Penrhyn Island

While he was here (2-3 years) Powell gave birth to many infants, assisted in building a chapel and a ship.

It contains digitised prints of monochrome photos, many of which have handwritten stickers on the back (also digitised). He was said to have created the photos himself, possibly with an X-ray device. In at least one photo, Robert Dean Frisbie and his daugther Florence "Johnny" Frisbie are depicted, and Charles Powell is referred to in Frisbie's Miss Ulysses of Puka-Puka (1948:230).

Among the photos are profiles of Powell and the other soldiers, among them Powell's "hut mate" Roger Roper, as well as Dr. Ngai Tou, a resident physician and alumnus of Fiji Medical School. Included in the library are photos of villages, women's wickerwork, a jibcan, the small clinic, the Roman Catholics (Powell, the Roman Catholics call the London Missionary Sunday School & Church), a collective lunch and procession-dancing.

Some pictures are the plane "Kangaroo Kate" and a trip to New Zealand's Prime Minister Peter Fraser in December 1944. Tiare Taporo", the large ship for the island market, can be seen in several photos taken between 1918 and 1945 by Viggo Rasmussen, Phillip Woonton and Andy Thomson.

Many of the names on the photos refer to him as Capt. Powell. Viggo Rasmussen, a Dane skipper who lived most of his lives in the Cook Islands and Polynesia, is also the object of a film.

PENRYN ISLAND - Sailing Ship Kwai

The Penrhyn is 848 northeast of Rarotonga (1365 km). This is the most secluded of the Cook Isles and the biggest of the 15 islets. Bennett Island was another name in Europe, but it is not known why it was ever named so and by whom. According to the 2001 survey, the number of inhabitants was 357.

According to the present burgomaster, the island's total populace has declined to around 200 since 2006. In 2010 Kwai called at 4 harbours in Penrhyn and supplied groceries, fuels mainly for her fishermen' s vessels and various other necessary provisions. The Black Pearl Farm is the only significant business on the island, although it has declined in recent years.

A further article that is manufactured in the local area but is not well known outside the Pacific Island communities is the local production of coir wovens. They' re regarded as the best in the South Pacific. Rito " is the name of the weavery and the most common articles are Sunday chapel fan, small basket and hat.

It seems that they were a big success back then and are still in great demand on many islands. Its current populations depend on the oceans for most of their sustenance, as well as local crops such as coconuts and breadfruits. In the mornings (except Sundays) men leave the island in small metal vessels to impale or catch seafood for their family.

In 1854, as I have already said, the island's pilgrims came and the island's contemporary residents are very religious churchgoers, 75% of the island's citizens are Christian, while the other 25% are members of the Roman Catholic community. There is no work on Sunday and you can hear nice songs from all the local congregations if you are lucky enough to walk around.

Penrhyn, along with many other Asian Isles, was devastated by the devastation of the Penrhyn slaves in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. By 1863, an estimated 1,000 men, wives and kids were brought from the Cook Isles to South America, and about 400 of Penrhyn were tricked out. There were four local mission instructors who supported the Peruvians and who were selling these unfortunate people for five bucks a capita.

While the islanders wanted to construct a church and received good payment if they escorted the "merchants", unfortunately they did not make it home. Lamont was one of the sharpest watchers of Pacific island living in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On Penrhyn he extensively covered his year in his classical book "Wild life Among the Pacific Islanders".

On a voyage to Tahiti and the Cook Islands, where he made many sharp observation about the missionaries' activity, his vessel sailed up to the northeast and was destroyed after a hurricane on the Penrhyn coral canal. Him and a fistful of the island' s inhabitants took him prisoner and entangled him in their inner battles.

I' ll try to collect more up-to-date information about the island, its culture and folk and publish it here.