the giant 
 buffeting of the thundering rollers, following the 
 long, slow starvation of their wonderful journey in 
 the hut on the canoes among ' the waters of the 
 wondrous isles'. 
 
 Thrown up by the ocean in the darkness like 
 driftwood, Elikana and his companions lay on the
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 105 
 
 grey shore. Against the dim light of the stars and 
 beyond the beach of darkness they could see the 
 fronds of the palms waving. The five survivors 
 were starving, and the green coconuts hung above 
 them, filled with food and drink. But their bodies, 
 broken and tormented as they were by hunger 
 and the battering breakers, refused even to rise 
 and climb for the food that meant life. So they 
 lay there, as though dead. 
 
 Over the ridge of the beach came a man. His 
 pale copper skin shone in the fresh sunlight of the 
 morning. His quick black eyes were caught by 
 the sight of torn clothing hanging on a bush. 
 Moving swiftly down the beach of pounded coral, 
 he saw a man lying with arms thrown out, face 
 downward. Turning the body over Faivaatala 1 
 found that the man was dead. Taking the body 
 in his arms he staggered with it up the beach, and 
 placed it under the shade of the trees. Returning 
 he found the living five. Their gaunt bodies and 
 the broken craft on the shore told him without 
 words the story of their long drifting over the 
 wilderness of the waters. 
 
 Without stopping to waste words in empty 
 sympathy with starving men, Faivaatala ran to 
 the nearest coconut tree and, climbing it, threw 
 down luscious nuts. Those below quickly knocked
 
 106 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 off the tops, drank deep draughts of the cool milk, 
 and then ate. Coming down again, Faivaatala 
 kindled a fire and soon had some fish grilling for 
 these strange wanderers thrown up on the tiny 
 islet. 
 
 They had no time to thank him before he ran 
 off and swiftly paddled to Nukulaelae, the island 
 where he lived, to tell the story of these strange 
 castaways. He came back with other helpers in 
 canoes, and the five getting aboard were swiftly 
 paddled to Motutala. 
 
 As the canoes skimmed over the surface of the 
 great lagoon Elikana and his friends could see, 
 spread out in a great semi-circle that stretched to 
 the horizon, the long low coral islets crowned with 
 palms which form, part of the Ellice Islands. 
 
 The islanders, men, women, and children, ran 
 down the beach to see the newcomers, and soon had 
 set apart huts for them and made them welcome. 
 Elikana gathered them round him, and began to 
 tell them about the love of Jesus and the protecting 
 care of God the Father. It all seemed strange to 
 them, but quickly they learned from him, and he 
 began to teach them and their children. This went 
 on for four months, till one day Elikana said : 
 'I must go away and learn more so that I can 
 teach you more/
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 107 
 
 But they had become so fond of Elikana that they 
 said : ' No, you must not leave us/ and it was only 
 when he promised to come back with another 
 teacher to help him, that they could bring them- 
 selves to part with him. So when a ship came to 
 the island to trade in coconuts Elikana went 
 aboard and sailed to Samoa to the London Mis- 
 sionary Society's training college at Malua. 
 
 1 A ship ! A ship ! ' The cry was taken up through 
 the island, and the people running down the beach 
 saw a large sailing vessel. Boats put down and 
 sculls flashed as sailors pulled swiftly to the shore. 
 
 They landed and the people gathered round to 
 see and to hear what they would say. 
 
 ' Come on to our ship/ said these men, who had 
 sailed there from Peru, ' and we will show you how 
 you can be rich with many knives and much calico.' 
 
 But the islanders shook their heads and said they 
 would stay where they were. Then a wicked white 
 man named Tom Rose, who lived on the island 
 and knew how much the people were looking for- 
 ward to the day when Elikana would come back to 
 teach them, went to the traders and whispered what 
 he knew to them. 
 
 So the Peruvian traders, with craft shining in 
 their eyes, turned again to the islanders and said : 
 ' If you will come with us, we will take you where
 
 io8 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 you will be taught all that men can know about 
 God/ 
 
 At this the islanders broke out into glad cries, 
 and speaking to one another said : ' Let us go and 
 learn these things.' 
 
 The day came for sailing, and as the sun rose, 
 hundreds of brown feet were running to the beach, 
 children dancing with excitement, women saying 
 ' Good-bye * to their husbands men, who for the 
 first time in all their lives were to leave their tiny 
 islet for the wonderful world beyond the ocean. 
 
 So two hundred of them went on board. The 
 sails were hoisted and they went away never to 
 return, sailed away not to learn of Jesus, but to 
 the sting of the lash and the shattering bullet, 
 the bondage of the plantations, and to death at 
 the hands of those merciless beasts of prey, the 
 Peruvian slavers. 
 
 Years passed and a little fifty-ton trading vessel 
 came to anchor outside the reef. One man and 
 then another and another got down into the little 
 boat and pulled for the shore. Elikana had re- 
 turned. The women and children ran down to 
 meet him but few men were there, for nearly all 
 had gone. 
 
 ' Where is this one ? Where is the other ?' cried 
 Elikana, with sad face as he looked around on them.
 
 ADVENTURES OF A RAFT-CANOE 109 
 
 'Gone, gone/ came the answer; 'carried away 
 by the man-stealing ships.' 
 
 Elikana turned to the white missionary who had 
 come with him, to ask what they could do. 
 
 ' We will leave Joane and his wife here/ replied 
 Mr. Murray the white missionary. 
 
 So a teacher from Samoa stayed there and taught 
 the people while Elikana went to begin work in an 
 island near by. 
 
 To-day a white lady missionary has gone to live 
 in the Ellice Islands, and the people are Christians 
 and no slave-trader can come to snatch them away. 
 
 Now on that beach, as the sunlight brims over 
 the edge of the sea, and a new Lord's Day dawns, 
 you may hear the islanders sing their praise to the 
 Light of the World, Who shines upon them and 
 keeps them safe.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SMALL CRAFT 
 
 IF you saw the steamer John Williams anchor 
 off the island of Kwato or in Port Moresby on the 
 coast of Papua, you would see a motor-boat come 
 bustling out and go round her tapering hull like 
 a cygnet paddling round her stately mother swan. 
 
 That motor-boat is one of quite a brood of small 
 craft that are used for running swiftly along the 
 coast of Papua or up its great rivers carrying 
 the missionaries at their work. Small boats are 
 also needed by missionaries working among the 
 people around those great lakes in Central Africa 
 which are really inland seas. 
 
 In this chapter we shall read just two stories 
 about these small craft, the boats of peace ; though 
 many books could be filled with the adventures of 
 our men who have gone in them among the wild 
 savages both of Papua and Africa. 
 
 (i) The Iron Canoe 
 
 A small gunboat churned up the waters of Lake 
 Tanganyika, and poked her sharp nose into the tall 
 reeds around the southern shores of that inland sea. 
 Her Captain was looking for something. At last
 
 SMALL CRAFT m 
 
 he found what he had been seeking. High and 
 dry on the bank was a steel lifeboat of which only 
 the rusty hull remained. She looked harmless and 
 useless enough, but the Captain of the gunboat was 
 a German, and Britain was at war with Germany. 
 He feared lest British engineers might come along 
 and turn the empty shell of a boat into a lively and 
 dangerous enemy, so he gave an order, and pre- 
 sently there was a 'Bang, Bang, Bang'. Men 
 brought hammers from the German boat and made 
 big holes in the rusty steel boat which will never 
 agajn float on Tanganyika. 
 
 That steel boat was the Morning Star, the first 
 of the two boats of the London Missionary Society 
 in Central Africa ; and this is the story of the men 
 who carried her from the coast to the heart of 
 Africa so that she might go about doing good 
 among the black people on the shores of Lake 
 Tanganyika. 
 
 The sun rose out of a misty sea one September 
 morning in 1883, and as soon as its beams touched 
 the tree-tops in Eastern Africa the sharp notes of 
 a bugle rang through a sleeping camp and roused 
 its brown sleepers to a day of great doings. 
 
 From their little huts and shelters in the surround- 
 ing bushes, scores of African carriers presently 
 assembled around the carts they were to push and 
 the bundles they were to carry.
 
 ii2 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Many of them understood quite well that they 
 were to help the white people of Britain who wished 
 to have a boat on the greatest of the African lakes ; 
 boats which should carry missionaries who would 
 bring peace and progress to the fighting tribes 
 around the shores. 
 
 The boat had been made in England for the 
 London Missionary Society and sent out in pieces 
 to the island of Zanzibar on the coast of East 
 Africa. These parts were to be carried across 
 East Africa, from the coast opposite the island of 
 Zanzibar to the great lake 836 miles inland 
 Lake Tanganyika, 1 which David Livingstone had 
 explored. 
 
 The path before these carriers lay along old 
 caravan tracks where the Arab slave trader had 
 made his slaves bear great tusks of ivory from the 
 interior, their burning homes behind them, to the 
 coast where both the ivory and the slaves were sold. 
 
 The porters gathered up their loads with a good 
 heart. The name of the new steel lifeboat was 
 the Morning Star. It was a sign to them that 
 the dark night of slavery was to pass away and 
 a glad day would dawn in which the path they 
 trod would no more be marked by the bones of 
 captured Africans. 
 
 Clothing and personal luggage did not trouble the 
 
 1 It will be more interesting to read this if you get your 
 school atlas and look up Zanzibar and Lake Tanganyika.
 
 How THE ' MORNING STAR ' WENT TO CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 T. 113
 
 SMALL CRAFT 113 
 
 porters much. They consisted of a ' kanso ' (a sort 
 of long calico shirt), a small mat to sleep on, a tiny 
 bag to hold small treasures, and a girdle with a small 
 knife stuck in it. So dressed, the Zanzibar porter 
 was ready to walk the long road to Tanganyika and 
 carry any package up to sixty pounds weight. 
 
 The long procession, walking in Indian file, began 
 to unwind itself. The first detachment started on 
 the road ahead. The whole expedition contained 
 a thousand carriers, the largest number that ever 
 crossed East Africa under one leader. The parcels 
 were the fittings and machinery of the boat. 
 
 The boat itself was in six large sections. The 
 small parts and fittings were carried on the men's 
 shoulders and heads, but the large sections were 
 too heavy for the porters and had to be drawn 
 along on hand carts. Two or three porters pulled 
 the cart by ropes in front and two pushed behind. 
 To get between the trees of the forests the carts 
 had been made as narrow as possible with the 
 wheels close together. 
 
 In front of the carts went pioneers armed with 
 axes and sword bayonets. Day after day the axes 
 rang out as these men cut away brushwood and 
 small trees to make a path for the iron canoe on 
 wheels. 
 
 Away went the expedition for week after week 
 and month after month through forest, river, and 
 marsh, over hills, deserts, and plains, startling the 
 
 H
 
 ii 4 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 birds, monkeys, and crocodiles with joyous shouts. 
 Brown village children ran out from their little 
 villages to gaze with round and startled eyes at the 
 long winding caravan of bearers. 
 
 At last the bush cutters and cart pullers had 
 a reward for their months of hard work, when 
 after a hundred and four days of toil and travel the 
 Sea of Ujiji 1 was reached. 
 
 The whole population of Ujiji turned out to 
 cheer the porters as they rolled gaily into the 
 town. Now Ujiji, on the eastern shore of Tangan- 
 yika, was the place where the explorer Stanley 
 discovered Livingstone, who had been lost. It was 
 a town in which proud Arab merchants bought and 
 sold black men, women, and little children as slaves. 
 But the slave traders knew that the coming of the 
 Christian message of Peace and Goodwill would 
 put a stop to slavery, so they had closed their slave 
 market on the day that the first missionaries had 
 arrived. 
 
 Yet slaves were still being bought and sold 
 secretly. 
 
 Excitement was immense when the pieces of the 
 Morning Star were put together by the lake-side 
 and the steel plates rattled under the hammer. 
 
 'Would she float?' was the question in many 
 an African mind. Old Africans who had never 
 seen iron float gathered round to see the boat 
 1 A native name for Tanganyika.
 
 SMALL CRAFT 115 
 
 grow. They had no faith in the new-fangled toy. 
 Some of them were asked to join the crew, but 
 they said: 
 
 ' No, we can never go to sea in a saucepan/ 
 
 But some of them knew better, and while the 
 crowds of natives from the country-side buzzed 
 and questioned on the beach or patted and stroked 
 the boat in silent wonder, the Arabs whispered to 
 one another : 
 
 ' This indeed is work.' 
 
 On May 21, 1883, the Morning Star was launched 
 by three hundred pairs of willing hands, and from 
 that day she carried good tidings of great joy to the 
 people in the villages on the shores of Tanganyika. 
 Sometimes missionaries were taken on visits of 
 friendship to new tribes. Often the little boat 1 
 became a relief ship, carrying food and comfort to 
 the victims of the savage slave trade. 
 
 She went once to the Ulungu villages at the 
 south of the lake and found nothing but blackened 
 ruins, for war between tribe and tribe had swept 
 over them. 
 
 Nosing about for fugitives she found a few sad 
 remnants of the tribe hidden on a little floating island 
 at the mouth of the Lofu river. 
 
 They were mostly women and children dying of 
 
 1 The Morning Star was 32 feet long with 8 feet beam. 
 She carried two masts and sails (jib, lug, and mizzen) and 
 had eight oars. 
 
 H 2
 
 n6 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 starvation. The Captain of the Morning Star 
 wrote in his note-book : 
 
 ' We gave a supper of hot porridge to the poor 
 women and children by cooking what meal we had 
 in the boat. 
 
 'The news spread fast that the wazungu (white 
 men) had come news of work for food supplies 
 of protection from their enemies hope of brighter 
 things all round . . . men arrived begging us to 
 come and settle amongst them/ 
 
 At another time the boat went to the same people 
 and found them again starving, for war had brought 
 famine, and enemies stood between them and the 
 places where there was food. 
 
 The Morning Star had the freedom of the sea 
 and used it. She sailed off to a distant tribe, 
 bought food and the seed of corn and rice, carried 
 these back to the Ulungu people, and set them on 
 their legs again. 
 
 The seed was a happy thought; it was helping 
 people to help themselves, and their hearts were 
 won so that they made a poem about it which they 
 chanted at their drum-beatings and merry-makings 
 for many years. 
 
 Now our good boat that took healing to the 
 broken-hearted and deliverance to the captive lies 
 wrecked. But we believe more than ever in the 
 Day of which the Morning S/arwas the forerunner, 
 for the makers of Wars and Famines are hiding 
 away from the light of Him who came that we 
 might all have life and have it abundantly.
 
 SMALL CRAFT 117 
 
 (2) The Son of Amaka and ihe Magic Boat 
 
 A group of brown young men stood on the deck 
 of a steamship as she heaved her anchor and stood 
 out for sea. The beach that she left was the wild 
 shore of an island off the coast of western Papua, 
 where the Goaribari live, the fierce savage people 
 who slew the heroic Greatheart of Papua, James 
 Chalmers, and his young colleague Tomkins. 
 
 The Goaribari savages stood there frightened 
 and filled with doubt. White traders who worked 
 the steamship had come to Goaribari, and were 
 taking the young natives along the coast to labour 
 in distant coco-nut plantations. On the shore behind 
 were their wives and brothers, and all the people 
 of their tribe were wailing and mourning the de- 
 parture of their young men. 
 
 But the ship steadily steamed away, and the 
 Goaribari boys glowered sullenly as they watched 
 the coast sliding slowly past them, every pulse of 
 the engine carrying them farther from home. Night 
 fell and day came again. The men were borne 
 away, landed and set to work on a strange coast 
 over two hundred miles from their home. Some 
 of them settled down to work ; but one youth was 
 unhappy in his exile from home, and longed to get 
 back again to his people who regarded him as lost. 
 So he brooded as he worked, and planned as he 
 brooded. His name was Amakamere, the son of
 
 ii8 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 Amaka, chief of the village Mubagowa. One night 
 he crept away unseen and made his way along the 
 shore to a place called Jokea. 1 
 
 When he came to Jokea he saw a strange boat 
 such as he had never seen before. It had no sails 
 nor had it any funnel. It was neither sailing canoe 
 nor steam-boat. Yet it ran swiftly through the 
 water to the sound of a rapid p-p-p-pop. It was 
 a motor-boat. 
 
 In the boat was a man wearing a pith helmet on 
 his head, khaki trousers, a shirt which showed 
 by its dirt that the wearer had been attending 
 to the engine. The man's kindly eyes gleamed 
 through curious shining things that he carried on 
 his nose. They were spectacles. His name was 
 Mr. B. T. Butcher. On the bow of the boat was a 
 word, which of course the son of Amaka could not 
 read. The word was Tamate, the native name of 
 the great missionary Chalmers, who was killed by 
 the fathers of this Goaribari man and his friends. 
 
 Mr. Butcher, who is a missionary who volun- 
 teered on the death of Chalmers to go out to the 
 very country in which Tamate was killed, spoke to 
 Amakamere, who soon told him all his troubles. 
 
 ' I will take you home to your own people ', said 
 Mr. Butcher, ' if you will come with me in my boat/ 
 
 The son of Amaka, however, was afraid. He 
 had already been taken away from home by white 
 1 Yo-kee-ah.
 
 SMALL CRAFT 119 
 
 men. What worse thing might happen to him if 
 he went in this strange, puffing canoe ? 
 
 Something in the white man's eyes and his way 
 of speaking showed Amakamere that he would not 
 do him any harm. So he got into the boat. But 
 he wished he were out of it a moment later when 
 the white man touched a lever, and some strange 
 devil spirit went brrrrrrrrrr in the stern of the boat, 
 and the Tamate sprang out to sea. The faster the 
 engine throbbed the more the boy trembled. But 
 at last he got used to it, and sat quietly while they 
 sped westward in the magic boat past Mount Yule, 
 whose strange peak rises to the skies in the shape 
 of a French Liberty Cap, and where the green palm- 
 trees stretch right down to the water's edge. They 
 stopped on the way for a night at Orokolo, where 
 once headhunters lived, and then a few days at 
 Urika not long ago the home of cannibals. 
 
 With Mr. Butcher in the boat was another Papuan 
 youth, who desired to be a missionary to his own 
 people. His name was Papela, and he was known 
 as Charlie Papela. He was twenty-four years old. 
 These three men in the motor-boat were following 
 the very track on which Chalmers had travelled 
 when he went to his death. The Tamate was 
 passing by the way of Tamate. 
 
 As the shore of Goaribari came in sight 
 Mr. Butcher and Amakamere saw the 'braves' 
 of Dopima, the village where Tamate was killed,
 
 120 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 hastily leaping into their canoes by the beach. 
 The canoes dug out of the trunks of trees, and 
 some of them sixty feet long were swiftly pushed 
 off, and the men paddling out to sea. 
 
 Clearly they intended to cut off the Tamate by 
 lining up ahead of her. Mr. Butcher saw the 
 danger. He stooped over his engine and was soon 
 bringing out of her the fullness of her power. The 
 canoes gathered speed, the men standing up in 
 them as many as twenty in a row, with paddles 
 flashing and the canoes flying over the water 
 toward the motor-boat. Mr. Butcher measured 
 the distance and the pace of the canoes with his 
 eye. It would be a close thing, he could see. He 
 turned again to the sturdy engine, now working at 
 furious speed, to be sure that the last turn of the 
 screw was being secured. 
 
 The Tamate sheared a glittering furrow through 
 the sea, and her bows lifted to the scatter of the 
 spray, as she pulled clear of the foremost canoe and 
 left the foiled savages to come along in a disappointed 
 procession of canoes in her triumphant wake. 
 
 They were now drawing near to Mubagowa, the 
 village from which the son of Amaka had been 
 carried away. At length they were close to the 
 shore of Mubagowa (which means 'the river point'), 
 and Papela at Mr. Butcher's word dropped the 
 anchor. The Dopima canoes came up in the rear. 
 
 Hastily the three took everything movable from
 
 A MOTOR LAUNCH OFF THE PAPUAN COAST, PASSING 
 NATIVE SAILING CANOES
 
 SMALL CRAFT 121 
 
 the deck, and stowed it away below so that the 
 savages should not steal the boat's gear. 
 
 Then the yelling crowd of savages from the 
 shore was upon them. They at once recognized 
 their own tribesman, Amakamere. The lost was 
 found, and (he told them) it was the wonderful 
 white man in the magic boat who had brought him 
 all along the coast and had put him upon his native 
 shore. Amakamere's friends hugged him, and 
 patted him, and grinned at him, and shouted to one 
 another with joy. 
 
 Then they turned to Mr. Butcher. 
 
 1 Go ashore with 'us ', they said. 
 
 'No', he replied, 'it is too dark now and I am 
 tired. I will sleep on the boat. To-morrow I will 
 come.' 
 
 He intended to sleep on the boat, but sleep was 
 impossible. The men of Goaribari shouted and 
 watched, and went to and fro all night. In the 
 morning Mr. Butcher and Papela got out the eight- 
 foot dinghy and slung her into the sea, and with 
 two paddles leapt into her. 
 
 'The Tamate never looked so comfortable as 
 when we left her that morning ', says Mr. Butcher, 
 as he tells the story of that day's adventures. 
 
 'Crowds of canoes filled with savages were round 
 about us. More crowds came out from the shore, 
 making frenzied yells, with spears and clubs in 
 their hands, their faces painted all red and yellow.'
 
 122 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 As the bow of the dinghy grated on the beach 
 they leapt at Mr. Butcher and Papela and dragged 
 them out of the canoe. 
 
 The savages gripped them tightly by the wrist 
 and pulled them up the beach to the village. 
 Mr. Butcher heard Papela's frightened voice. 
 
 ' Master', he said, ' I don't like the look of them ; 
 they are going to kill us.' 
 
 'Well, Charlie', replied Mr. Butcher, 'I don't 
 know what they're going to do, but I know what 
 we are going to do. We are going with them.' 
 
 At last they were dragged through the village 
 till they came face to face with the great men's 
 club-house, the Auwodaimo, a vast, long house like 
 a Zeppelin-shed, with an uplifted, pointed, front 
 awning like an enormous crocodile's upper jaw, 
 sixty or seventy feet high. Under the awning 
 was a platform. With a final tremendous yell the 
 savages lifted Mr. Butcher and Papela on to the 
 platform. It was on such a platform that Chalmers 
 was killed by those same savages near the same spot. 
 
 Mr. Butcher took a sharp look round. He saw 
 a sight, ugly in itself, but to him at that hour a thing 
 of indescribable beauty a dead pig with a bleeding 
 nose. The dead pig meant a feast. A feast meant 
 peace. A feast spelt gratitude to the white man 
 like the very white man they had killed, who, instead 
 of hating them, had brought back their own lost 
 brother. So they had determined upon a feast of
 
 SMALL CRAFT 123 
 
 gratitude to which they had dragged Mr. Butcher 
 and Papela. They had, indeed, 'compelled them 
 to come in'! 
 
 They sat down together, the lost boy restored to 
 his people, the Goaribari savages, the Christian 
 Papuan young man Papela, and Mr. Butcher the 
 missionary. 
 
 From that day Mr. Butcher was able to move 
 among these wild savages and to go in his motor- 
 boat up the water-ways where no white man had 
 ever been before, till he and his motor-boat are 
 known as friends throughout over a hundred miles 
 of river-villages. The London Missionary Society 
 has built a bungalow for Mr. Butcher on the top of 
 a hill, called Aird Hill, on an island in the river. 
 
 And down by the bank the Tamate, the stout, 
 brave motor-boat, rests when she is not threshing 
 the water-ways or braving the seas along the coast. 
 Without that staunch little craft the son of Amaka 
 would never have reached his people again, and 
 the friendship of Mr. Butcher with the savages 
 there would not have begun so splendidly, nor 
 would they have learned from him in so many 
 villages the beginning of the knowledge of the 
 love of God. 
 
 The London Missionary Society's flotilla of 
 motor-boats on the Papuan coast now includes 
 the following: Ainauia, Purari, Mauri, Tamate, 
 Mamari, Ada, Piete, Daba, Maru.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 JOHN WILLIAMS IV 
 
 You will remember that John Williams I and 
 John Williams II were both shipwrecked, because 
 when the wind fell to calm, and the ocean current 
 flowed swiftly towards the islands, neither of these 
 lovely ships could be saved from being hurled on 
 to the cruel reefs, where they were shattered by 
 the tremendous breakers. The ocean was too 
 deep for anchorage ; the current was too strong 
 for the ships' boats to pull them from the rocky 
 coast. The might of the rolling waves that swept 
 across the thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean 
 finished the destruction. 
 
 If they had been steam-ships they would not 
 have been wrecked in this way; for in calm or 
 storm they could have steamed away from the 
 reef. So when John Williams III was very old, 
 and had sailed for twenty-five years among the 
 islands of the South Seas, the Directors of the 
 London Missionary Society decided that the next 
 boat must be a steam-ship. 
 
 A steamer, they said, would not only be safe from 
 being wrecked in calm, but also, instead of having 
 to beat up against a head wind, tacking hither and
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS IV 125 
 
 thither for week after week on a long zig-zag course, 
 she would be able to steam steadily from the South 
 Seas to Papua in the teeth of the trade winds. Thus 
 she could save weeks and weeks of the precious 
 time of the missionaries in the course of a year; 
 so that actually a time-table could be drawn up, of 
 the days when she would reach each island, which 
 had never been possible for any of the sailing- 
 ships. 
 
 So the Directors of the London Missionary 
 Society told the boys and girls of Britain and 
 Australia that in order to carry the Missionaries 
 of the Gospel of Jesus to the great and small 
 islands, and to Papua, a steam-ship was needed. 
 The boys and girls set to work to collect for the 
 new ship, and at last they provided money for 
 a three-masted schooner (called a barquantine), 
 equipped with steam-engines and with room for 
 385 tons of coal in the main hold, with an ordinary 
 speed of 8 knots an hour. She was 204 feet long, 
 and drew 13 feet of water. In order to save 
 coal, her rigging was so contrived that she could 
 carry 2,200 feet of canvas. Cabins were built to 
 take six married missionaries and fifteen native 
 teachers with their wives. By November n, 1893, 
 she was ready to launch. 
 
 Decked out from stem to stern with waving 
 flags, she glided into the river Clyde amid the 
 cheers of hundreds of children, and was tugged to
 
 126 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 the yard where her engines were to be fixed. 
 On Saturday, March 10, 1894, she was dedicated 
 to her work as she lay alongside the Broomielaw 
 quay the very quay from which, years before, 
 young David Livingstone had sailed for the first 
 time. 
 
 Steaming out from Glasgow the John Williams 
 went to Runcorn, where special excursion trains 
 and steamers brought thousands of boys and girls 
 and men and women from Manchester to see her. 
 She then went to Liverpool and Swansea, where 
 all the schools in the town were closed, and ex- 
 cursions were run from all parts of South Wales ; 
 and so to Bristol, Cardiff, and Plymouth, Cowes 
 and Southampton. At each port Sunday School 
 children, who are now fathers and mothers of 
 boys and girls who collect to support her, came 
 down to walk on her decks and read on her bows 
 the message that she has carried across the world, 
 ' Peace on earth, goodwill among men/ 
 
 So she sailed out from Britain, and has never 
 returned. 
 
 Many books would be filled it we told the 
 story of her journeys through those years. For 
 every year from the time she steams out from the 
 glorious land-locked harbour of Sydney (one of the 
 finest ports in the whole world, with its 365 bays, 
 and over 100 miles of deep water close to the shore) 
 to the hour when, having gone from island to island
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS IV 127 
 
 and through the Pacific to Papua on three separate 
 voyages, her bows again butt through the water 
 between Sydney Heads she has run 20,000 miles. 1 
 
 Let us go aboard her and take one of these 
 journeys. Going down to the harbour we see 
 a fine yacht, spotlessly clean, with her brass shining, 
 and her decks scrubbed, her rigging in perfect 
 order, and a breeze humming through the wireless 
 apparatus, strung between the masts. 
 
 Her brown-faced crew of Aitutakians are some 
 of the most wonderful seamen in the world. They 
 can swim like dolphins, and swarm up the rigging 
 like squirrels chasing each other up a pine-tree. 
 
 Her hull has been cleansed in dry dock from 
 the weeds that collect rapidly and thickly on ships 
 sailing in the South Seas, and would slow her 
 down if allowed to stay on the hull, which has 
 also been painted after the scrubbing. There are 
 now 500 tons of coal in the bunkers and the hold. 
 The cargo of food, clothing, paper, ink, books, 
 axes, screws, hinges, and a thousand other things 
 that are needed in the islands, are then stowed in 
 the hold, or arranged on the deck. Sometimes the 
 children of the Sunday Schools of Sydney, as well 
 as of Brisbane, when the ship calls there, will come 
 down and have their New Year Offering books 
 
 1 A list of the places she usually visits on her journeys 
 will be found at the end of this chapter, and can be followed 
 on the map.
 
 128 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 presented to them on board, when the Aitutakian 
 crew will sing hymns in their own language. 
 
 She then steams out between the lines of ship- 
 ping toward the open sea and Brisbane. Coming 
 from Brisbane, as she runs out between the Heads, 
 the pilot-tug comes up to take the pilot off, and 
 the John Williams is out in the ocean. She runs 
 northward along the coast of Australia. With a 
 steady wind in her favour she will run under 
 canvas without steam, thus saving her coal, and 
 often making quite as much speed. 
 
 As we walk up and down the deck we find, on 
 the forward part, crates with fowls and geese and 
 ducks and turkeys for some of the New Guinea 
 missionaries, and perhaps some galvanized iron 
 water-tanks, and a small boat or two. As we 
 run northward, toward the equator, the heat gets 
 heavier. Precisely at mid-day the captain takes 
 his observations of the sun, so that we may know 
 exactly where we are upon the seas. A missionary 
 travelling on board with his children from Australia 
 to New Guinea will be playing games with them on 
 deck, and we shall all join in and play together. 
 
 Swinging north-west, when we are about ten 
 degrees south of the equator, we sight the foam on 
 the barrier coral reef that protects the south coast 
 of New Guinea. Steaming through the gap in the 
 reef we suddenly discover that the ship, which has 
 been rolling in the ocean for many days, is running
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS IV 129 
 
 through absolutely calm water, the reef stopping 
 the heavy ocean swell. Inside the reef for thirty 
 miles we run through lovely waters, over which 
 are scattered hilly islands, and, as the sun sets, the 
 ship drops anchor off Samarai. 
 
 The swift puff-puff of a motor-boat in the dusk 
 brings the missionary from the island of Kwato, 
 which belongs to the London Missionary Society. 
 This island, when our missionaries first settled 
 upon it, was dreadfully unhealthy fever coming 
 up from the great swamp at the foot of its hill; 
 but the missionaries, gathering together a large 
 number of brown Papuan natives, filled up and 
 drained the great swamp, so that now it is one of the 
 healthiest places, as well as one of the most beauti- 
 ful, on the coast of Papua. Running alongside the 
 stone pier, which was built by a South Sea Island 
 Christian teacher, Ono, we meet with other brown 
 islanders from the South Seas, who, having become 
 Christian, are now missionaries to the people of 
 Papua. On landing we see ahead of us the school- 
 house and teachers' dwellings, the church, the store 
 with its pots and kettles, hatchets, knives and forks, 
 scissors, thimbles, clothes, rice, lamps, paraffin, and 
 all the other things needed by the South Sea 
 teachers and the missionary. 
 
 Right up above us, on the top of the hill, 200 feet 
 high, stands the Mission House, surrounded by a 
 deep verandah, which shelters from the tremendous 
 
 i
 
 130 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 power of the sun. On Sunday morning strange 
 sails, looking like great crab-claws, come across the 
 waters to the landing-place. Men jump out of the 
 big sailing canoes dark brown men, with no 
 clothing except a narrow band, and women wearing 
 short skirts made of grass hung thickly upon a 
 band, which is tied round the waist. They have 
 come, strange as it may seem to us, to church, to 
 join in the morning worship, led by the missionary. 
 While down from the Mission House, and out from 
 the teachers' houses come children, who are being 
 taught their books, and trained in carpentry and 
 sewing and other things upon the island by the 
 missionaries and their helpers. 
 
 On the next day we come back aboard the John 
 Williams, taking the missionary from Kwato on 
 board, and run along westward to Fife Bay, 
 Vatorata, Port Moresby, Delena, Orokolo, Urika, 
 and Daru, visiting many of these places two and 
 three times in order to land stores and mails, and 
 embark and disembark missionaries. 1 
 
 Often in these seas tremendously heavy thunder- 
 storms come, and the ship itself has been struck 
 by lightning. At one of the ports, when all the 
 missionaries are together, we land and spend some 
 days in thinking out together and praying about 
 the problems of the work and how best to bring 
 
 1 See map.
 
 JOHN WILLIAMS IV 131 
 
 this world of savage people to love the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 From Dam the good ship turns again, and 
 running south-eastward goes down the coast of 
 Australia once more to Sydney, having covered 
 over 4,000 miles between February and April. 
 
 Within a few weeks she sails again from Sydney, 
 and runs eastward on her second journey of 9,997 
 miles ! Imagine what it means when the boys 
 and girls and men and women on that loneliest 
 of islands in the South Seas, Niue, catch sight 
 of their loved ' Religion Ship ', and rush down to 
 the beach to greet her. 
 
 From Niue she runs to the Samoan Islands, 
 and thence northward by the Tokelau Islands, and 
 westward to the Gilberts. 1 Think again of what 
 it means on those Gilbert Islands on the equator 
 to see the John Williams coming. For instance, 
 there is no food to be found on those islands ex- 
 cept fish and small wild fowl, and all the rest has 
 to come to them on the John Williams, and the 
 missionary has seen no white face, probably during 
 the whole year, except during the short time when 
 the good ship is with him. 
 
 From the Gilberts she runs down to the Ellice 
 
 Islands, where you remember Elikana and his 
 
 friends were cast, half dead, on the shore, by the 
 
 waves, and there taught the people their first know- 
 
 1 Follow the journeys on the map.
 
 132 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 ledge of Jesus Christ; and from the Ellice Islands 
 she runs back via Samoa to Sydney. This long 
 journey of 10,000 miles takes just three months. 
 
 The longest journey of all is the third, on 
 which she starts at the end of August. The long 
 list of islands at which she stops is given at the 
 bottom of page 133. If you remember from the 
 earlier chapters in this book, and from John 
 Williams the Shipbuilder (see Chapter X espe- 
 cially), how in the brave old days John Williams 
 himself sailed among these islands, building The 
 Messenger of Peace on Rarotonga, and carrying 
 the strange cannibal chief Roma-tane to sweep 
 away the idol worship on other islands; if you 
 recall, too, that it is only by the coming of the 
 John Williams that the missionaries are able to 
 sail to the help of the native teachers in some of 
 the little islands, you will see why it is that there 
 is no ship in all the world, sailing the oceans to-day, 
 the sight of whose masts coming up over the edge 
 of the sea brings such thrills of joy and makes so 
 many people call out to their friends, with faces 
 wreathed in smiles, 
 
 ' The ship, the ship, she comes ! '
 
 Between 132-3
 
 80 170 160 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 30 
 
 Buto/tan X. 
 
 M^gn'/GlLBERT 
 
 
 
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 a x<CsC^.'x 
 
 , a . w ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 e "-"vT^x 
 
 Nanomango. LAGOC 
 
 *x. . 
 
 N OR ^'V 
 
 I C 
 
 ,AU OR 
 
 Penrhyn 1. 
 
 Nutufetai ELLICE Is. ^ TOM I 
 
 rt^fut;" 
 
 ' U k' NJ-un^^ 
 
 gMfcf****) 
 
 '^ 7/ r 
 
 rui 
 
 ISLAND 
 
 "*-. i 
 ~'^--x ( S A 
 
 Pukapuka. "^j" ,^ L '" 
 
 NfOA OR *\ 
 
 ngo.. 
 
 i 
 i 
 i 
 f 
 
 i 
 
 R 
 
 V ^v ^ SAvAiiS'.NAVIGATOR Is. \ 
 
 A /V .^i^P' - 
 
 also Methodist \ .Suwarrow 1. 
 
 3 /'Briti, f,) ."'^ , ' '. 
 
 . / ,x* .' V 
 
 /*' / ^ 
 
 ka'". ./ \ 
 
 . \ 
 
 ,. /TONGA OR 
 
 V* \ 
 V COOK o 
 
 Methodist " va t 
 
 \ HERVEY Is./ 
 
 Palmerston 1 j, _ _ 
 ~.^_ Aitutaki 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 rjj Mission 
 LTY Is. (Frvtch) 
 
 To atabJ| FRIENDLYl! 
 ..(A (****} 
 Huhl*** Methodist Mission 
 
 Rarotooga. 
 
 /' ^ M ' 1 " k " 
 
 % --<UA 
 
 -;.-"""" 
 
 KERMADEC IT ,..'" If ^\ 
 
 1,8, SPHEF 
 in the 
 PACIFIC 
 
 vl. S. Stations underlined 
 John \VUliams" shewn thus,< 
 
 *>e Udhn \Yillto.ms is only rouqhl 
 ie map. ft is impossible to atto 
 H moLy have to be made on diff 
 
 DW; 
 
 ^,x 
 
 '-. y^ 
 
 * L. 
 Route of the 
 
 Note The journey of t 
 by tne line on ti 
 
 -_._-._ 
 
 .- represented 
 w for all the 
 
 Wjcklard '00 170 160 >-4
 
 THE STEAMER'S VOYAGES 
 
 February to April 
 
 Sydney Delena * 
 
 Brisbane Orokolo * 
 
 Samarai * Urika * 
 
 Kwato Daru 
 
 Fife Bay * Brisbane 
 
 Vatorata * Sydney. 
 Port Moresby 
 
 * These places are not shown on the map, but they occur 
 in this order between the places that are marked. 
 
 April to August 
 
 Sydney Gilbert Islands 
 
 Niue Ellice Islands 
 
 Samoa Samoa 
 
 Tokelau Islands Sydney. 
 
 August to December 
 
 Sydney Palmerston Island 
 
 Rarotonga Aitutaki 
 
 Mangaia Rarotonga 
 
 Mauki Niue 
 
 Mitiaro Samoa 
 
 Atiu Suva (Fiji) 
 
 Aitutaki Ellice Islands 
 
 Penrhyn Gilbert Islands 
 
 Manihiki Papua (if necessary) 
 
 Pakapuka Sydney. 
 
 Note. These are only examples of voyages, which are not 
 always in the same order.
 
 PRINCIPAL SHIPS OF THE LONDON 
 MISSIONARY SOCIETY 
 
 SOUTH SEAS AND PAPUA 
 
 NAME AND 
 DESCRIPTION. 
 
 Royal Admiral 
 (Ship). 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 Cost ^9,800 for purchase and stores. Her first 
 voyage lasted from August 10, 1796, to July n, 
 1798, during which she took the first missionaries 
 to Tahiti. She traded in tea on homeward trip 
 and earned ^4,100. On her second voyage 
 she was captured by a French privateer, on 
 February 19, 1799. 
 
 Chartered for one voyage at a cost of ^3,600. 
 Conveyed missionaries and stores to Tahiti and 
 other islands, arriving at Matavai July 10, 1801. 
 
 Haweis (Fore and Built by missionaries in Tahiti, aided by King 
 aft schooner). Pomare. Launched December 10, 1817. Mis- 
 
 sionary ship for short time only, then handed over 
 to Pomare for trading purposes. 
 
 Endeavour (or as PurchasedbyRev.JohnWilliamsandMrMarsden 
 
 called by natives in Sydney in 1821, and paid for in native produce. 
 
 TE MATAMUA,.Zfc- Used for carrying produce to Sydney, and as a 
 
 ginning) (Fore missionary vessel. Owing to the imposition of 
 
 and aft schooner). a hostile tariff", she was sold in 1823. 
 
 Messenger of Peace Built in 1827 by Rev. John Williams, when 
 
 (Fore and aft detained in the island of Rarotonga, the work 
 
 schooner, from 70 being finished in fifteen weeks. Sailed first to 
 
 to 80 tons). Aitutaki and back ; then to Tahiti, distant from 
 
 600 to 700 miles ; and then to Savage Island and 
 
 Samoa. A second voyage to Samoa in 1832. In 
 
 1833, being too small, she was sold. 
 
 Camden (Brig, Previously a government packet. Bought for the 
 
 200 tons). Society in response to the earnest appeals of 
 
 Rev. John Williams, when at home in 1838, and 
 
 equipped at a total cost of ^2,600. A sum of
 
 SOUTH SEAS AND PAPUA 
 
 135 
 
 NAME AND 
 DESCRIPTION. 
 
 John Williams I 
 (Barque). 
 
 John Williams II 
 (Barque). 
 
 John Williams 111 
 (Barque). 
 
 Surprise . , . 
 
 Ellengowan I 
 (Screw steamer). 
 
 Bertha (Brigan- 
 tine). 
 
 Ellengowan 11 
 (Fore and aft 
 schooner). 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 j4,ooo in all was raised for her purchase and 
 working. Sailed April n, 1838, with the Rev. 
 John Williams and party of missionaries, for the 
 South Seas. In November of the following year 
 visited the New Hebrides, and at Erromanga 
 Mr. Williams and Mr. Harris were murdered. 
 Continued working as a missionary ship until 
 1843, when she returned home and was sold. 
 
 First children's ship, who raised ^6,237 for her 
 purchase and working Launched at Harwich 
 March 20, 1844, and sailed June 5, 1844. Re- 
 turned to England in 1847, ^50, 1855, 1860, 
 and was each time repaired and refitted by the 
 young. Wrecked on Danger Island, May 16, 
 1864, after 20 years' service. Sailed altogether 
 about half a million miles. 
 
 Second children's ship. They raised for her the 
 noble sum of .11,190 35. id. Built by Messrs. 
 Hall of Aberdeen. Sailed January 4, 1866. 
 Wrecked on Savage Island, January 8, 1867. 
 
 Third children's ship. Paid for from insurance 
 money. Built by Messrs. Hall of Aberdeen. 
 Launched October 1868, sailed November 1868. 
 Never returned to England. 
 
 Chartered for voyage of inspection on Papuan 
 coast, 1871. 
 
 Purchased and refitted for Society by Miss Baxter 
 of Dundee, in 1873, at a cost 0^3,234. Working 
 on the coast of New Guinea up the Fly River, 
 and to and from Australia, until 1880, when she 
 was sold. 
 
 Purchased by the Society for temporary service 
 for ^775, while the Ellengowan was undergoing 
 repair in 1877. Employed on coast of New 
 Guinea for six or eight months, under command 
 of Mr. Me Arthur, the mate of the John Williams ; 
 then sold 
 
 Built for the Society by Miss Baxter in 1881, 
 for ,1,500. Working on the coast of New 
 Guinea. Being too small, was sold in 1888.
 
 136 
 
 THE SHIPS OF PEACE 
 
 NAME AND 
 DESCRIPTION. 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 Harrier (Large Formerly a government vessel. Bought by the 
 
 fore and aft children at a cost, including stores, of ^2,594 
 
 schooner). as. 8<f. Working on the coast of New Guinea. 
 
 Wrecked on reef near Cooktown, July 28, 1891. 
 
 Nine (Fore and Cost ^492 iss. Presented to the New Guinea 
 aft schooner). Mission by Island of Nine, 1891. Replaced in 
 
 1905 by another vessel of the same name which 
 
 was sold in 1912. 
 
 John Williams IV Cost ,17,055 i8s. Built for combined New 
 
 (Three-masted Guinea and South Sea Island work by Messrs, 
 
 schooner, square R. Napier and Sons, of Glasgow, under the direc- 
 
 rigged forward, tionof Gilbert S. Goodwin, Esq., Naval Architect, 
 
 provided with full of Liverpool. Length 188-6 ft. x 31-6 ft. breadth 
 
 steam power). x 16 ft. moulded depth. 
 
 Ainauia, Purari, Mauri, Tamate, Mamari, Ada, Pieti, Daha, Maru. 
 Motor launches on the Papuan coast. 
 
 CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 The Calabash Purchased and used by Captain Hore on Tan- 
 
 (Slave dhow). ganyika, 1879. 
 
 Morning Star Put togethei on Lake Tanganyika, 1883. Wrecked, 
 
 (Steel life-boat). 1895. 
 
 Good News (Auxi- Taken out by Quilimane Nyasa route in pieces, 
 liary steam-ship). launched on Tanganyika, March 1885. Sold in 
 
 1895 to African Lakes Corporation. Length 50 ft. 
 
 Breadth 12 ft. Depth 6 ft. 3 in. 
 
 INDIA 
 
 Mardie (River Used for itineration on the river Ganges. 
 Boat). 
 
 CHINA 
 
 Amoy Gospel Used in connexion with North River work. 
 Boat. 
 
 The Good News. Used by a lady missionary on the waterways 
 near to Shanghai for itineration purposes. 
 
 Printed by Frederick Hall at the Oxford University Press