National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003


Manuscript Collection
A Naval Officer in the Pacific: The Journal of James Hay

War-Canoe Hut, Choiseul War-Canoe Hut, Choiseul

War-Canoe Hut, Choiseul

Kaipoli or Council House, Nui
Village Scene. Nukufetau, Ellice Group

Village Scene. Nukufetau, Ellice Group

James Hay was second lieutenant on HMS Emerald, one of the British warships of the Australian Station in 1880–82. At the beginning of the voyage he dutifully began keeping a log, which later became a detailed journal, with many delightful sketches.  The manuscript, which will be a useful source on cross-cultural relations in the Pacific, has recently been bought by the Library from a London dealer.

The most dramatic episode described in the journal was an expedition in December 1880 to the Solomon Islands to avenge the deaths some months previously of a British naval officer and four other men on Nogu Island. For a few weeks, the Emerald sailed between the islands while landing parties tried to locate the murderers, and set fire to villages. In unfamiliar country, the British seamen moved slowly and they usually found the villages deserted. At the end of the expedition, Hay reported that ‘the number of villages destroyed during this unpleasant cruize I suppose to be 33 at the lowest computation and upwards of 250 huts altogether’. 

Canoe, Marshall Group

Canoe, Marshall Group

In the next 12 months the Emerald sailed over a large part of the western Pacific, visiting Norfolk Island, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa and the Gilbert, Ellice, Marshall and Caroline Islands. At each island group, Hay recorded meetings with chiefs and his impressions of the peoples, their villages and their customs. In Fiji, for instance, he noted that Suva was no more than one or two houses and a store, and he could not understand why it, rather than Levuka, had been chosen as the capital. He showed a fair degree of sympathy for the indigenous peoples, often regretting the impact of smallpox and the influence of missionaries and traders. In his view, Maori ‘troubles’ were an inevitable consequence of the annexation of their lands by British settlers.

The Australian passages in the journal are more cursory, as Melbourne or Hobart did not have the exotic interest of Funafuti or Ovalau. Hay was present at the opening of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne in 1880 and he noted that the ‘colonial forces except the Victorian Navy were not remarkable for much except small physique, bad marching and worse clothing’. In Sydney, the Emerald was one of 10 warships engaged in a sham fight, attacking Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. Once while on leave, Hay stayed on a station near Bungendore (New South Wales) where he took part in a kangaroo hunt. The Southern Highlands and Tablelands were always a popular region for officers enjoying breaks from their naval duties.

The Library holds journals and letters of many British naval officers who visited Australia and the western Pacific—from Cook in 1770, until the closure of the Australian Station in 1913. The journal of James Hay is an important addition to this collection and is especially notable for his impressions, in the form of both writings and drawings, of the peoples of the western Pacific.
—Graeme Powell, Manuscript Librarian

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