IT could scarcely be expected that, where native government controlled the natives alone, the representatives in Samoa of the three Great Powers interested should continue to dwell as the Lotophagi the white inhabitants of these isles are generally supposed to be. When also the predilection of Germany for intrigue and the effects upon exotic whites of the isolation of Samoa and the vitiating air of Apia are considered, the maintenance of peace will be understood to have bean almost a sorry impossibility. We have seen that England in 1877 and America in 1878 refused annexation. The place was not worth the complications - but none of the three Powers wanted either of the others to have it. We have seen how errors and questionable conduct attended in the 'seventies the unauthorised acts of Americans and Englishmen. While these persons pursued the semblance and gleam of authority, Weber was quietly and successfully extending and consolidating. As the 'eighties opened but one element was lacking to set the little pot boiling over, and that element was now furnished from the commercial advantage gained in the 'seventies by Germany, or, let us say, by Germany's protégé in the group, the German Firm, an advantage purely local which German representatives were determined not only to protect but to secure by adding to it a political supremacy. That such an ambition should bring them into conflict with the representation of England and America, both of which countries had long had interests in the group, as England had over most of the Pacific, was inevitable, but the ambition was pressed with design and disregard, and concerning the natives with a curious want of understanding and feeling. With what success?

We have seen that on Talavou's death in 1880 Laupepa became king. The succession was not undisturbed, and there was further native fighting. In March, 1881. Laupepa received formal salutes from foreign men-of-war, and was generally locked upon as supreme. But he was not so. The high chief Tamasese held the title Tui-Aana; Mataafa was Tui-Atua. In April representatives of these two districts met and resolved upon an alternate monarchy of two years - Tamasese first, then Matafa. Laupepa held the other three names, Hostilities were about to commence when on the arrival of the U.S.S. Lackawanna in July, 1881, a peace was made at the instigation of the Consuls, which, with all its disregard of native custom, lasted some four years. Under it Laupepa continued as king. Tamasese as vice-king.

The characters of the three rival chiefs differed more than is usual among Samoans of rank. Laupepa was something of a student. He was undesirous of kingship, and naturally almost unfitted for the turbulence that, for the thirty Years of his adult life which preceded his death in 1898, accompanied his uncertain throne. “I found him," says Consul Churchward writing of October 1881, "to be an intellectual and pleasant looking man of about forty years of age, with a very agreeable and subdued manner of address, without the slightest suggestion of the savage about him. He also gave me the idea of a studious man, in which. as I afterwards found out, I was not mistaken.” Educated at the Malua Institute of the London Missionary Society. Laupepa had wished to take up mission work, but his birth and the claims of his people prevented it. Mataafa, on the other hand, was unusually active and astute, and indeed possessed of considerable capacity and ambition. Tamasese appears rather as a nonentity.

The Peace wag disturbed and finally broken by Germany. From 1875 to 1880 Weber had acted as Imperial German Consul. In the latter year he was succeeded in this Imperial appointment by Captain Zembsch. Weber of course still remaining at the head agency of the Firm in Apia. Zembsch, Stevenson tells us, was long remembered in Samoa as "the gentleman who acted justly.” He had the hardihood to act on a number of occasions in a manner contrary to the interests of the Firm. One can imagine how Weber plotted for his removal. Be that as it may, in 1883 Zembsch was recalled, and was succeeded by Dr. Stuebel. Thenceforward the German Consulate and the German Firm worked loyally together for the advancement of the good German interests of the Firm.

The pressure on King Malietoa Laupepa was increased. In 1881 the German Consulate had supported Tamasese, and his then election as king had been actually initiated aboard a German war-ship at Saluafata. Now alleged thefts by Samoans from the Firm's plantations furnished cause for complaint against Laupepa. The thefts have always occurred. They occur to-day, plentifully. They are no offence in the eyes of the communistic Samoans, who regard without comprehension the collection of so much food, and they form a practice almost impossible to repress. In 1883 Stuebel extorted a Convention from the king whereby Samoans convicted of offences against German subjects were to be imprisoned in the Firm's private gaol. The following year His Majesty was again browbeaten and bullied, his very deliberations treated as insults, and the intervention of two German ships of war lying in Apia hinted. The demands this time were brutal to the Point of injudiciousness, but they were conceded, and a fresh agreement was signed by the king. In their troubles Laupepa and Tammese came together. In November, 1884, they secretly sent. through New Zealand, a Petition praying for annexation by Great Britain. The previous year Laupepa had directly petitioned Great Britain to annex, whereupon the German Consul had procured a similar petition to Germany. The prayer of the 1884 petition. be it said, was refused, but negotiation continued through New Zealand until 1886, when by a delimitation treaty between England and Germany it was agreed that Samoa, as well as Tonga and certain other groups, be declared neutral territory. It is yet within the memory of many how high feeling ran in the Colonies in that year upon French and German annexations in the Pacific. And in a rather remarkable despatch from Prince Bismark to the American Government dated 18th November, 1887, it is declared that, especially in the case of Samoa. "the covetousness repeatedly shown by New Zealanders of obtaining possession of these islands" had made, it much more difficult for Fngland to act with friendship towards Germany. "Nevertheless we are there in much better relations to England than to America”!

When Stuebel and Weber learnt of the address to Great Britain, which they did some days, later, a native selling them a copy of it, the fat was in the fire. Weber was immediately active. Laupepa and Tamasese were again threatened; Tamasese was advised to cut his Malietoan friendship and raise the standard of a separate government, which, in January 1885, he proceeded to do at Leulumoega. Weber then supplying him with arms. As Germany's champertor it must be confessed Tamasese appears heavily indifferent. Rumours of intended annexation by Germany were rife in the group throughout the latter part of 1885. The unfortunate Laupepa was further harried. He was refused a bodyguard, disallowed his Samoan meetings, even forbidden to play cricket, and then, on a land claim of the Firm's, evicted from Mulinu'u, the scat of his government. On his hoisting his royal and national flag in Apia, Stuebel himself, with a shore party from a German cruiser had it brought down. The German flag was hoisted on Mulinu'u; marines occupied the place and built a fort there. In 1886 a German squadron of three ships arriving at Apia ignored the king, but Admiral and Consul visited Tamasese and assured him of Imperial recognition.

What, it may be asked, were the representatives of England and America doing in the midst of all this forcefulness? The only possible answer is that they were pursuing a regular course, which, if it bore the marks of ineptitude, at least had the merit of decency. They protested repeatedly to the German Consul. They counselled Laupepa to wait, and so in the meantime preserve the peace, an attitude His Majesty was eminently fitted to take up. In the meantime they reported matters to their governments. The American Consul, at the request of the king, somewhat hastily granted him the protection of the States, and even went as far as to protect the Samoan flag at his Consulate by hoisting over it the Stars and Stripes. The British Consul Churchward in 1887 published an interesting account of his four years' sojourn in Samoa, which officially terminated in October 1885. His conduct, he tells us, "did not appear to please the powers that were, for it happened that many hints I had received from the Germans to the effect that if I did not cease to oppose them in their native intrigues my relief would be effected - warnings that I could not bring myself to believe had any official significance - did prove true, and my official reign in Samoa was brought to an end.”

Well, the communications of the British and American Consuls reached their governments. The subsequent steps are described with academic fairness in the American official report:

"The situation thus created seemed to require the discharge by the United States of its obligation trader the treaty of 1878, to employ its good offices in behalf of the Samoan Government. The phrase "good offices" is necessarily vague, and the circumstances show that it was not inserted in the treaty of 1878 for the purpose of involving the United States in the responsibilities of a protectorate. The inference is quite the reverse. But the situation existing in 1885 presented. as clearly as any situation could present, an occasion for the employment of good offices. Our Ministers at Lodon and Berlin were, therefore, instructed to say that the claim of an American protectorate over Samoa by the United States Consul at Apia was wholly unauthorised and disapproved, no protectorate by any foreign power being desired; and to suggest that the British and German Ministers at Washington be instructed to confer with the Secretary of State with a view to the establishment of order. This suggestion was accepted with the modification that, before the conference was held, each of the three governments should send an agent to Samoa to investigate and report upon the condition of affairs in the islands. This preliminary having been accomplished, a conference was held in Washington in June and July, 1887, between the Secretary of State and the British and German Ministers. It was adjourned on the 26th of July, by unanimous consent, till the autumn in order that members might consult their respective Governments with a view to reconciling certain divergencies of view which the discussions had disclosed. The German Government proposed in the conference a plan to commit the practical control of Samoan affairs to a single foreign official, called an adviser to the king, and to be appointed by the power having the preponderance of commercial interests. The plan proposed by the United States was to commit the administration of the laws to an executive council, to be composed of the Samoan king and vice-king and three foreigners, one, of whom should be designated by each of the Treaty Powers, but who should hold their commissions and receive their compensation from the native government, so as to he independent of the influence and control of the Powers designating them. It was also proposed that any arrangement that might be devised should be embodied by the Powers in identic, but several and independent, treaties with Samoa. Germany objected to the plan of the United States on the ground that it did not promise a solution of existing difficulties. which were largely due to rival foreign interests. The British Minister supported the German Ministry and, incidentally, the German plan."

The italics are introduced. In view of after events the "plan" which the British Minister incidentally supported is clear. Germany meant to push herself to a primary position among the three Powers, so far as the scene of this history is concerned. The curious fact is that Britain thenceforward was either lukewarm or materially assisted her. That Britain should not have observed the United States proposal until a better solution might he offered after the adjournment is explicable only by the exigencies of matters nearer home. The conference was destined never to sit again.

In the meantime in Samoa matters went actively. The convention, at has been said, adjourned on 26th July, 1887. By 24th August of that year, less than one month after the adjournment, Samoa was virtually in the possession of Germany. Two alleged causes of German complaint led up to this result: the introduction of a political agent end of four German warships made it practicable.

The first of the causes cannot in any event, be considered as more than an irritant. In January 1887, an embassy had arrived in Samoa from Hawaii, at this time also a native kingdom, larger but no less farcical, governmentally, than Samoa. Amid native festivity a treaty of confederation was in February of that Year signed between the the nations. Germany in Samoa was pained; it was an insult to the greatness of the Fatherland that such a large independence should be shown. The pain was worse when Germany discovered that Tamasese, ponderously feeling, the indignity of Germany's putting him up as a puppet king, entered into a a secret communication with the Hawaiian embassy, and was considering leaving Samoa for their romantic homeland. The Germans threatened war if the embassy continued its to them unwelcome presence, and the Hawaiian diplomats accordingly sailed away, first to Pago Pago where the crew bartered their muskets for pigs and the captain the ship's service of plate for a like consideration, and thence to their own country, where they found as the result of a revolution their government defeated and their Prime Minister, an adventurer called Gibson, in gaol. Thus the first ground of German displeasure was removed.

The second cause was even more trivial. It arose from a supposed insult to the German Emperor during a bar-room affray; by no stretch of imagination could any blame for it be attached to Laupepa.

In the early months of 1887 there had arrived in Samoa one Eugen Brandeis, a Bavarian ex-captain of artillery,”of a romantic and adventurous character." The exact method of his appointment to Samoa belongs to the secret history of the German Firm. He first appeared as a clerk of the Firm at Apia, later as their special agent at Tamasese's headquarters, Leulumoega. There he started up drilling troops and improving fortifications. Laupepa complained to the German Consul, who promptly denied all knowledge. The introduction of Brandeis much strengthened the hands of Laupepa's opponent, but it also flagrantly strengthened the difficult cause and purposes of Germany in Samoa.

In the light of after events the scheme is more than apparent. On the 19th of August a German squadron of four ships of war entered Apia Harbhour; Brandeis was at Leulumoega; the island steamer had left for Sydney, and thus for some weeks Samoa was practically cut of from the outer world; and on the 23rd an absurd ultimatum from the German Consul reached the king. It demanded reparation for wrongs alleged to have been committed by Laupepa or his people, every one of which antedated the Washington conference. In respect to the insult to the Kaiser one thousand dollars and a public apology were demanded; for thefts from German plantations during the past four years an immediate payment of twelve thousand dollars. The conclusion of the Consul's missive was delicate - it is Stevenson's translation that is quoted: "It is my opinion" he addressed His Majesty "that there is nothing just or correct in Samoa while you are at the head of the government." Laupepa called his Council, and though many were for defiance, the King's answer begged delay until the 27th.

Early next morning seven hundred men and six guns were landed from the warships, the government building was seized and the German colours hoisted. The king and his chiefs had meantime fled. German marines searched the town for the fugitives irrespective of the property rights of other nationalities. And the next day Tamasese and Brandeis were installed on Mulinu'u, the former given a salute of twenty-one guns from the ships and marched through the town with a German guard of honour.

Where again, it will be asked, were the Consuls of England and America? Again, be it sad, these gentlemen pursued a regular course. In reply to the German Consul's demonstration they proclaimed their recognition of Malietoa Laupepa and advised the followers of the latter to remain quiet and do nothing. Laupepa sent to Mataafa who endeavoured to arrange a settlement, first with Tamasese, then on board the German ship. But the Germans were obdurate. Laupepa was to give himself up, or "great sorrows must befall his country" - a curt reference to the guns of the ships. Whatever deficiencies there may have been in Laupepa's character, selfishness was never one of them. Indeed it rarely is of any Samoan. Against the wishes of many of his followers he surrendered, conscious that this meant exile from the only land he had known. His farewell to his people is famous, for truth and simplicity in it go naked: - “To all Samoa. On account of my great love to my country and my great affection to all Samoa, this is the reason that I deliver up my body to the German Government. That Government may do as they wish to me. The reason of this is because I do not desire that the blood of Samoa shall be spilt for me again. But I do not know what is my offence which has caused their anger to me and to my country. Tuamasaga. Farewell! Manono, and family, farewell! So. also, Salafai. Tutuila, Aana and Atoa, farewell! If we do not again see one another in this world, pray that we may be again together above. May you be blest. I am, Malietoa, the King.”

Not less simply and very fully he presented his case in a lengthy communication to the two Consuls, whose negative support had in no small degree been the source of his downfall. “I desire" he concluded to each of them "to remind you of the promises so frequently made by your Government, and trust that you will cause these assurances to come to pass in order that the lives and liberties of my people may be respected. I desire to make known to you this. I fear, indeed, that Germany will desire to compel me, as they are now making my people, to sign papers acknowledging Tamasese as king. If I write my name on paper it will he under compulsion, and to avoid war being made on my people by the German forces."

He was exiled for a little short of two years, first to the Cameroons, then to Germany, then for a longer period at Jaluit in the Marshall Group. Stevenson tells the story as he received it from Laupepa himself. It is a shocking illustration of the lack of decency, even of humour, that is so particularly Germany’s when ambition drives her to the exercise of cruelty.

For a further year the oppressions continued. Tamasese was established as king at Mulinu'u. Brandeis became premier. The native unrest, though quiescent, steadily increased and it was heightened by the assumption by Tamasese, who was rightly Tui-Aana, of the two great names Tui-Atua and Malietoa. On the last days of August 1888 a rebellion broke out at the back of Apia which was quelled by the troops of Brandeis and Tarnasese; the island of Manono, was bombarded by the German gunboat Adler; the lines of the Mulinu’u garrison were extended through Apia and through Matautu, on the eastern side of the bay.

By September 9th the rebellion had flared into war. On that day Mataafa was crowned king at Faleula, and he promptly gathered and led his forces against those of Tamasese at Matautu, driving them before him and penning them back to the Mulinu'u peninsula. The situation here became impossible for them, partly owing to the arrival of two British ships of war and partly to the devices of the Commander of a United States gunboat who took impish delight in the situation. These ships dominated the peninsula, and Tamasese and Brandeis withdrew by night to a position near Laulii, some six miles cast of Apia.

Mataafa followed them, and for some days the days, the rival forces faced each other across a ravine. Skirmishes ensued with no definite result. Then, Germany attempted further to force matters. A letter to Mataafa threatened the intervention of a man-of-war if he did not withdraw from Laulii. But Mataafa sent the contents of the letter to the English and American Consuls, and for once at least these gentlemen were ready for anything. At daybreak of the morning of 15th November 1888 three ships of war of the three Great Powers, the German leading, swung out of Apia harbour for Laulii. Each carried its Consul. War - international war - hung in the balance, for there is little doubt had the German ship opened fire on the shore, the American ship would have "let her have it." Mr. William Blacklock, now of Sydney, was then acting as American Consul and he verifies this view. But the German Consul contented himself with a visit ashore and by noon the three ships had returned to Apia. The bluff had been called. The incident went far to lessen the prestige of Germany.

The succeeding incident went further. On 11th December Mataafa received a large supply of cartridges which were smuggled into the island by a British ship. This brought bitter complaint from Brandeis to his Consul. There were further causes for soreness: thefts from German plantations continued; a horse was stolen from the stable of the German Consulate; there was open brawling in Apia between half-castes and German sailors. Only those who have lived in small tropical places know the extreme irritation that such occurrences cause. It was felt by the representatives of Germany that something must he done.

The expedient resolved upon was simple but ill-advised. Both native parties were to be disarmed and to return to their homes. An order accordingly went forth from the de facto Government of Tamasese, but it was obeyed by neither party. It is understood that an arrangement, was then come to by the supporters of the, German as well as native, whereby an attack was to be made on the Mataafan forces for the purpose of disarming them. Tamasese was to bring down native troops, the warships were to supply landing parties; the two forces were to junction at Vailele, a plantation of the German Firm adjoining the native village of Fagalei, in possession of Mataafa s troops and lying midway between Tamasese's base and Apia. The strategy was essentially on for a daylight attack so far as the white force, were concerned. It was planned for daybreak on the morning of 18th December, and the ship's part of it was then embarked upon. But Tamasese failed to arrive, and the crews to the number of about one hundred and fifty were misguided as to attempt the expedition by themselves. The adventure was bravely carried. Two landings were effected and the forces junctioned at the plantation, but with some loss. The fight centred round the homestead and the little garrison, losing heavily was threatened with extinction from thousands of combatants when the Samoans withdrew. The cause of the withdrawal is uncertain. A German warship had entered the bay and commenced shelling the adjacent villages; it is said also that Mataafa held his hand. Be this as it may, two lieutenants, and fourteen men had been done to death and some forty men lay wounded, and as soon as the conflict ceased the party was quickly and without further loss returned to the ship. The mana of Germany was for the time being dashed and broken. Her schemes had resulted only in disaster, even in shame.

Still the bluster of the German Consul continued; still the fortunes of the German side declined. The natives' positions were again bombarded; Tamasese steadily lost support; Brandeis prepared to leave Samoa, which he did early in 1889. In January of that year the German Consul proclaimed martial law in Samoa, to which the English Consul entered protest. An Englishman was arrested, another forestalled arrest by surrendering himself. At last, on February 12th, the whole business was broken up by the iron hand of Bismarck who in an emphatic despatch disapproved of his Consul's usurpation of jurisdiction over foreigners. In the same month martial law was terminated.

No doubt German intrigue would have ended here with results no worse than the unfortunate affair at Vailele, but matters had gone too far. The attention of England and America had been roused. In the States particularly feeling ran high. Warships began to arrive at Apia, until before March was half-way gone there were seven-ships of war as well as two merchant vessels and eleven coasters crowded into the tiny harbour - more it may be thought than ever before or since, though in August of 1914 Apia saw outside its roads a much sterner and more powerful display of naval strength. And then, suddenly, there fell upon the little world gathered there a disaster the magnitude of which filled three great nations with dismay and pity, and with no small wonder that so much trouble could arise in a place of such little worth. The "hurricane" of 1889 remains by far the most famous of any episode in Samoa's chequered career. Many pens, one of them of the ablest of our time, have described it. And it gave to Apia Harbour a name for evil in the late months of summer which sailors know the world over.

The evil was not unknown, even in 1889. The natives of course had long known of the "knock-down atoms." Captain John Erskine R.N., in his Journal published in 1853, mentions two which did considerable damage in 1848 and 1850. In March of 1883 an unusually violent storm had stripped the little harbour almost bare - several big sailers and all save one of the mosquito fleet then in the port going awreck, great damage being done to trees and buildings ashore, and several lives lost. A late as February of 1889 three vessels had been driven aground, and on the 7th of March the fated warships had been compelled to steam at their anchors to prevent dragging in a gale.

A glance at a chart will discover to the reader the shape of the anchorages afforded by the reefs which bound the coast of the wide and open bay of Apia. During much of the year, and while the easterly trade winds blow, these anchorages are secure enough, though the holding ground is nowhere too good. But from December until April the wind will set upon occasion in the north and north-west, sometimes merely with uncertainty and short and squally boisterousness, at others with a long, driving, rain-bringing gale. The wind does not rise to hurricane pitch; it seldom even attains a great velocity; and damage to the exposed and flimsy buildings on the beach is rare. But the sea piles up in the long jar-shaped haven, and it lifts and buffets the ships at their anchors fill dragging becomes unavoidable, and it breaks and runs upon the jagged reefs with a tumult that spells terror and destruction for the people of a stricken ship. The storm comes suddenly, but a rapidly falling glass gives in almost all cases ample notice of its arrival.

The seven ships of war comprised three American,, the Trenton, frigate cruiser and flagship of the squadron carrying Rear-Admiral Kimberley, the corvette Vandalia and the sloop Nipsic; three Germans, the corvette Olga, and the gunboats Adler and Eber; and one Englishman, the third-class cruiser Calliope. They carried an aggregate of upward of fifteen hundred men of whom about fifty were ashore.

Early in the afternoon of Friday the 15th of March the barometer had fallen to 28.95 which was a plain mandate to the ships to steam out from the coming peril. But such were their strained relations, such their individual pride, that none would go; each apparently was waiting for the other to lead the way. The afternoon was spent in making the ships as snug and safe as possible, and full steam was fired for. By nightfall the storm had commenced and throughout the hours of darkness it continued with increasing violence. When morning broke the crisis was plain to those watching from the shore; fearful seas were driving up the harbour, but all ships save one had so far weathered the gale. Of the Eber nothing could be seen. A few days before she had received injuries to her propellor and no doubt this prevented her from keeping way on her anchor. Shortly before daybreak she had dragged so far that she had struck the mushroom edge of the shore reef, broke, and in a few minutes sunk beneath it. And of her whole ship's company only one officer and four men reached the beach alive.

In such a sea the fortune of each vessel needs lay with herself; to each there was a separate battle to be fought; for each that battle was against overwhelming odds. Of the six ships seen fighting the storm on the morning of the sixteenth, three had suffered injury. Just before daybreak the Adler had struck into the Olga, carrying away her own bowsprit and holing the Olga, luckily above the water-line. The Nipsic had lost her funnel. Throughout the whole of the sixteenth the gale continued, unabated until nightfall, and all that day the crews of the ships fought with the storm, their lives as a stake. One by one the ships were forced from their anchorages, either by seas or by danger of collision. The first to go was the Nipsic, which was fortunate enough to avoid the reef and take ground on a shingle beach. There with the help of Samoans her crew, got ashore, but with the loss of seven lives. She was afterwards refloated and taken to Honolulu.

She was followed by the Adler, which was not so lucky. Finding himself faced with the shore reef and a similar fate to that of the Eber, the Geman captain, it is said, resolved upon an extraordinary expedient. He waited for a huge sea, slipped his mooring chains as he met it, and, riding upon its crest, lifted his ship clear over the reef-edge, settling her with a crash well in on the shallow platform of the reef. Fortunately, as she broke, her stern portion heeled towards the shore and a number of her crew escaped by reason of the shelter of her hull. But many also were compelled to cling to her; running seas upon the reef made rescue impossible that day, though it was valiantly attempted chiefly by Samoans; and by the following morning twenty had been lost, some when the vessel broke upon the reef, but most, it is believed, from exposure. There on the little calm lagoon the Adler lies broken to this day, perhaps the most noticeable feature of the harbour view, her ribs arust, her iron decks growing grass, a grim reminder of the strength of the seas that beat upon the spot nearly thirty years ago.

There were now hunched within the inner harbour three ships, the Vandalia, the Calliope and the Olga. A little before nine o'clock the Vandalia drove down on the Calliope, catching her stem beneath the bowsprit of the British ship and bursting it upward as she lifted to the sea. To avoid immediate collision the Calliope reversed her engines until she nearly touched the shore reef. Doom here almost encircled her; in the hot moment of action it seemed but one chance of safety remained. She was too heavy a ship to follow the example of the Adler; she must thread her way to the open sea. She was a fairly new ship, but not of exceptional power, and the odds were long. Captain Kane took the chance.

He swung her to starboard of the Vandalia, and slipped his ship's last anchor of four. And then he put her nose to the sea, calling for every pound of steam that the good New Zealand Westport coal he carried could give him under forced draught. Those who watched from the shore were thrilled at the manoeuvre; the issue of it hung doubtful for a time. As the cruiser rose to the piled-up seas her whole deck and houses from stern to stem were visible, as she sank she seemed buried in sea and send. Gradually, it is said at first quite imperceptibly, the ship crept to the harbour mouth where a final obstruction lay in the plunging Trenton. Between flagship and reef there were a few yards of tumultuous water, but beyond was clear sea and security. Kane's story is brief: “I sheered close past the Trenton's stem" he says “our foreyard actually passing over her quarter as she rolled. We came up to the windward in splendid style, clearing the reef by fifty yards, and then stood right out to sea. As we passed the Trenton all her officers and crew, who were on deck, gave us a ringing cheer, which was heartily returned by us. We were much affected by that proof of goodwill from another ship at a time when they might well have been thinking about themselves alone. We noticed that her rudder was broken and her screw not revolving."

The Calliope, then, got clear away, and she returned only when the storm had subsided. Shortly after she had started on her perilous enterprise, the Vandalia's captain, despairing of being able to longer ride at safety, attempted to beach her near the Nipsic. Misfortune attended the attempt, the ship striking the eastern corner of the inner reef but settling in fairly shallow water. Many of her crew perished in an endeavour to get a line ashore, including her captain, and the losses of this ship were outnumbered only in the case of the Eber. The hull was soon awash, and the crew were eventually compelled to seek safety in the rigging.

Meanwhile the Trenton, as Kane. "not thinking about themselves alone" had noted in passing, had lost her rudder and her wheel, her engines were flooded and her fires extinguished . Early in the afternoon she parted her moorings, and. despite efforts to keep her up to the wind, she drifted wildly in the direction of the Olga with which, after some skilful avoidance on the Olga's part, she collided. The Olga’s captain immediately slipped his moorings and going full steam ahead beached his ship off Matautu in the safety of comparatively smooth water. She was subsequently refloated. The Trenton, though unmanageable, had almost equally good fortune. She eddied down past the stranded Nipsic in the direction of the Vandalia, partially sunk a few yards from the shore. Luckily as darkness was falling she here brought up so that ropes were passed, and, before the two ships struck, the men from the Vandalia's tops, which afterwards fell with the collision, had been transferred to the larger ship. Then the Trenton settled alongside and stayed so all night, partly piling up on the Vandalia and herself awash below her top deck. But, of all her crew of four hundred and thirty, only one died and he by the accident of a falling block.

The harbour was now clear of ships, and the sole anxiety the work of rescue. This was still impossible. All through the night that followed. the rain and wind continued to beat upon the survivors clinging to the wrecks, and those ashore sat helpless. But before dawn of Sunday the 17th the gale had moderated and the seas were falling. Along the strand of Apia wreckage was strewn and floating, far and near. The Samoans now showed their native generosity. They were, many of them, at war with Germany; here was devastation visited upon their foes, and that without their taking even a part. But the disaster inevitably moved their ready sympathies. Throughout the morning of the 17th they zealously and courageously worked under the leadership of Seurmanu, chief of Apia, in getting lines to the ships for the purposes of communication and of rescue. And further, they did no pillage, a thing that is probably most easily explained by the chiefs putting a ban upon the harvest of the wrecks. The United States was lavish in presents in recognition of the service to her seamen, Germany, it is stated, paid three dollars for each German saved.

One hundred and forty-five officers and men perished as a result of the wrecking of the six war-ships, and five lives were lost from the merchant vessels, of all of which only one small schooner escaped.

The weight of the disaster was of course especially felt in America and Germany. But British regret was nevertheless genuine and deep, and there was no or little rejoicing at the good fortune of the Calliope. The Queen expressed her, sympathy to President Harrison. The Government of New Zealand offered to place the steamer Hinemoa at the disposal of Admiral Kimberly. H.M.S. Rapid was sent to Samoa. And when Count Herbert Bismarck interviewed Lord Salisbury in London the most perfect agreement in colonial matters was announced.

The event nevertheless brought great changes in the political affairs and situation of Samoa. German Nationalists might pass affirmations that the calamity must not cool German colonial ardour, but its occurence clearly cut level to the roots the unlovely growth which German ambition in Samoa was rearing. We shall see in the next chapter that the plant was to grow again, though perhaps more healthily, during the decade and the new era which