In a paper contributed to the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1847, the missionary, Chopard, says that silver had a peculiar attraction for the natives, and was the chief article which induced them to butcher, by treachery always, crews of vessels calling at the harbour. He knew a Kamortan, thirty-five years of age, who recollected eight vessels which had been cut off there in that manner.
In 1833, a Cholia vessel was cut off in the false harbour of Nankauri (Expedition Harbour) and everyone murdered. In 1844, Captain Ignatius Ventura, from Moulmein, commanding the Mary, anchored on the north side of Teressa at two o'clock, and an hour later he and his crew were murdered. In the same year, Captain Law met the same fate on Kamorta. In 1845, a vessel, having taken in part of her cargo at Kachal, sailed to the false harbour at Nankauri to complete, and all hands were murdered.[52]
"While I was at Kar Nicobar," Captain Gardner writes in 1857,[53] "two vessels were cut off at Nankauri, the crews massacred, and the ships plundered and scuttled." In 1840, the Pilot, South Sea whaler, was cut off there, and the captain, mates, and twenty-five men murdered; the third mate, surgeon, and seven men escaped to sea in a boat.[54] In 1844, the cutter Emilia visited Nankauri, and her captain was murdered within an hour of landing, but the boat escaped.
Piracy in the Nicobars came to an end with the occupation of Nankauri Harbour by the Indian Government in 1869; but two years previous to that it had been necessary to send there a British punitive expedition, on account of the atrocities committed by the natives. A notification of the event was made by Captain N. B. Bedingfield, who commanded the expedition, in the first of the Port Registers entrusted to the Nankauri natives.
"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
"Whereas the natives of these islands have been guilty of several acts of piracy; the crews of no less than four vessels have been massacred; a white woman and two children have been kept prisoners for about two years and a half, and after being most cruelly treated, the poor woman, used for the very vilest purposes, was, with her children, first poisoned and afterwards knocked on the head: Her Majesty's ships Wasp and Satellite were sent to endeavour to liberate any captives that might still remain on the Islands, and to punish the natives for their crimes.
"Several towns implicated have been burnt, all the war canoes destroyed, and other punishments inflicted ..." etc., etc.
Nor was this the only case of the kind, for although most of the vessels disposed of were native, the total included not a few European. There is another instance on record, in which a European woman was taken ashore and so brutally abused by the band of pirates that she died next day.
It is believed that the origination of these practices cannot be traced to the natives, but is due to the settlement of a body of Malays, who attracted a number of the inhabitants to themselves, and then formed a gang to plunder all vessels calling at the harbour, consequent upon a successful massacre of the crew.
