“Who have burst all bonds of habit,
And have wandered far away,
On from island unto island,
At the gateways of the day.” (Chambers, 1881)

This is not a story about a happy couple strolling hand in hand, picking up shells along the sandy coast; the young enthusiast brandishing his newly purchased metal detector; nor the amateur artisan, bending and stooping for each hard-to-come-by scrap of sea glass which might one day become a one of a kind piece of jewelry. (Ruger)

While it is about ‘beachcomers,’ these were typically a motley crew of castaways, deserters, traders and escaped convicts. (Castaways may be defined as simply involuntary beachcombers: for the most part the victims of shipwreck, but including persons marooned by their captains or kidnapped by the islanders. (Maude))

The Oxford English Dictionary calls the beachcomber a resident “on the islands of the Pacific, living by pearl-fishing, etc., and often by less reputable means”.

“In the more precise terminology of the anthropologist he is a regional variety of the world-wide class of individuals called by Hallowell ‘transculturites’…

“… persons who, throughout history, ‘are temporarily or permanently detached from one group, enter the web of social relations that constitute another society, and come under the influence of its customs, ideas and values to a greater or lesser degree’.” (Maude)

“Beachcomber is a word of American coinage. Primarily, it is applied to a long wave rolling in from the ocean, and from this it has come to be applied to those whose occupation it is to pick up, as pirates or wreckers, whatever these long waves wash in to them.”

“Nothing comes amiss to the so-called beachcomber; he is outside of civilization – is indeed a waif and stray not only on the ocean of life, but on the broad South Pacific, and he is certainly not above picking up those chance crumbs of the world around him which may be washed within the circle of his operations.”

“If the average British colonist and capitalist has not since his boyhood’s days, when he may have dipped into Cook’s Voyages, given a thought to the islands of the great South Sea, other white men have; and these pioneers of the Pacific are chiefly of their own stock – English or American.” (Chambers, 1881)

“In the majority of cases, the beachcomber has been a seafaring man, who has become weary of a life of hard work, with but scant remuneration, on board of Whalers or trading craft; and having landed from his vessel on one of the Pacific islands, and becoming domesticated among the natives”.

“The beachcomber is therefore stalwart, smart, and lively; and some of them can lift a kedge-anchor and carry two hundred cocoanuts or more upon their shoulders.”

“As a rule, they can climb trees like apes, and dive for fish to feed their families. They rarely, or never, wear shoes, but go barefooted at all times on beaches of sharp gravel and reefs of prickliest coral.”

“Beachcombers generally marry native women and as a rule have large families. Their sons are often like bronze statues; and their daughters are models of beauty and strength.”

“While it is true that their intellect is of a low order, and that they know little or nothing of ordinary morality, as we understand it, it yet must be borne in mind that the race of half-castes thus produced is likely to form a prominent factor in the future civilisation of Polynesia.” (Chambers, 1881)

“What really differentiated the beachcombers from other immigrants was the fact that they were essentially integrated into, and dependent for their livelihood on, the indigenous communities …”

“… this source of maintenance might occasionally be supplemented by casual employment, with payment usually in kind, as agents and intermediaries for the captains or supercargoes of visiting ships, but to all intents and purposes they had voluntarily or perforce contracted out of the European monetary economy.” (Maude)

“Historically beachcombing is as old as European contact itself, for the first beachcombers came from Magellan’s own Trinidad, deserting at one of the northern Marianas.”

“(N)ot more than a handful of Europeans settled in the islands, either voluntarily or as castaways, in all the two and a half centuries of the age of discovery, which may be said to have lasted roughly to the founding of New South Wales.”

“The basic pre-requisite for a beachcombing boom – commercial shipping – was in fact absent … while discipline on the exploring ships was in general too strict to permit successful desertion, and stops were usually too short for plans to be perfected.”

“Desertion was attempted, of course; even Cook, on his last voyage, had difficulty in recovering a midshipman and two others who deserted at Raiatea, and he recorded that they were ’not the only persons in the ships who wished to end their days at these favourite islands’.” (Maude)

“(I)t was the north-west fur trade between America and China, stemming direct from Cook’s last voyage and having nothing to do with Australia, which brought the first voluntary beachcombers to be landed from commercial shipping.”

“In 1787, or less than ten years after the death of Cook, the Irish ship’s surgeon John Mackey, formerly in the East India Company’s service, was landed in Hawai‘i from the Imperial Eagle, en route to China, at his own request.”

“Within a year he had been joined by three deserters – Ridler, carpenter’s mate of the Columbia; Thomas; and a youth named Samuel Hitchcock …”

“… while by 1790 the Hawaiian beachcombers numbered 10, including John Young, kidnapped at Kealakekua, and Isaac Davis, spared at the cutting off of the Fair American, both of whom were destined to leave their mark on Hawaiian history.” (Maude)

“In 1791 Captain Joseph Ingraham in the brig Hope, while cruising off Maui, was hailed by a double canoe in which were three white men, besides natives. These men were dressed in malos (loin cloths), being otherwise naked.”

“They were so tanned that they resembled the natives. They told Captain Ingraham that they had deserted Kamehameha, who had maltreated them, after the arrival at Kailua of the boatswain of the Eleanora.”

“These men were I Ridler, James Cox and John Young (an American, not the boatswain of the Eleanora). They begged Ingraham to take them to China with him, which he did in the summer of 1791.” (Cartwright)

“Most of the early Europeans congregated on Hawai‘i itself, around the chief Kamehameha, who was quick to realise their importance to his plan for conquering the other islands; there were at least 11 with him in 1794.”

“A minority, however, settled on O‘ahu, including the American Oliver Holmes, who after the death of Isaac Davis was considered the most influential foreigner in the islands.”

“After the conquest of O‘ahu in 1795 these joined Kamehameha’s entourage and with the development of Honolulu as the main shipping port and Kamehameha’s transfer there in 1804 this became the principal beachcomber centre, though a rival group settled on Kauai round the independent chief Kaumuali‘i, at least until his voluntary submission to Kamehameha in 1810. “

“In 1806 there were estimated to be 94 whites on O‘ahu alone, but by 1810 departures had reduced the total to about 60; these were nearly all beachcombers and included at least seven escaped convicts from New South Wales. Eight years later there were said to be as many as 200 in the whole group of islands.”

“Most of these, however, were mere transients, for hardly a ship called without adding its quota of deserting or discharged seamen, anxious to sample the supposed delights of life on a South Sea island, while there were always plenty of others who had had their fill and were anxious to get away.”

By the 1830s, “the geographical distribution of beachcombing had changed. The beachcomber had ceased to be a factor of political importance in Hawai‘i, Tahiti and Tonga, and civilization with all its attendant restrictions – governmental sanctions, missionary disapproval and consular action – was driving them from earlier centres to the remoter islands”. (Maude)

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