THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY – DID SEPTIMUS SEVERUS PASS MY BUNGELOW?

It must have been in 1962 or thereabouts. I was working in Benghazi and was called to Tripoli to help when a P & O liner docked and disgorged a bus load of tourists who wanted to visit the remains of the notable Roman City known as Leptis Magna.

The great liner docked with smooth and skilful decorum. A young officer in crisp white uniform stood at the gangway as passengers disembarked and boarded a bus. I joined them. Our guide made himself known to us all and we were on our way. My job was easy. I was required to look English and engage passengers in enthusiastic conversation. A few words here and there about Tripolitania’s three Roman Cities, Sabratha, Oea and Leptis Magna and their Phoenician predecessors seemed to be appreciated. Speculation about the Emperor Septimus Severus helped to enliven the journey. He was born in Leptis Magna and was the first Roman Emperor not to have been born in Rome.He and his Syrian wife Julia Donma spent a great deal of money and time improving and expanding the city. We spent an agreeable time amongst the ruins and at lunch in a local restaurant.

As I write this, I see the oak and ash wood which grows on the remains of the Roman Road from Londinium to Calleva Attrebatum where it meets the Portway, the Roman Road leading onwards to Bath. Now we call it the Devils Highway. The Roman soldiers and civilians that passed where my dwelling now stands were on the main route from Roman London to the West of England. I can discern the characteristic Roman shape of the road and note that my granddaughter’s cat which died prematurely is buried thereon. I wonder if the Emperor Septimus Severus and his escort could have used the road when he was hereabouts between AD208 and 211. If so the noise of his chariot and his escort must have reached my ears, were I to have been alive then.

On the other side of the Devil’s Highway there is a new housing estate. It was built on what was known as Duke’s Meadow and changed the nature of our village. The duke in this case was the Duke of Wellington whoes gift it was from a grateful nation for his role in the defeat of Napoleon. Before the noise and mud the developers inflicted on us, they were required to appointed archaeologists to search for what we hoped would be the remains of a Roman villa and thus the end their plans. Diligent archaeologists crouched over their work and soon found the remains of a late Iron Age Round House. They carefully unearthed and kept the pots and tools that must have been familiar to the Round House dwellers as are our pots and pans and air fryers today. Amongst them were four loom weights made of fired clay, and they were large and heavy. I wanted one but did not ask the kindly archaeologists who would have been duty bound to refuse. They are in the storeroom in a museum by now. They may lurk there unnoticed. Remains of Iron Age Round Houses are not enough to stop developers. You need those of a good-sized Roman Villa to do that.

THE CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS DEPART

THE END OF SOMETHING?

Here is Rudyard Kipling foretelling the end of the British Empire. It is part of his poem Recessional written by him in 1897.

Far called, our navies melt away,

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations spare us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Are all the present ills, now evident in so many onetime parts of the British Empire, the fault the long-gone colonists who governed them? Some sources tell us that Britain, at the height of her power, invaded 90% of ‘the world’. If that is so, then there are plenty of places where warfare or insurrection might occur.

For some years, I had a front seat from which to see some of the British Colonial Elite returning to their home country when independence unseated them. And to watch the new masters and commanders, Kenyatta, Nkrumah, for example, make their way to see the British Queen or to address the United Nations. Kipling’s poem ‘Recessional’ resonated with me then. I left Africa and worked for a while in Fiji and Papua New Guinea both of which have now become strategically relevant in today’s disturbing times.

I invite you to look critically at my stories of a time amongst the Arabs and Berbers of Libya and the people of Pacific Islands. Are they relevant Today? I suggest they are if only because there is now a struggle for influence in the Pacific Islands by the Chinese probably to shore up their southern flanks for the invasion of Formosa.

I taught clever young men in one of England’s oldest schools for well over a quarter of a century. The main school building was an architectural hymn to the British Empire, and the walls of the corridors were then hung with images of Imperial Glory and lists of famous alumni. I had served in the Royal Air Force in Libya and later as a trader in Fiji and Papua New Guinea as the British Empire began to collapse. Those of us who served in the armed forces or in some other capacity in the far-flung Empire are now open to accusations of colonialism. Why, I must ask you, is it necessary to label all of us who worked overseas in the last century with a pejorative word which ‘deplatforms’ us without a hearing.

If you are amongst those who think thus, I would ask you, as I asked many of my pupils, what will your grandchildren think of your generation in sixty years from now. I cannot believe that you will be proud of the rampaging civil war in the Sudan or the accelerating climate change threatening the Sahel countries. Nor will you be proud, I suggest, that you are trying to limit the multitudes of migrants desperately escaping poverty and tyranny in their home countries and facing the hazardous people trafficking routes to find a better life. Especially if you are Fijian, your grandchildren are unlikely to thank you for the increase in methamphetamine use and associated rise in HIV foisted on them by powerful drug cartels. How happy will you be when you look back on the war burgeoning even now in Gaza and the Sudan

So it was that in the second half of the 20^th Century, I worked in Libya for more than eight years and later for one of the great Pacific Island trading houses. I confess that I was partly motivated by a sense of adventure arising out of the popular travel and adventure stories I read as an impressionable youth. They were unashamedly colonialist, and they were written by the ‘influencers’ of their day.

In Libya I know I was helping to pave the way for a Libyan airline. In Fiji and Papua New Guinea, I thought I was helping to benefit the Island economy. In so doing I travelled widely and often throughout both.

I have had much time since those colourful days to reflect on the morals of that enterprise and on the effect the colonial system had on the island people amongst whom I worked. I invited you to read the stories of my experiences in Fiji and Papua New Guinea and their causes and consequences with which time and reflection have endowed them.

FIJI

In 1874 the Fiji Islands became a British Crown Colony because several powerful Fijian chiefs wanted the protection the British would give them. There had been a goodly number of British Christian missionaries at work in Fiji who persuaded many of the prominent Chiefs to abandon their internal differences and, not least, the practice of cannibalism. These heroic missionaries in their black coats and grinding poverty did much to pave the way for British interests. The British, who were at first reluctant to take Fiji on board realised that there were good reasons to do so. What were they?

There was a growing body of British and American traders in business in Fiji and there were resources still available to establish sugar, cotton, copra and coffee plantations in the main islands. However, the geographical position of the Fiji Island in the South Pacific made it possible for Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy to use it as a base to extend its influence and challenge the other great powers such as the USA, France and Germany with colonial ambitions in the region. Tongans were actively vying for control, and the Americans very nearly achieved it.

It is Fiji’s position in the South Pacific today which is attractive to the growing Chinese Communist Empire much to the consternation of Australia, New Zealand and the USA. It also attracts the major drug cartels who use the islands as a staging post for the supply of drugs to Australia and New Zealand

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

New Guinea is the world’s second largest Island, after Greenland; it defies easy description. The more so because it is surrounded by spectacular but impenetrable reefs and protected by a difficult shoreline. The western part of the island is part of Indonesia and separated from the eastern part, Papua New Guinea, by two very remote river systems, the Fly and the Sepik. The Island is in an interesting strategic position as a line of defence for Australia, its immediate neighbour southwards across the Torres Strait. In World War II the Japanese tested this by invading the northern shores and pushing on through the central mountainous country towards Port Moresby the capital on the South Coast. They were beaten back by a courageous Australian Army and a well-equipped American military force.

If I were to find the fact about Papua New Guinea which is most revealing I would tell you that there are 838 living languages still spoken in the country. Why is that so? I will try to explore this unique condition later. In 1975 Papua New Guinea achieved its independence and embarked on the formation of a democratic state. How was this possible without a common language and in the face of huge difficulties inherent in the terrain? In my view that was an achievement of the highest order orchestrated by an enlightened Administration. Now in 2025 there are disturbing increases in crime and inter-tribal violence which must trouble near neighbours considerably.

I worked for one of the great trading houses which had developed the commercial life of the country and were looking with interest at the potential tourist industry. I travelled around PNG and its archipelago to learn about its potential as a tourist destination. What did I find? That the people and their customs were unique and should remain so. Their history is just now being uncovered by archaeologists, anthropologists, and biochemists and their findings are being shared in expensive and turgid books and learned papers published for other academics.

I soon found that my left femur which had been broken in the accident in Fiji had not mended. I suspect that made me not just the only person to have flown around PNG with a broken leg, but it also allows me to tell you about the unifying language which helped the diverse people to exercise their democratic rights. It is a ‘pidgin’ language in which I was known as ‘the big fella im leg im bugger up’.

A METEORIC MESSENGER

I think I must have been fifteen or thereabouts. By now my family were farming in Devonshire, an English county blessed by considerable natural beauty. I was helping my father with the hay making. Our farm was on high ground. We heard a jet aircraft approaching us. It roared low over our heads, flashed its silver livery at us and vanished over the horizon. It was a Gloster Meteor, the first jet fighter in service with the British Royal Air Force.
By the time I was standing with a pitchfork in my hands on a hilltop hay field in North Devon that heroic little Gloster Meteor had been demoted from its combat role and used for training. The sudden appearance of one of them and its pilot’s skill and audacity rooted me by my boots to the hay field whilst my imagination escaped into an unfamiliar and thrilling world. Yes, I know. I am beset by pedantry acquired I fear long after my hay making days. The aircraft was manufactured by the Gloster Aircraft Company, so called because it was hard for foreigners to pronounce Gloucestershire. If you live in Arkansas, you have no room to criticise.
I have heard other people tell of the moment that changed their lives and gave them purpose. That fleeting incident propelled me from the cow sheds and pastures of a small English dairy farm to the coral reefs of Fiji, the glaciers of Norway and sandstorms in the Sahara.
It was the duty imposed by the rhythms of a dairy herd that prepared me to survive long periods of watch keeping in the Royal Air Force and the duties of a House Master of a boarding house in an English school that boasts 900 years of history. House Masters in my day were on duty even when they were asleep.
Those so-called imperialists of my generation who are still alive in the early years of the 21st century may observe with interest that our old schools are filling up with the sons and daughters of the people our generation were supposed to have ruled. These new boys and girls attend their lessons in rooms the walls of which boast memorials to long dead alumni who excelled in the far-flung British Empire.

FIJI – STILL A BRITISH COLONY

THE PAYING WARD

In 1967 I was in the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva in Fiji. I had been severely injured in an accident and, I am told, near death at one time. I survived the immediate trauma and embarked on the long business of mending my body in what was called the Paying Ward because we who occupied it could afford the modest fees for our operations and care. The Fijian nurses set about mending my mind with unfailing humour. My fellow patients came and went, some I fear to their respective heaven or hell depending on their religious preference.

It was not unusual that we patients should talk about death in the circumstances. One of my Fijian neighbours in the ward was from the island of Bega(pronounced Benga) where fire walkers occasionally displayed their immunity from burns by running across pits full of very hot stones. My ward neighbour had walked barefooted for most of his life. When he was confined to a hospital bed for a long time the thick skin on his feet began to crack into deep and painful fissures. The famous fire walkers may have benefitted from the insulation afforded by similar hard skin on their feet I suspect.

He told me that there was a Fijian healer on the Island of Bega who could mend a broken limb with the power of his mind. I would have given him the chance to prove it had I lived on Bega.

He also told me the story of the serpent god who lived in a cave in the Nakavada mountains in the interior of Viti Levu, the largest of Fiji’s numerous islands. When you die, he said, your soul journeys into the afterlife via the serpent’s cave and it decides there and then if you go to heaven or hell. He was unable to tell me the criteria the serpent applied when making its decisions. Modern religions are more helpful in this regard and give you a checklist. That seems moderately better than hoping the serpent was having a good day when you fetch up in its cave.

WHICH DOCTOR?

It is fair to say that June saved Setiri’s life given the way things were in Fiji in those days. I was in hospital and likely to be there for some time. We could afford to pay for my treatment. Setiri was a Fijian ‘house girl’ and could not afford modern health care. In fact, she was our ‘house girl’ who lived in a hut in our garden and looked after our daughter. In retrospect, we have much to answer for in this regard.

Modern medicine was out of reach to many Fijians. They relied on self-appointed doctors who claimed to cure most illnesses. Whilst I was in hospital, I heard stories of one such person on the island of Beqa who could mend broken bones by the power of his mind alone. An outlandish tale easily dismissed but in mitigation my family, who lived in England, called on the services of a ‘wart charmer’ to exercise her mental powers on both animals and humans. It was said that warts vanished from cow’s teats after she had stared at them for some time. In his old age my father became an enthusiast for homeopathic medicine, a practice which lacks evidential support.

Setiri began to suffer from abdominal pain. She sent for a well-known Fijian lady ‘doctor’ who visited her in her hut. She advised Setiri to engage in frequent copulation to drive out the pain. She also undertook to concentrate on Setiri’s problems from afar providing she was supplied with cigarettes to keep her going. Despite her best efforts and Setiri’s’ conscientious compliance with her instructions, the cure failed and her pain increased. June became concerned and took Setiri to our family doctor. He diagnosed acute appendicitis and arranged for an emergency operation. The appendix was near to bursting and would have probably been fatal if not removed immediately. Setiri was cured and returned to work.

There was a sequel. In due course, I was discharged from hospital. I had broken both legs and my left wrist in a traffic accident. My left leg had been fractured above and below the knee and I was unable to move it. My condition upset Setiri. In return for June’s help in the matter of her appendicitis she engaged the Fijian lady who had recommended the ineffective copulation cure to exercise her powers on me.

The lady arrived soon afterwards. She carried a bottle of purple oil with which she massaged my left leg whilst Setiri and June looked on. She then told me I would be able to elevate the hitherto inert limb from the bed. She was right, the dammed thing shot up in the air. My left leg had suddenly been endowed with energy and I was forced to acknowledge the lady’s control over my mind. The effect wore off when she left but Setiri was happy that her obligation to June had been redeemed.

SHIPWRECK ON A REEF WITH DIAMONDS

Sometime in the dead of night I received a call from a senior personage in the trading company for which I worked in Fiji. I am not sure why it was me he called but I did have the experience to deal with his problem. He told me that the company’s ship, the SS Lakemba, on its way from Suva to Sydney, was shipwrecked on a reef. The SS Lakemba was an old-fashioned cargo and passenger ship which had long tramped her way from Vancouver to Sydney and back via Hawaii, Western Samoa, and Fiji. She had reached the end of her honourable life and was to be paid off when she arrived in Sidney. Now she was about to die. My caller told me a rescue ship was on its way to save the passengers and crew who would be coming ashore in due course. What, he wanted to know, could I do about it?

I had dealt with similar events in Libya. It was easy to tell him to set about chartering an aircraft to take them to Sidney and to arrange hotel rooms for them in Suva whilst we waited for the rescue ship to arrive. He asked me to see if a suitable aircraft would be available whilst he conferred with his superiors. I called Qantas and they had a Boeing 707 in Sidney we could use for a price. The ship’s owners agreed to charter it and instructed me to do so and to make the other arrangements to get the passengers from the dockside in Suva to Sidney as smoothly and quickly as possible. By the time the rescue ship, the Cable and Wireless vessel ‘Retriever’, arrived alongside Suva docks we had staff, accommodation and ground transport ready. We had also chartered Fiji Airways to fly the passengers from Suva to the international airport at Nadi to meet the Qantas charter: interesting but not exciting.

It was the consummate seamanship of the captain and crew of the CS Retriever which saved one hundred and fifty survivors four of whom were in their eighties. The captain of the SS Lakemba had kept her engines going and the propellers turning until the rescue had been all but completed. Soon after they were stopped the ship fell off the reef into deep water. It was, as they say, beyond salvage.

When the rescue ship docked, I went aboard with a representative of the wreck’s owners. I found the rescued passengers in a saloon. They were venting their frustration in emphatic terms. I stood on a chair and explained the arrangements I had made. This cheered them up somewhat. I waited with the owner’s representative at the foot of the gangway as they disembarked. A somewhat distraught passenger engaged us in conversation. This is the gist of his story in so far as I remember it.

He had joined the ship in Vancouver intending to emigrate to Australia. He arranged for his camper van to be loaded aboard as deck cargo. He would use it to travel around Australia looking for a place to settle. The camper van had, of course, gone down with the ship. He added that he had invested his savings in diamonds. He had concealed them in the bodywork of his camper van and been unable to retrieve them before he was rescued.

CORNISH FARMS – MAN AND BOY

Many of my fellow boarders at Probus School were farmers sons. They came from all over the county; from the windblown north to the gentle south and their farms varied in crop and herd depending on climate and soil. I think these two ‘observations’ will paint a picture of the life we expected to lead when we were allowed to leave school and begin our farming life. The Labour government of 2025 has made it very hard indeed for farmers to leave their farms to their progeny. This may help when trying to understand how small and medium farmers feel about that.

In the aftermath of WWII, Cornish farmers sons expected to leave school at the age of 15 and to await the time when they inherited the family farm. Until they did so they hoped to grow stronger and wiser as they milked the cows, picked, bunched, boxed and dispatched flowers to Covent Garden market, mended the dry stone walls, drove the tractor at hay making, thatched the ricks, peep-shot rabbits for food, learned the price of bull calves in Truro market, caught moles and cured their skins for sale, ate egg and bacon tart, set fire to gorse in the right season, played Rugby, caught Congar eels in the tidal creeks in old car tires, scorned English folk and, perhaps, donned the canvas jacket and engaged in Cornish wrestling.

They would learn to plough and watch the masters of that art compete at the annual ploughing matches and listen to the critical talk between watching farmers with their hazel stick in hand and dogs at heel. They would know about ferrets and how to set them to hunt in rabbit warrens with nets over the holes and the terrier on a lead should a rabbit escape. They would deftly catch and kill a rabbit, slit its abdomen and remove the gut and take the carcass home to skin and hang in the cold larder for the women to cook.

Eventually they would inherit the farm and have a roll of pound notes in their pockets on market day to do a deal and to pay the auctioneer and be a man of substance in their village.

Who would he marry? Would she be church or chapel for that counted in Cornwall?

If he was very lucky, he would land a neighbouring farmer’s daughter who would learn to command his farmhouse kitchen and preside over the big Cornish range with a kettle on the hob and her aged and incontinent mother-in-law in her chair close by. Over her head would be the laden laundry rack and behind her the scrubbed kitchen table.

She will preserve fruit in season, work the butter churn and weald the butter pats. She would know how to use the jam kettle, and the clotted cream bowel. In her care would be the sides of salty bacon, the legs of ham, the keeper apples, the cider barrel, and the kitchen garden. She would keep the hens and know how to pluck and cook them and feed the family at breakfast and at the big midday meal. She and her women folk would fill the great metal tub and light the fire below it to heat the water to do the laundry.

At lambing time, in the warm kitchen, there would always be a kettle on the boil from sunrise until late at night. Whisky and hot water always ready to restore the shepherding men back from the flock with their backsides against the warm Cornish range and their boots at the back door.

Each week she would blacken the Cornish range and polish the brass. She would fill the lamps with paraffin and trim the wicks and fill the hot water bottles against the winter’s cold. She would keep the farm ledger and the cash box, darn the socks in her spare time, and pay the tradesmen.

She would forgive him when he was drunk, fill his bed with joy and give birth to his children at home. Farms would flourish with good wives in the house.

A SECOND COMING IN THE GREEN HIGHLANDS

The British Vice Consul in Benghazi when we arrived was a renowned bingo caller. Not a common skill amongst Vice Consuls, but times are changing. His tour of duty was terminated abruptly because he was found to be a bigamist; a combination of indiscretions which may prove to be unique amongst British Vice Consuls, though some of His Majesties Honorary Vice Consuls may have colourful histories.

Most British expatriates were happier with the new Vice Consul who was young and presentable. One day he turned up in my office and told me the story of a young Englishman placed by the British Council to teach school children English in the high country in the interior. The people there were Muslim and belonged to the Senussi sect led by King Idris. Their tribal ties were strong, but they were tolerant folk, and insanity was tolerated amongst them, but it did not pay to insult them.

The young Englishman had lost his mind and should have been mentored by the British Council with more care. The notion that a lone young Englishman could live and teach amongst the tribes was fanciful at best and a hangover of the old colonial mind set. He had taken to wandering around the villages loudly proclaiming himself as the new Christ. He had to be removed and sent back to UK. If he was to travel in a commercial airline, he could well start to strut the isles proclaiming himself as Jesus. You can see that would create some unease the amongst passengers such as that generated by belligerent drunks on a holiday flight to the Costas.

The Vice Consul soon realised that I was doubtful about getting him to UK by air in his present state. He left to convey my unease to the Consul Genral. Within a very short time I received an invitation to the Consul General’s residence and found myself having Gin and Tonic with him and his lady wife in the embassy garden. So, well flattered and slightly influenced by Gin I agreed to send the poor young teacher home by air as a casualty if the Consul General agreed to have him sedated before he boarded the aircraft and accompanied by a good strong male nurse from the British Military Hospital armed with a syringe of happy juice sufficiently powerful to dissuade him from proclaiming the second coming.

To accommodate the poor young teacher, I arranged to have a stretcher fitted in the first-class compartment in an aircraft flying directly to London Heathrow airport. I was at the airport to watch his embarkation and brief the aircrew. I was apprehensive when I met the army nurse chosen to accompany the aspiring Saviour. He was not impressive, but it was too late to change him for a more robust one. Once he and the aspiring messiah were aboard, I talked to the head steward. Happily, he was famous for being a very tough citizen. He agreed to act decisively if there was a disturbance.

I heard the story of the deluded teacher’s adventurous flight home in a letter of reprimand from London. His sedation wore off over Switzerland and his religious zeal turned political when he found there was a bulkhead between First and Tourist class in the aircraft. In the name of the political left, he set about destroying the bulkhead. He was dissuaded from his efforts by the chief steward who knocked him out with a powerful uppercut.

Our political zealot found another cause to support vigorously when he arrived at Heathrow. He had been a Rhesus positive baby of a Rhesus negative mother. A matter of some concern for him. His mother would have received special treatment throughout the gestation. She must have complained about her suffering during her pregnancy and clearly made her son feel angry. He strode around Heathrow telling innocent staff and bemused passengers that he was a Rhesus monkey.

I was severely reprimanded. The consul general appeared to have avoided chastisement and was later promoted. The British Council were, in my view, culpable in both recruitment and duty of care. I hope the young teacher was not abandoned by his careless employers.

A LONG WAY FROM THE BIRMINGHAM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

I know little about motor cars. For years I have been sure car salesmen recognise me as a sucker as soon as I step into their showrooms. That may be why I bought an Austin 1800 whilst I lived in Benghazi in the middle of the last century. The Austin 1800 was designed by Sir Alex Issigonis who was responsible for the popular and successful Minni, a car which is now manufactured by Germans. The Austin agent in Benghazi offered me a discount on the grounds that I would be driving it regularly to the oil ports around the Gulf of Sirte. In doing so, he reasoned, I would demonstrate what a fine automobile it was. He had no Austin 1800s in stock so made great play of ordering one especially for me from UK. Sadly, when the vehicle arrived in his premises the discount he offered me was paltry. I should have smelt a rat and left the car with him.
My work often involved helping visiting British businessmen, journalist, archaeologists and so on. Sometimes they elected to join me when I visited the oil ports around the Gulf of Sirte or the remains of ancient Greek cities in the Jebel Akdar. It was a long time ago, but I clearly recall that the English visitor I was taking with me on one of my visits to the oil terminal at Marsa Brega was on a fact-finding tour for the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.
There are a few matters I would ask you to take into account. The first is that the Austin 1800 was not a reliable vehicle. The second is that the distance between Benghazi to Marsa Brega is around 150 miles across the Red Plain and the White Plain both of which are politely called arid and, in those days, there were few wells and no fuel stops until you got to Ajdabia. The road was in bad condition. The potholes were numerous and large.
At the time the UK motor industry was experiencing industrial unrest. One well publicised industrial action was the ‘shoddy job’ protest when workers were apparently persuaded by their trade union leaders to be deliberately careless with their work on an occasional car as it passed through their hands on the assembly line. It was a ploy the unions deployed to unsettle the management. It may have been ‘fake news’ but it spread rapidly overseas. It made me angry because my life often depended on the reliability of the vehicle I drove.
We, the Chamber of Commerce man and I, had driven a good way into the Red Plain. A large lone cloud was moving across our route trailing rain. There were no other vehicles, camels, donkeys of humans in sight. I thought it would be a good time to address my guest about the difficulties we British were experiencing when trying to sell our country’s exports in Libya.
I cannot remember my exact words, but I am sure I explained that there was no water, other than the rain, or fuel available for about 50 miles. There were not likely to be many others on the road to help us if our vehicle broke down. Even if someone appeared, they may have been aggressively inclined towards us.
I remember asking him to go home to Birmingham and tell the worthies of his Chamber of Commerce what it felt like to be in an unreliable British made motor car in the middle of a desert.
Who would knowingly purchase and drive a car over the Red Plain, or any other similar terrain, which might have been one of the deliberately shoddy jobs? I think I made my point effectively and the Chamber of Commerce man kindly refrained from asking me why I had bought and Austin 1800.

RECKLESS, CRUEL AND PROFLIGATE MEN?

Walt Watson is probably dead by now. He was my neighbor in Tripoli. He was an American ‘ace TV reporter’ who had, amongst other adventures, accompanied Marilyn Munro on her tour of US military bases throughout Japan and South Korea. He was absent from his apartment in Garden City for a while. But when he reappeared, he told me he had been sent to the Belgian Congo because the US State Department had got wind of a potential attempt to remove the colonialists by force. Belgians were doing their utmost to get across the border to Kenya and safety. It was the first zephyr of what British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan referred to as the ‘Wind of Change’ which became something of a gale for a while.

Some days later I was on duty at the RAF staging post a few miles south of Tripoli when several military aircraft arrived from the UK, India, Italy and Canada. They were on their way to the Congo to rescue Belgian colonists who were fleeing the attention of rioters wielding their machetes with intent to butcher white people. One of the aircraft returned carrying some passengers. Also on board were three wooden packing crates over which had been draped blue UN flags. The crates contained mutilated bodies of nuns. There was a high demand for and a consequent shortage of coffins in Leopoldville. Long ago King Leopold’s men had set a cruel precedent which the rioters emulated with enthusiasm.

The Congo descended rapidly into bloody chaos and attracted several retired British Army men as mercenaries. One of their leaders became known as ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare. He was a retired British Army major and his mercenary exploits in the Congo inspired a performance by the noted film star Richard Burton in the 1978 film ‘Wild Geese’. There is a tension amongst the military between the need for disciplined and cooperative behaviour and unorthodox heroism, The latter trait was exhibited often by the super-mercenary Vice Admiral Lord Cochrane who served in wars of independence with the Chilean, Brazilian and Greek navies whilst he was at odds with the British establishment between 1818 and 1825. Mercenaries are interesting people and sometimes used as state proxies. The Russian Wagner group was Putin’s proxy army in Libya, and it helped him establish a profitable foothold in the Mediterranean and the Sahil.

There was a famous, and notably unorthodox, mercenary who operated in Fiji in the early days of the 19th century. He was Charlie Savage and his story, repeated as it is in many histories of Fiji, may be true in parts. He used his skill with firearms to support the ambitions of the chief of a warlike federation which was centred on the island of Bau, near the Rewa River estuary in Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. Missionaries have strong moral convictions which causes them to make unfavourable judgements about the likes of Charlie Savage. However, they provided us with the first written history of Fiji, so we need to keep this in mind when reading the first mention of him in their reports.

So, we pick up the story in the reports of Christian missionaries Thomas Williams et al who were active in Fiji after Savage ended his career somewhat abruptly by being killed, cooked and consumed. There was a tendency amongst British colonialists to criticise their fellow countrymen who go native as did Charlie Savage. There is an early mention in print of Charlie Savage in ‘Fiji and the Fijians’ by the sometime missionaries, Williams, James, Calvert, Rowe and Stringer.

‘’About 1804 a number of convicts escaped from New South Wales and settled amongst the [Fiji] islands. Within two or three years there were twenty of them: reckless, cruel, profligate men, whose muskets made them a terror to the enemies of their patrons; they lived by violence and the safe slaughter of savages armed only with primitive weapons; their reward was unrestrained licence, and their morals were that of a poultry yard.

Some of them were men of the most desperate wickedness, being regarded as monsters even by the ferocious cannibals with whom they were associated. These lawless men were twenty-seven in number on their arrival but in a few years the greater part had ended their careers, having fallen in the native wars, or in deadly quarrels amongst themselves.

A Swede named Savage who had some redeeming traits in his character, was acknowledged as the head man by the whites who was drowned and eaten by the natives at Weilea, in 1813’’

The language the missionaries use leaves us in no doubt that both the ferocious cannibals and the monstrous mercenaries needed the attention of the missionaries to repent of their sins and convert to Christianity. They did convert Fijians and precipitated the end of cannibalism, child culling and widow strangling. The missionaries do not say how these lawless men reached Fiji from Australia, but they do make a special case for ‘A Swede named Savage’. The majority of the ‘reckless, cruel, profligate men’ arrived in Fiji on merchant ships which were seeking cargoes of sandalwood.

Charlie Savage, who may have been Swedish, had arrived in Fiji from Tonga in an unorthodox manner. There are reliable sources who suggests that he had been a survivor of the armed brig ‘Port au Prince’ which had hit a reef off Tonga. His reputed skills as a marksman and fighting soldier, akin perhaps to those of the British Royal Marines, give credence to the claim.

Sailors with experience of ‘muskets and cannons’ were sought after crew members of ships owned and operated by merchant adventurers which carried ‘Letters of Marque’, as did the Port au Prince. She was a vessel with a doubtful history having at one time been employed in the transatlantic slave trade. She is recorded as an English private ship of near 500 tons armed with 24 cannons and 8 carronades. She was thus armed and authorised, by virtue of the ‘Letter of Marque’ to capture or sink French and Spanish vessels. Preferably capture because she could put a prize crew aboard, sail them to a port ‘within the King’s dominion’ and sell them to the prize commissionaires.

England was at war with Napoleon’s France which is why the British Admiralty was issuing ‘Letters of Marque’ to armed merchantmen. The United States also issued Letters of Marque at this time and was engaged in an early form of Gun Boat Diplomacy in the Sandwich Island and Fiji.

Holders of Letters of Marque were known as Privateers. They were supposed to operate within the law. Owners were required to register their ship with the British Admiralty and to stand security for the sum of £1500. In return They could tackle and seize vessel and cargoes belonging to France and Spain.

The Port au Prince had been busy whaling and sealing and had dropped anchor off Tonga when she was boarded and looted by Tongans who may have failed to take the considerable treasure in gold coins she had aboard. The wreck has been located by divers recently. They may be hoping that some of the gold she carried is still amongst the decaying timbers.

The Tongans killed about half of her 60 odd crew and burnt her down to the waterline. Was Savage one of the survivors? From the evidence now available it seems very likely. He certainly found his way to Tonga and is said to have learned to speak Tongan

How did Savage get from Tonga to Fiji? By a remarkable series of chances. His story is bound up in that of an American brig called Eliza which came to grief on a reef as she was on her way to secure a cargo of cedarwood in Fiji. It is akin to that of a shipwreck with which I had some dealings in last century. My story may help us to see how he reached the island of Bau, the seat of a powerful War lord, and find employment there as mercenary.

Navigating amongst the Fiji Islands is hazardous because of the extensive reefs which are at the same time amongst its precious assets. This is an anecdote I wrote in my own diary sometime after leaving Fiji.

SHIPWRECK ON A REEF WITH DIAMONDS

Sometime in the dead of night I received a telephone call from a senior personage in the trading company for which I worked in Fiji. I am not sure why it was me he called but I did have the experience to deal with his problem. He told me that the company’s ship, the SS Lakemba, on its way from Suva to Sydney, was shipwrecked on a reef. The SS Lakemba was an old-fashioned cargo and passenger ship which had long tramped her way from Vancouver to Sydney and back via Hawaii, Western Samoa, and Fiji. She had reached the end of her honourable life and was to be paid off when she arrived in Sidney. Now she was about to die. My caller told me a rescue ship was on its way to save the passengers and crew who would be coming ashore in due course. What, he wanted to know, could I do about it?

The Fiji reefs are spectacular. I hope that Global Warming is not killing them.

They had a terminal effect on the American brig Eliza which was on her way to collect a cargo of Sandalwood from the southwest coast of Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second largest island, but was off course by a goodly margin. She was off the Island of Nairai in the Lomaviti archipelago when she hit a reef. According to the dairy of one of her crew members this occurred:

‘’On the 20th of June 1808, being in S. lat. 17, 40, E. Long 179, at about eleven o’clock p.m. the man who had the lookout on the forecastle, seeing breakers but just ahead, cried out “with the greatest vehemence, and gave us the alarm. I then was sick in my bunk below, but with the others, I jumped out, but before we could get on deck the vessel struck on the rocks. We caught the axe and cut away the rigging and the masts went over the side, and as they fell broke our whaleboat in pieces, but we got the long boat out and put the money in it to the amount of 34000 dollars, the navigating implements, muskets, a cask of powder and balls, cutlasses and some of our clothes: we also lashed two canoes together, and John Husk and William Brown went on board of them to keep them astern of the long boat and heading the seas, while mase[sic] the rest of us went into the long boat. Our fears were great that, if the vessel went to pieces, we should be killed……’’

Where had the brig been? On the 1^stof May 1808 the Eliza had set sail from Port Jackson in Australia and twelve days later arrived in Tonga. It was there that two survivors of the Port au Prince were living. They both persuaded the Captain of Eliza to take them on as experienced and useful crew members. One was called Charlie Savage who was to become a notable figure in the history and folklore of Fiji.

Somehow Savage travelled the considerable distance from Nairai and wreck of the Eliza to the Island of Ba where the War Lord was aggressively striving to become the paramount chief of Fiji. Legend has it that whilst he was on Nairai a ‘canoe’ voyaging from Bau stopped at the island and recruited him as the War Lord’s ‘white mercenary’. We know nothing of the inducements offered but we know that he took several muskets and quantities of powder and ball with him. The Fiji Times published an interview with his decedents living in Fiji today. They claim the news of Savage’s presence had reached the Paramount Chief of Bau, Ratu Naulivou, who sent the ‘canoe’ to offer him employment.

Historians sum all this up by saying that the brig Eliza brought the musket and Charlie Savage and thus changed the nature of warfare in Fiji. Some say that Charlie Savage and his muskets propelled the Cakobau dynasty to the paramount chieftainship of Fiji but that is too simplistic. However, the muskets alone would have made a notable difference because the Fijian weapons of war were only effective for skirmishing. They were mainly bows and arrows, spears and clubs. Before a battled there was a great deal of posturing and threatening and once everyone was sufficiently motivated, close order fighting began resulting in a few casualties. If possible, each side would try to carry off their dead otherwise they would be butchered, cooked and consumed by their enemies. These intense motivational events have persisted in the Thimbi. Today the superb New Zealand Rugby teams perform the Haka to terrify their opponents before the starter’s whistle. The Fijian Rugby team perform a similar war dance called a Cibi. The Fijians pronounce that ‘Thimbi’, a name which understates its power to intimidate opponents.

We have become almost inured to the sight on our TV screens of large numbers of deaths and numerous casualties in the burgeoning warfare of the early days of this century. But it was possible to survive the wounds inflicted by spears and clubs. A lead ball shot at short range from a musket by comparison caused severe and often fatal wounds. A good marksman could pick out and kill Chiefs and leaders who died as if by magic, creating confusion and panic. When they were first used in Fiji, they were psychologically damaging. Today we find combatants are getting used to drones but in their early days they created panic on the front line.

However. There was a fundamental limitation with muskets. They took time to load. Modern films based on Bernard Cornwall’s novels about the character he calls Sharp who ‘fought’ in the Peninsular battles of the war against Napoleon have shown how this was done and how crack soldiers who did it well were sought after. British infantrymen who were drilled in their use and could manage three shots a minute starting with their weapons already loaded. Charlie Savage is said to have been highly effective with them. This is how he is perceived in Fiji today. It is part of a piece in the Fiji Times dated 11^th January 2015:

‘It was a sight completely alien to the Bau people. A strange white skinned man with red hair and beard was being accorded rites and ceremony normally befitting a great warrior, more-so, one of their own. Many Bauan natives had never seen a white man before, except that Kalle Svensson aka Charlie Savage, was no ordinary kaivalagi (white) man.

The giant Swede single-handedly turned the tide of war in Fiji when Bauan warlord, Naulivou, was determined to overwhelm his enemies and stamp his dominance throughout the land. But Savage’s influence would grow and legend has it that the sons he had by high ranking women, given to him in marriage, would be killed to prevent anyone usurping the chiefly leadership at Bau’.

Often repeated stories about Savage are still circulated. Foremost amongst them has him standing in a canoe on the Rewa River firing his muskets at the people of a village. He kills so many villagers that their dead bodies are built up in a wall behind which survivors sheltered.

The other and most likely story is that he had a ‘arrow proof sedan chair’ made of coconut fibre and other vegetation in which he sat with some preloaded muskets and was carried into range of his enemies. So protected, he fired though an opening, cooly picking out leaders who fell dead as though by magic.

He was specially treated by then War Lord of Bau and given a highborn woman as a wife. That led to trouble in the end because his son by her would have had some claim to the War Lord’s place when he died. His was therefore killed. Savage had other wives with whom he had children. His descendants are living in Fiji under the name of Shaw. Their story appeared in the Fiji Times dated May 29^th, 2017.

Savage himself was killed when attempting to rescue some of the crew of a merchantman who had been recruited by a War Lord to settle a dispute which became a shooting war. They had become surrounded and were in mortal, danger. Savage offered to negotiate with their besiegers. He approached them unarmed. A fatal mistake. His head was held under water in a convenient pond until he drowned and then, it seems, they butchered him, cooked him and ate him.

One small point to make. He is often referred to as being Swedish. He may have been. The claim needs more evidence in my view.

The Hakluyt Society published ‘The Journal of William Lockerby – Sandalwood Trader in the Fijian Islands 1808-1809’. In it the Journal is preceded by a diligent and scholarly analyses of the arrival of white men among the Fijian Islands and observations on their effect on the social system they encountered and which they changed or, as one critic has said, mutilated by 1840. There are now numerous scholarly papers and publications analysing the effect of ‘colonialism’ on the plight of native Fijians and the Indo-Fijians who live now under the military government of Rear Admiral Bananarama.

There are other factors to considered. The Fiji Islands were long isolated behind the extensive coral reefs. They are still, as I have shown, dangerous to unwary mariners and were more so in the days of sail. In Tahiti the arrival the HMS Bounty was greeted by canoes bearing welcoming men and women. No such welcome was offered when ships arrived amongst the Fiji Islands. There, the women were absent and the men often menacing. The story of the mutiny on HMS Bounty is being scrutinised carefully and new conclusions drawn. There are crucial differences between the arrival of Whiteman in Tahiti and Fiji.

Those early sailing brigs which penetrated the Fijian reefs and fetched up in Sandalwood Bay loaded their holds and bilges with the valuable wood. They were privateers which were crewed by men who were educated in the ways and means of rope and sail, musket and cannon and used to living in close and sparse quarters under the rule of hard driving masters. Notably they lived for long periods without women. However, they expected a share of the profits and were volunteers not pressed men.

Some of these men were left behind or were put ashore as troublemakers or were survivors of wrecks. They were recruited by the War Lords engaged in internecine warfare and favoured with status and women, sometimes with high borne woman, with whom they had numerous children.

The warfare and the influence of these white men helped to catalyse the mutation of Fiji’s ancient social system. They were followed by Christian missionaries of which more annon.

John Oakes

24th December 2024

HIGH WIND IN CYRENIACA

I was visiting an oil terminal on the Libyan shore of the Gulf of Sirte. The wind was fierce and coming from the east. It was not a Ghibli – the wind Libyans call what Egyptian’s call the Khamsin. That would have been coming from the south and would have been uncomfortably hot and carrying fine sand from the Libyan desert. This wind was cold and coming from the east and carried grains of local sand which stung when they hit exposed parts of humans. It was the windblown sand which erodes soft rocks and strips paint jobs off motor cars.

As I watched, the wind blew a large ship from its moorings out in the Gulf of Sirte where it had been filling its copious tanks with crude oil. It was drifting helplessly toward the shore. An anchor cable had entangled itself in its propellers. The great vessel was pulled away from danger by the Dutch ocean-going tug which was always on standby near the oil terminal.

I finished my work and headed home in my car along the coast road. I was driving into the wind. It was blowing sand which was blasting against the car and abrading it. Camels walked towards me with their legs immersed in the blown sand and their rider perched in clear air. An empty and anomalous cardboard box flew past me a meter or so above the ground. It remained elevated by the wind as I watched it come towards me and as it vanished behind me. Here and there, Libyan men sat wrapped in their Jards with their backs hunched against the wind. These Jards were Toga like woollen blankets draped about the body in traditional fashion. They could also be used as a tent, a blanket, or a windshield.

The road turned northeast at Ajdabiya and crossed the White Plain and the Red Plain and in both the terrain changed. The main hazard here was the tumbleweed rolling across the plains and across the road. There were very few settlements along the road and no water wells. If sand had seized up my car engine, I would have been in troubled. I recall my growing anxiety.

I got home to our villa in a sheltering olive grove in a suburb of Benghazi. The sump of my car had been polished to a high shine by the sand blast. I took it to the garage the next day. The engineers found sand in the engine. I was lucky.

THE GAUNTLET

I wonder now about the casual brutality meted out to migrants in Libya by the people traffickers. Or the political or religious fervour which allows for the extermination of so many human beings. Where does it come from? I do not mean the collateral damage caused by bombs and artillery which is bad enough. I mean the casual killing such as Boko Haram’s mad men carry out in villages and towns in Northern Nigeria or Chad. They do that in the name of God.

My headmaster used the cane with intent to hurt. He beat me across my fingertips for crimes I committed downstairs and across the buttocks for those I committed upstairs in the dormitories. I was beaten most often for failing a test or once for persistently misspelling the word went. I added an h to make it whent so that it was spelt the way my mother pronounced it when putting on airs.

There was a tradition amongst we boys about not showing pain when we were caned. Was I a mug to try to keep that tradition? He had caned my fingertips once and complained because I showed no pain, so he caned me again. I still showed no pain and he left with his academic gown bellowing out behind him. He would play Mozart on his upright piano after school before falling asleep on the settee in his rooms.

Sometimes the bigger boys beat the smaller boys with army webbing belts or wooden coat hangers. This was gratuitous beating and more akin to the Boko Harem killings because some boys would enjoy their work. They did not need instructions from an avenging deity. They were experimenting with sadism perhaps.

In the dormitories the ordeal of the knotted towels was called running the gauntlet. Small naked boys ran between two lines of big boys who swung towels at their backs with knots tied at one end. The knots were better and had a more satisfactory impact if the towel had been soaked in water for a while.