July 1870: Mountaineers from Navosa kill 370 in four towns in Ba, on the North-west coast of Viti Levu

The particulars are condensed from the Fiji Times of July 23:— “We have just heard frightful news from Ba, on the North-west coast of Viti Levu. For some time past the Ba people have been at war with the mountaineers, and a few have been killed on both sides, but a letter just in from [...]

1870: English Consul, Mr Williams chases Bully Hayes from Samoa

1870: It happened in this wise. A month or two before our arrival, (October) Hayes had dropped anchor in Apia, and some ugly stories of recent irregularities in the labour trade had come to the ears of Mr Williams, the English Consul. Mr Williams, with the assistance of the natives, very cleverly seized [...]

October, 1870: German traders in Apia, Samoa were shaking in their shoes for fear of what the French squadron might do to them

“When in October, 1870, I sailed into the harbour of Apia, Samoa, in the ill-fated ALBATROSS, Mr Louis Becke was gaining his first experiences of island life as a trader on his own account by running a cutter
between Apia and Savai’i. “It was rather a notable moment in Apia, for two reasons. In the first
place, [...]

1870: Captain Robbie, and the fish god, the Dakuwaqa

“When I came to Fiji the famed fish-god, the Dakuwaqa, was very much a reality. The Government ship, the Lady Escott, reached Levuka with signs of an encounter with the great fish, while the late Captain Robbie, a well known, tall, and very erect Scot - even [...]

1870: Cotton boom ends, chaos rises: government needed: planters of Lau, German with business interests in Tonga, wanted Ma’afu; the men of Western Fiji preferred Cakobau

On June 5th, 1871, Cakobau was proclaimed King of Fiji at a ceremony in Levuka. This event followed a period of chaos created by the sudden fall in the value of cotton. Derrick, in his “History of Fiji” (p.196), says, “With the rapid increase of the foreign [...]

1870: 400 hopeful European immigrants arrive in Levuka: South Sea Islands cotton boom, 600 Europeans in Levuka

Immigrants came by every ship, and during the winter of 1870 there were over four hundred new arrivals: the total increase for the year was 1,035″ The 1860’s were noted for the great South Seas cotton boom. R. A. Derrick’s “A History of Fiji” records that 1870 the European population in Fiji “now [...]

1870: Kopsen joined the missionary ship John Wesley and reached Levuka in May

KOPSEN, WILLIAM (1847-1930), manufacturer and ship-chandler, was born on 29 December 1847 and baptized Gustaf Wilhelm at Vaxholm, Sweden, only son of Erik Gustav Kopsen, marine customs house porter, and his wife Anna Greta, née Ohrstrom. His early childhood was marred by family discord and straitened circumstances. Orphaned at 15 he lived in 1862-64 on [...]

1870: Levuka mix:people from Rotuma, Samoa, and Tahiti, Tanna, New Hebrides, Banks Groups, Solomon

A. B. Brewster (1937:101), a long-term resident of Fiji, describes Levuka of the 1870s and 1880s when he first arrived in Fiji: Straight-haired olive-skinned people from Rotuma, Samoa, and Tahiti passed to and fro jostling their wooly-haired black neighbours from  Tanna, the New Hebrides and Banks Groups and from the faraway Solomon Islands. There they [...]

1870: Fijian or pidgin Fijian evolves as plantation language in Queensland and Fiji

Fijian began to dominate as a trade language after 1870. After the arrival of large numbers of Pacific Islanders, there were two contenders for the plantation language in Fiji: Melanesian Pidgin English (MPE) and Fijian. Fijian was already used on plantations with Fijian laborers before the importation of Pacific Islanders, and it was known [...]

1870: Levuka had 52 hotels and kava saloons on the one mile beach front

The Moon and Polynesia By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston Archdeacon of Fiji, London: Published by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Sydney: Australian Board of Missions, 1961 reported the Anglican Church came first of all to Levuka in the person of a single priest, the Rev. William Floyd, an Irishman ordained in Melbourne [...]