Captain Samuel Pinder Henry offers his services to the London & Wesleyan Missionary Societies 1832

 

On leaving Sydney to vissit the Wesleyan Missions at New Zealand first, then proceed to the Friendly Islands [Tonga] vissiting all the missionary Stations in that part, and from then to the Society and adjacent Islands [Polynesia] vissit all the missionary Stations and out Stations as may be required.

This 1832 business letter addressed from Sydney to the Missionary Society in London sets out an ambitious plan to provide regular maritime support to all the Protestant missionary stations then established across the Pacific Ocean; a complete circuit by sailing ship will take seven months – the Pacific Ocean is rather large and, for example, the straight-line distance from New Zealand to Tonga is at least 1600 kilometers starting from Auckland and ending in Nuku’alofa. Faith may move mountains but when it comes to moving goods and people you need Logistics.

The letter was written by Captain Samuel Pinder Henry, almost certainly the most qualified person for the job; he is not boasting when he writes “I shall from my knowledge of the Islands and natives be enabled at all times to render satisfaction to all concerned”. His proposal is supported by a statement from a Methodist missionary, the Reverend Joseph Orton (1795-1842) whose life is well-known to the history books. So too is that of Captain Henry, at least to those written in the Southern hemisphere which draw on the London Missionary Society’s files. What was in those files may well have caused some hesitation in accepting the plan. Captain Henry had distressed missionary minds from his childhood onwards.

He was born in Tahiti in 1800 where his father Reverend William Henry, a carpenter and joiner by trade, had arrived in 1797 as the first British missionary to a region hardly touched by European state interventions; Tahiti was no one’s colony and had its own rulers. Samuel’s mother Sarah like her husband originated in Irish Sligo; in Polynesia she gave birth to four children (Samuel the second) before dying in 1812. The forty-two-year old widower promptly departed for Sydney to find a new wife and came back in 1813 with Ann Shepherd, daughter of a reformed convict and just turned sixteen. Her stepson Samuel was thirteen and his older sister Sarah the same age as Ann. Ann went on to have eight children of her own.

The 1797 reception of the Henrys was welcoming; they were given housing and land, the event recorded in a grand and probably misleading painting by Robert Smirke. Political instability in Tahiti did however necessitate brief evacuations to Sydney in the first decade of Samuel Henry’s life. Nonetheless, he and his siblings grew up in local company. They mixed freely and ran about as naked as native children, becoming bi-lingual, and coming of age in the local way: learning to swim and navigate, circumcisions, tattoos, and sex.

The Cession of the District of Matavai in the Island of Otaheite

(Sarah Henry in bonnet far right with her husband William) 

 

When their father left for Sydney in 1812 in search of a wife, all the children except Samuel were lodged in temporary native custody. The oldest child, Sarah born in 1797, had been wet nursed by the king’s wife and now, while her father was in Sydney, was seduced by a young local chief. One missionary excused her, “She had been brought up from her Infancy with the natives – They were the same to her as her own people” but a Christian settler wrote angrily that she “played the whore in her father’s house”.  Twelve-year-old Samuel had been lodged with the missionary John Davies and misbehaved; two years later, he was ship wrecked on the island of Huahine along with Pomare II, king of Tahiti, who had known him all his life; a close friendship was now cemented. It did not improve Samuel’s conduct (alcohol, girls) and following more complaints, Samuel’s father sent him to Sydney to train as a navigator and hopefully learn to behave more like a European. Within a few years he had an impressive CV. In 1821 as captain of the trading ship Governor Macquarie he was the first person of European descent to set foot on the island of Rimatara; in the same year and now captain of the Queen Charlotte he and his first mate Thomas Ebrill commanded the capture of a much larger and better armed Chilean pirate brig, the Araucano. In 1821 he married Sophia Pitt Wood in Sydney with whom he had six children; additional children were scattered across the Pacific.

In the 1820s Captain Henry focussed his efforts on the sandalwood trade. Sandalwood was a profitable commodity to sell to China, where it was burnt as incense, and the trees grew naturally on small Pacific islands. Trading ships captained by Samuel and others obtained the wood using what were not much more than large raiding parties, comprising native labour recruited from Tahiti or Tonga to chop down and haul trees. Sometimes local islanders joined in the work; sometimes their passive consent was secured with gifts of much-coveted iron. It did not always work out; some tribes were hostile or in conflict with each other and unruly labour gangs could cause serious friction with local inhabitants; in 1829-30 that was the main reason why ventures to the New Hebridean island of Eromanga culminated in violent deaths.

But during such adventures and others, Captain Henry also carried missionaries and missionary supplies. In his contemporary journals, the missionary John Davies records some of Henry’s activities conveying correspondence and newly-trained native missionary teachers; in 1829 the Captain passes on to him an urgent request for a teacher to be sent to Fiji “promising to give a free passage if a teacher could be found”.  Despite or because of all this activity, which included attempts to establish a sugar plantation on property he owned in Tahiti, he appears to have been bankrupted in 1831. It is in that context that I think he wrote this 1832 letter.

Captain Henry died in Tahiti in 1852 by which date he held the post of Harbour Pilot at Papeete, now under French influence; the only probable cause of death given in the literature is alcoholism. His wife pre-deceased him in 1851. He had become a legendary figure in the Pacific islands and the numerous descendants of the original 1797 missionary couple formed a tribe in their own right, even with pretensions to dynasty: the internet shows me photographs of Samuel Pinder Henry the Second and Samuel Pinder Henry the Third. The family produced at least one archivist of its history, Teuira Henry (1847-1915), who taught in both Tahiti and Hawaii; she has a Wikipedia page.

There is some discussion in the literature of whether people like Captain Henry were simply Antinomians, interpreting the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination as giving them the freedom to live pretty much as they pleased, their eternal fate already settled quite independently of their own conduct.

 

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Transcription

Addressed to: The Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missions    77 Hatton Garden   London

Datelined: Sydney, Augt. 15^th 1832

London arrival postmark 7 March 1833; office docketing note of the same day.

The Reverend Mr Orton

Sir

I beg leave to lay before you the following Plan for visiting the whole of the Missionary Stations belonging to your Society and that of the London Missionary Society in the South Seas. If it should meet your views I shall feel obliged by your forwarding the same to your Society in London.

I am Sir    Your Obdt. Servant    Saml. P Henry

Plan

In consideration of the sum of Three Hundred pounds yearly from the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and Three Hundred and fifty pounds from the London Missionary Society I will undertake to find a Vessel to attend upon and visit all the missionary Stations belonging to both Societys once in the year, make Sydney the Port of discharge, to carry Passengers and Luggage from Sydney to and from the Islands and from Station to Station as may be required, for the term or period of Five years.

With respect to the time it would take to perform the whole I think it could not be accomplished in less than seven months, provided all the Stations were quiet and peaceable. The missionary Stations belonging to the London Society are already widely spread, and likely to be more so – also those of the Wesleyan Society at the Friendly Islands have the pleasing prospect of soon extending through the large group of Islands surrounding. As unforeseen circumstances may require it necessary to detain the vessel longer than usual at some of the Stations I think it necessary a stated period be mentioned  that the vessel should be expected to remain at each Station, to say one week at each station, and if a longer time be required by the missionaries in that case the vessel to be considered on demurrage at the rate of fifty shillings per day. All circumstances considered I trust the above plan will meet the approbation of the Societys and that I shall from my knowledge of the Islands and natives be enabled at all times to render satisfaction to all concerned.

Saml. P. Henry

Mission House   Prince Street    Sydney  28^th Aug 1832

Revd. And Dr. Sirs

You are no doubt aware from communications made from time to time regarding our Missions in these parts of the World, particularly the Tonga Mission that considerable inconvenience has been and continues to be endured on account of the infrequent opportunities offering to convey supplies and other communications to & fro. If this evil could be remedied and a more regular communication ensured, I have no doubt it would tend materially to the advantage of our Missions here, in this part of the world which now demand every possible attention. I am aware that my predecessors have suggested plans, and taken steps that from circumstances upon which I forebear to offer my private judgement, have not fully succeeded.

I do however think that the time has now come, when our Committee ought to take into their serious consideration of such measures as will afford the greatest  facilities for the advancement of these important missions in consistency with the just distribution of their funds, viewing the claims of other mission Stations.

The individual who makes the annexed proposition is a son of one of the Missionaries of the London Missionary Society and a native of the Society Islands, who has been in the habit of trading in these Seas for many years. I have no doubt of his competency to fulfil his proposal quite to the satisfaction of all parties – His statement is so clear  that there is no necessity for me to attempt explanation – If the London Missionary Society   would jointly accede, I think it would answer very well, & would therefore, so far as I am capable of judging recommend the plan to the serious  consideration of our Committee – of course, the plan suggested by Captn. Henry is open to amendation according to the views of the Committee to which if not materially deviating from Captn. Henry’s standard of remuneration – I have no doubt he would accede.

The reason why a greater amount is proposed to be paid by the London Missionary Society, is that Captn. Henry considers the Service to be performed for that Society is a little more than for ours.

I am instructed to add that in the event of the London Missionary Society rejecting the proposition Captn. H feels inclined to commence for our Society alone, should our Committee agree to his proposition on their part.

I am, Rev & Dr Sirs

Your affect & Obt St Josh. Orton   

 

Captain Samuel Pinder Henry 1832  

Shineberg, Dorothy (1967)   They Came for Sandalwood.

Gunson, Niel (1976) “The Deviations of a Missionary Family: the Henrys of Tahiti”, in J W Davidson and Deryck Scarr, eds., Pacific Island Portraits.

Davies, John (1961) The History of the Tahitian Mission 1799-1830, edited by C W Newbury