CHAPTER I
EARLIEST
RECORDS OF THE ISLANDS THElR DISCOVERY BY CAPTAlN BEECHEY, H.M.S.
"BLOSSOM"
Mu nin to or Bu
nin to are the Japanese sounds for three Chinese ideographs which would be
translated "no man island." There can be little doubt that we have here
the origin of the name Bonin Islands. Kaempfer, in his classic work on Japan,
is our authority for the statement that about the year 1675 a vessel belonging
to Japanese was driven by a storm to these islands which, though uninhabited,
they found to be pleasant and fruitful and, in default of other name, described
as Buninto. This may or may not have
been the occasion of their coming to be so called. But this is not the name by
which they are commonly known in Japan, nor is the year 1675 the first in which
we have record of them, for these same islands are claimed to have been
discovered in 1592 by a certain Ogasawara Sadayori, a Japanese warrior under
Hideyoshi, to whom they were granted as a fief, so that they became known as
the Islands of Ogasawara. That is the name for them to which the Japanese
adhere to-day. This warrior chief no doubt did what he could to farm some
portion, at least, of his newly acquired island territories, but there were
five hundred miles of serious sea separating them from the mainland, and we can
quite believe that any Japanese who, induced by a spirit of enterprise, set
sail in those early days for these islands, soon found their banishment
intolerable and were not satisfied until they were back again in their own
country. But there is yet another name for these islands which claims our
attention. They figure still on some not very antiquated maps as the Bonin or
Arzobispo Islands, and this latter name is evidence that the Spaniards come
into their history.
The Rev. A. F. King (now Archdeacon), having
already ascertained that a Spanish explorer was reported to have discovered the
islands in 1543, and the likelihood being, if this were so, that he had given
this name Arzobispo to the islands, was determined to pursue his inquiries on
this point further, and, being in London some years ago on furlough, visited
the libraries of the British Museum and the Royal Geographical Society. The
result of his researches he gives as follows:
"It appears that the Spaniard Ruy Lopez de
Villalobos commanded an exploring expedition that sailed from Mexico some time
in 1542 or 1543. After reaching the Philippines on August 26, 1543, he sent off
a small ship, the San Juan, having a
crew of eighteen or twenty men, to explore in a northerly direction. Somewhere
about the beginning of October they sighted some islands, which from the
description were almost certainly some of the Bonin group. But I am persuaded
they effected no landing because they shortly afterwards steered back for the
Philippines, and the chief reason given is that their stock of water was not
sufficient for them to proceed. If they had landed they could hardly have
failed to find a sufficient supply of excellent water. Thus, as far as our
knowledge goes at present, to the captain of the San Juan, whose name is not
given, must be allowed the honour of having been the first discoverer of the
islands, and some fifty years before their discovery by Ogasawara. With regard
to the name Arzobispo, however, my conviction is that Villalobos was not the
author of it. It must have been given to the islands at some later date by the
Spaniards of Manila, for the name appears first in some Manila maps and
probably was inserted not earlier than the middle of the eighteenth century. It
was afterwards copied into some English maps, and I have seen it in an English
chart dated 1800. Exactly when and for what reason this name was given is still
uncertain."
The above early notices of the islands are
given for the light they throw on the names which the islands have received.
Other interesting early facts relating to them might be collected, but it will
be enough to say that, throughout the eighteenth century at least, they
remained isolated from the world and uninhabited. Their consecutive history
only begins after their re-discovery by Captain Beechey in the year 1827; and
because this is our true starting point it will be well to give the account of
that discovery in some detail.
H.M.S. Blossom,
under command of Captain Beechey, was a sloop carrying fifteen guns and a
complement all told of 122 men. She had been dispatched from England on May 19,
1825, with instructions to co-operate with Franklin and Parry's Arctic
Expeditions. Captain Beechey's instructions were that he should be at Bering
Straits in October 1827, the interval to be employed in cruising in the Pacific
Ocean. At the close of 1827 the Blossom was to leave for England on her return
voyage.
Captain Beechey, having sailed as above
narrated on May 19, 1825, rounded Cape Horn, and touching at Tahiti and the
Sandwich Islands reached Bering Straits in July, 1826. In October the Blossom,
failing to meet Franklin, left Bering Straits and proceeded to San Francisco,
where she anchored on or about November 6. On December 28, 1826, Captain
Beechey sailed from San Francisco and again visited the Sandwich Islands,
proceeding from there to Canton and Macao, at which latter place he arrived on
or about April 30, 1827. After a brief stay the Blossom again set sail, making for Loochoo, and in due course, some
time in May 1827, she anchored off the town of Napha, the capital of those
islands.
From here Captain Beechey took his departure on
May 25, and shaping his course to the eastward he reached on the evening of
June 7 the situation of the Bonin Islands as marked in Arrowsmith's chart in
use at that time. The following day, the 8th, no land was in sight, and Captain
Beechey was on the point of giving up the islands as having no actual
existence, when, after a few hours sail to the eastward, several islands were
seen extending in a north and south, direction as far as the eye could discern.
These were the Bonins. A full account of the Blossom's visit is found in Captain Beechey's narrative, published
in two volumes.
The Blossom
anchored in Port Lloyd on June 9, 1827, having first attempted to fetch the
southernmost group; but finding wind and current against the ship and
discovering in the nearest land an opening which appeared to give promise of a
good harbour, Captain Beechey made for this and anchored in Port Lloyd, to
which he gave this name out of regard to the then Bishop of Oxford.
Captain Beechey was much surprised to find here
two Europeans who turned out to have been two of the crew of the English whaler
William, which vessel had been
wrecked in Port Lloyd some eight months previous to the Blossom's arrival. The name of one of the men was Wittrein; that of
the other is not given.
According to the statement of these men it
appears that after the wreck of the vessel the crew set to work to build a
small schooner in order to find their way to Manila, as the chances of their
being picked off from Port Lloyd were somewhat remote; to their surprise,
however, a whale ship, the Timor, appeared, and took off the crew of the
wrecked vessel with the exception of these two men. Wittrein and his companion.
The Blossom
remained at Port Lloyd for six days, and the time was fully taken up with
surveying the harbour, excursions in the immediate neighbourhood, and with
circumnavigating the island. To the island in which Port Lloyd is situated
Captain Beechey gave the name of Peel Island, in compliment to Sir Robert Peel,
who at the date of the departure of the Blossom
from England was Secretary of State for the Home Department ; and to the other
two of the cluster he gave the names Stapleton and Buckland, the last mentioned
after the then Professor of Geology at Oxford. A large bay at the south-east
angle of Peel Island was named Fitton Bay, after a late President of the
Geological Society; whilst a bay to the south-west angle of Buckland Island was
called Walker Bay, after Mr. Walker, at that time one of the officers of the
Hydrographical Department.
To the southern cluster of islands Captain
Beechey gave the name of Bailey, after a former President of the Astronomical
Society; but they are equally known as Coffin Islands, from the name of the
master of the American whaler Transit, who must have been an earlier discoverer
of them.[1]
Captain Coffin, of the American whaler Transit, landed on the South Island in
the year 1823. Not the whole island, but only the principal bay, was given his
name, Coffin Bay.
To the northern group Captain Beechey gave the
name of Parry, after the former Hydrographer to the Admiralty.
Captain Beechey has pronounced Peel and
surrounding islands to be volcanic in their nature, which is borne out by
Commodore Perry of the United States Navy, who visited the islands in 1853 and
writes of Port Lloyd as follows: "It would appear that Port Lloyd was at
one time the crater of an active volcano, from which the surrounding hill had
been thrown up, while the present entrance to the harbour was formed by a deep
fissure in the side of the cone through which a torrent of lava had poured into
the sea, leaving after its subsidence a space into which the waters subsequently
were emptied, bringing with them their usual deposits, which together with the
coral formation now forms the bottom and sides of the harbour."
In a letter of Captain Beechey's to Dr.
Buckland at Oxford, he states that he has named the central island after him
from its peculiar geological formation and the existence of a cave of basaltic
columns, closely resembling that of the Giant's Causeway.
After leaving Port Lloyd on June 15, Captain
Beechey made another attempt to reach the southern group, the Bailey or Coffin
Islands, but finding the wind adverse he bore away to the north and fixed the
position of the Parry Group.
Before leaving, Captain Beechey affixed to a
tree a sheet of copper nailed to a board, and on the sheet of copper the
following words were punctured:
"H.M.S. Blossom, Captain Beechey, R.N.,
took possession of this group of islands in the name and on behalf of His
Majesty, King George, the 14th June, 1827."