I’m in the Solomon Islands with a British sailor and some cannibals

I picked up The White Headhunter by Nigel Randell in a local charity shop. I have a few books about famous shipwrecks and stranded sailors (see reviews of a couple here and here) and I have also read a few books about Pacific Islands (see here and here) so this one seemed to fit in well with my previous reading. The book mainly considers the life of a sailor stranded in the Solomon Islands in the nineteenth century but the author covers a lot of other ground in the narrative.

Jack Renton was a young Scotsman who was shanghaied onto a ship headed for the Pacific. The ship was unsafe and the journey precarious so he and two others escaped onto one of the Solomon Islands. Jack was more fortunate than his fellow escapees and found a village which was prepared to house him as long as he was useful to them. Eventually Jack was able to escape and tell his story but, as the author points out, what he said cannot have been the whole truth.

This book outlines the society and culture of the Islands at this time. Villages fought each other and competed over food and resources. They also ate their enemies and kept their heads as souvenirs. Jack was almost certainly a slave on the Island and he participated in the fighting and the eating until he was trusted. He also familiarised the Islanders with British ideas and the English language so that when change came those with whom he had lived found themselves at an advantage. Following Jack’s escape he joined with the ships recruiting, and sometimes capturing, Pacific Islanders to work in the growing sugar industry in Australia.

The book shows how the provision of weapons and the introduction of new diseases changed and eventually destroyed the delicate culture of the islands. He describes these changes and shows how religion and new ideas challenged the traditions and rituals of the local people. It’s a sad book in many ways but the story of Jack’s life is interesting and I found the story informative – I had no idea that the Pacific Islanders were used in such a way or how their societies were destroyed by visitors in ships.

This book goes on my shelf alongside the other books I have linked to in this review – this, of course, does not help with the reduction in the number of books I own but it has at least moved this one off the pile on the floor and into a bookcase.