Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate

by C. A. W. Monckton

CHAPTER V

At length Tommy Rous’ boarders all departed. His health seemed to be somewhat better, for a while at any rate, and I felt that I could leave him with a clear conscience. As I was thoroughly sick both of prospecting for gold and hotel-keeping, I purchased the cutter Mizpah, and manned her with a crew of six Papuans, getting also the Resident Magistrate’s permission to arm them. At the same time I chartered from Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co. the luggers Ada, Hornet, and Curlew, fully equipped with diving plants and crews of Malays and Manilla men; and also engaged Billy the Cook, late of the Myrtle, to take charge of the three, bound under the guidance of the Mizpah, on a general prospecting voyage for pearl or mother-of-pearl anywhere in the Coral Sea, the latter commodity then having a value of about £150 per ton, with the chance—a very remote chance it is true—of valuable pearls being found in the shells. The Mizpah was fitted with a deep-sea dredging apparatus, having, prior to my purchase, been owned by a scientist, a Dr. Wylie, who had come to New Guinea, I was told, in search of the deep-sea nautilus.

Leaving Samarai we rapidly ran down to East Cape, when, coming to anchor, Billy came on board my boat to discuss a plan of action for my venture. At the very beginning Billy and I differed, to my future loss I must own; for had I taken his advice as then tendered, I should have made a fair profit instead of ending in a heavy loss. Billy’s advice was that we should proceed to an old pearling ground well known by him, and worked for many years, off the island of Sudest, and commence operations there, where we were certain to make a few hundreds in a short time. My idea was to search for an entirely new ground, where we might make many thousands in a few weeks, off the shores of Goodenough Island. Billy, finding that I was fixed in my views as to our procedure, persuaded me to wait several days at East Cape, fishing, and to send a boat into Samarai for salt to cure the fish.

We fished in this manner. Firstly, we stationed men at the masthead to view the approach of shoals of trevalli passing through the narrow channels, and then sent out boats to throw amongst them dynamite cartridges with a twenty-second fuse attached. The explosion of the cartridges stunned the fish, and enabled them to be raked in by the boys forming our crews. Secondly, we sent the divers down armed with small spears, and they speared the cod which had been attracted by the dead fish or the diver. The ordinary rock cod, groper, or more properly gorupa, has no fear of a diver in dress, and will swim up and gaze into the face glass of the helmet, and hence falls an easy victim to the spear. It is, however—with the exception of the octopus—the diver’s greatest enemy, from the same lack of fear. No real diver is afraid of the shark, but all dread the greater codfish.

The shark at best is a most cowardly scavenger of the sea; much preferring, even when hungry, to gorge on carrion than to kill its own prey. And even when made bold by hunger, it is readily frightened away by the sudden emission of air bubbles from the valve in the diver’s helmet. A diver, when approached by a large shark, seldom troubles much, so long as the fish does not get too near to his air pipe. He fears that, because sharks have an unpleasant habit of suddenly rolling over and snapping at a fairly quiescent object. Should a shark’s attention, however, prove too persistent, the diver signals for the fullest possible pressure of air, and then either walks towards the fish or, if it is higher up and interfering with his air pipe, rises in the water and suddenly turns on his valves; result, immediate flight of Mr. Shark.

The codfish, however, is afraid of nothing, and will nose up to a diver, smell round him until it discovers his naked hands, and then bite them off. Owing to this unpleasant trait on the part of the codfish, the first and important duty of a diver’s tender is to wash the former’s hands thoroughly with soap, soda, and warm water before he descends, in order to remove any trace of perspiration or grease from them. A diver’s hands are the sole portion of his body outside the diving suit, the dress ending at the wrists, where thick india-rubber bands prevent the admission of water and expulsion of air. Should a diver meet a large groper, the only thing to be done is to either ascend twenty or thirty feet and drift out of the short-sighted fish’s range of vision or, if there is no tide or current, rise to the surface. Then he can lower a dynamite cartridge or two, which will either kill, wound, or frighten the beast away. A groper, I have been told by divers, and my own experience bears this out, will never pursue a diver or leave the bottom; it is sluggish in the extreme. These fish grow to an immense size. I have myself seen a fish so large that, when his mouth was open, the lower jaw was on the bottom and the upper jaw above the level of one’s helmet. My own opinion is that, as the cachalot preys upon the larger, so the gropers prey upon the smaller form of octopi; otherwise I fail to see how so slow and bulky a fish, a fish too that is not a carrion feeder, can possibly catch enough food on which to live.

I have mentioned a diver’s tender. This person and the diver are usually engaged together, and in most cases have been close friends and associates through many engagements. The tender’s duties are to keep the air pumps, dress, pipes, etc., in apple-pie order, to hold the diver’s life-line and air tubes while he is below, and to receive his signals and communicate them to the master of the vessel. On this man’s constant watchfulness the life of the diver depends. At the time of which I write, all signals from a diver at work were conveyed by numbered jerks on the life-line. I believe now, however, the diver’s helmets are fitted with a telephone, through which he speaks direct to his tender. The submarine telephone must add immensely to the safety of the diver, for by its means he can explain exactly what he wants or what difficulty he is in.

For instance, I have known the case of a diver landing his leg in a large clam shell, which of course immediately closed upon it, the shell weighing probably three or four hundred pounds and being fastened to the bottom. The man signalled “pull up.” The tender passed on the signal, and after the life-line had been tugged and strained at for some time, ordered it and the pipe to be slacked under the impression that it was fast round a coral mushroom. The result was, that before another boat could be summoned and a second diver sent down to ascertain the trouble, the first man had exceeded his time limit and was stricken fatally with divers’ paralysis. Had the diver then possessed a telephone, a second line could have been sent down to him by a heavy iron ring slid down his own life-line, and by him have been attached to the shell; whereupon man and shell together could have been hoisted by the ship’s winch.

Having collected and salted our fish, we sailed away for Dawson Straits, between Ferguson and Goodenough Islands. My intention was to prospect the narrow sea lying between the latter island and the Trobriand group for pearl shell; the north-eastern coast of Goodenough Island was at this time merely marked on the Admiralty charts by a dotted line, with the terse remark, “Little known of the northern shores of these islands.” In Dawson Straits we drilled our crews for some days in their routine work, whilst I accustomed myself to the use of a diver’s dress. Billy the Cook, I regret to say, flatly refused to have anything to do with work under the water.

Our method of procedure was this. Firstly, by sounding, we found a level sandy bottom of anything under twenty fathoms. Pearl shell is peculiar for growing only on a perfectly flat surface. Then the vessel was hove-to or allowed to drift with the current, while the anchor was lowered some ten feet beneath the vessel’s keel. The diver then descended by the anchor chain, and seated himself astride of the anchor. At his signal it was lowered until within about six feet of the bottom, the vessel then being allowed to drift while the diver scrutinized the bottom for signs of pearl shell. Upon his sighting shell, he gave two sharp tugs at his life-line, which meant, “Slack life-line and pipe, let go anchor.” Immediately upon giving his signal and finding his life-line and pipe released, the diver leapt from the anchor, the anchor dropped, and he began work. For sign of shell it was sufficient to see certain marine plants, which almost invariably occur under the same conditions as pearl shell. The diver when below water is in supreme command of the vessel through his tender, and there can be no possible excuse for disobeying either his first or second signals. The first, consisting of one tug on his life-line, meaning “More air, I am in great danger, pull me up.” The second, of two tugs, meaning “Slack all, I am on shell.” One peculiar thing about pearl shell is, that it only occurs in payable quantities where tidal currents are very strong. Where the current runs at less than three knots, though one may find shell, it is rotten and worm-eaten; where the currents are strong it is clean and thick. My own impression is that a strong force of water is necessary to tear and distribute the spawn from the parent oyster; when that force is lacking disease and degeneracy set in.