1869: Tannese kill Levuka plantation owner, Norman, of Sandhurst, Victoria, enroute from Levuka to Norman’s plantation at Nasavusavu: Jimmie Lasulasu survives

The Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 4070, 7 September 1870, Page 3  reported Levuka trader Mr, Norman, well known in Sandhurst, Victoria, was murdered, and his body cooked after a group of 22 unnammed Tannese took over Normans boat taking them from Levuka to Norman’s plantation, and  wanted to go back home
‘Colleen Bawn,’ at [...]

1838: Port Jackson ship Nimrod was at Kadava in 1838: Vedovi kidnapped the mate and a boat’s crew, and held them to ransom

When the Port Jackson ship Nimrod was at Kadava in 1838, the now notorious Vedovi kidnapped the mate and a boat’s crew, and held them to ransom. For their release he demanded some large whales’ teeth, four axes, two plates, a case of pipes, some fish-hooks and iron pots, and a bale of cloth.
Whalers trade [...]

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 [...]

1930s: Blackbirded Solomon islanders return from Queensland to Levuka

Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia, By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937 reported on blackbirded or indentured Solomon islanders at home in Levuka in the 1930s - “most of them by way of Queensland sugar fields, to the cotton and sugar fields of Fiji. [...]

1876: Anglican Church service at Levuka, a congregation of planters and short-term Solomons indentured labour

Miss Gordon-Cumming, who was with the first Governor of Fiji, Sir Arthur Gordon (afterwards Lord Stanmore), says in her letters: “At present our parson, Mr. Floyd, is in New Zealand (1876), so all the Governor’s staff take it in turns to [officiate, two in the morning and two in the evening. They appear in surplices [...]

1937: Decline of copra and Levuka port economy of network of individual planters and traders

Planters and traders in isolated islands are models of hospitality and cheeriness. I cannot remember in my many travels among them any unpleasant interlude. To-day they constitute a brave lot, fighting with their backs to the wall against a cruel fate that allows huge European combines to make excessive profits while they, the primary producers, [...]

1864: Blackbirders arrive in Fiji

1864: Blackbirders arrived in Fiji and with them brought the first New Hebrides and Solomon Island labourers, to assist in the cotton plantations.