Searching for Queen EMMAPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
A reader wrote and asked about a lady named Queen Emma that I had mentioned in one of my earlier stories. The reader searched and found several Queen Emmas but none were from the South Pacific. Could I tell readers more about her? I can do that, although the setting of my story will take place a bit out of the way for Royal Orchid Holidays travelers. But maybe I can stretch it a point. New Zealand, a Thai Airways destination, is a good place to begin. From Auckland there are connecting flights across the Pacific.
Now to Queen Emma. Any time someone mentions the South Pacific, what comes to mind are some remarkable characters, men who have etched their names into the history of the Pacific: explorer James Cook, artist Paul Gauguin, buccaneer Bully Hayes, mutineer Fletcher Christian of the Bounty and writers like Louis Beck, Herman Melville and James Michener. The list is long and their names have become household words in the annals of the Pacific.
But not all the notable characters of the South Seas were men. One was an attractive young lady, half Samoan and half American, who was run out of her native island by the missionaries and the society they had created. She vowed that one day she would return, rich and famous, and make them regret it. She did just that, by achieving the impossible. She went into the cannibal islands of the western Pacific and there carved herself an empire out of the disease-ridden jungles, and in time so vast and so great were her holdings she became known as queen of the islands.
Emma Coe was her name and they called her Queen Emma. The first time I heard her name was when I sailed my schooner Third Sea into Rabaul Harbour on New Britain Island in northern New Guinea. Strange as it may be, after I came to know her, or I should say came to know about her, for she had been dead for more than 70 years, I found myself being drawn to her, almost as though I was falling in love with her. It is possible, especially when you get to know Emma Coe.
Before I tell readers about this remarkable lady, I should tell something about Rabaul. It's one of the most beautiful ports in the Pacific, but it was once considered to be inhabited by the world's most fearsome and treacherous cannibals. It was here out of this wilderness that Emma built her empire.
The stories the old timers have to tell are not only about cannibals and diseases but about German plantations and volcanic eruptions that twice destroyed Rabaul, about the Japanese taking Rabaul and holding it during the entire war years. But the story they like to talk about most is Queen Emma. They will tell about the ruins of her great house in Ralum, some 30 kilometres south of town. They say it was the most famous house in the Pacific. And if you continue to show interest in the story of Queen Emma—and sometimes even if you don't—they will explain how to find her grave and those of her lovers on a hillock overlooking the harbour.
When I first sailed into Rabaul, I became intrigued by these strange tales of a beautiful Samoan girl who became Queen of the South Seas. I wanted to learn more about her. I read what was available, and talked to those who knew her. I spent many hours at the ruins of her house, and I located her grave, forgotten and jungle covered, on the hillock overlooking the harbour. I delved into the libraries and archives, and with each new discovery, her story intensified. Then I sailed my schooner into Samoa where Emma was born, and now the story was complete. Queen Emma died eighty years ago, but to me she is very much alive. She is the breath and soul that makes up the dramatic history of the South Seas.
Emma Coe was born in Apia, Samoa and, while still an infant, placed by her father in the hands of Catholic sisters to be educated. She was not yet eleven but already well developed when he sent her away to a convent school in Sydney "to save her from growing up" along the untamed waterfront that was Apia in those days.
But all did not go well in Sydney. Emma was "asked" to leave the convent when she was sixteen, for teaching the girls in her class how to dance the licentious and uninhabited Samoan dances. Her father then sent her to live in the household of his brother Edward Coe in San Francisco, where she was put under stern educational training. Part of her instructions was to learn to sew, play the piano and pour tea for the ladies of San Francisco.
But Emma's heart was not in San Francisco; it was in the islands of her birth. She longed to return, and when the chance came, she took it. She was nineteen when she reappeared in Apia, unannounced and unexpected.
The Beach talked for years about the performance Emma's father, Jonas Coe, put on when he went out to greet the brigantine Emile Ann, just in from San Francisco. He looked up from the tender to be greeted by a very well-dressed and good-looking young lady standing at the railing. He hardly recognized his daughter but when he did, hell broke loose. He went into a rage. He reprimanded the captain and then the shipping office for giving her passage. Emma smiled quietly to herself. She was her father's favourite daughter and she knew well how to handle him. Anyway, there was little he could do now. She was back.
In the South Seas in those days men took what they wanted and when they saw young and attractive Emma, they wanted her. Emma was glad to be back and she loved the attention, but her easy manner and flirtatious ways did not rest well with Apia's new-found society and the stern missionaries. Jonas was not a man to bend to please ''bitches in white mansion" and especially not the missionaries, but he was concerned about his daughter's future in the rambunctious town. He then did the best thing a father could. He married her off to a prominent ship's officer, James Forsayth, who was to become trader and captain of his own ship, provided, of course, by his father-in-law.
Emma had a natural flair for business and politics which was to contribute to her success later in life. For the time being she was content running her husband's business and assisting her father with his duties as consul. But she was also an adventurer. Whenever she could, she sailed with her husband on trading voyages. She was both a good seaman and an accomplished navigator.
Emma became pregnant and grew restless when she could not travel. She loved children but she admitted she was not a good mother. She left the raising of her son to her mother and sisters.
A few months before her son was born, James Forsayth sailed on a trading voyage to China and was not seen nor heard from again. It was assumed that he was lost at sea during a typhoon off the coast of China. Emma's life now took a series of turns and twists.
Her antics became the gossip about town, but that didn't stop her from doing what she pleased. Eyebrows really turned when she accepted a dinner invitation from buccaneer Bully Hayes aboard his famous black brigantine Leonora. Hayes tried to seduce her, whereupon Emma merely slipped out of her dress but instead of falling into her host's arms, she dived overboard and swam ashore.
Nor did the town stop talking when Emma became romantically involved with Colonel Albert Steinberger from Washington, D. C. Steinberger appeared in Apia with a letter of introduction from President Grant and shortly became involved in local politics. The Samoans accepted him as an envoy of the United States Government and within a few days he became the friend and confidant of everyone, Samoan chiefs included, and Emma herself. Soon he set himself up as adviser to the Samoan Government.
Steinberger, however, was a fraud. It was discovered he made secret negotiations with German companies for the sale of Samoa lands. He was tried and deported, and unfortunately pulled Jonas Coe into his web.
A new American consul was appointed and charges were brought against Emma's father regarding his relations with Steinberger. He was accused of misappropriating government funds. Emma defended her father at the hearings. The next day the court re-assembled and now decided that Mr. Coe was guilty of fomenting civil disorder and that he be sent to the United States for trial. (He beat the charges and was later reinstated.)
But in the meantime, with her husband lost at sea, her father deported and most of the family property gone, Emma was at the mercy of missionaries and the cruel Apia society. Ridiculed and belittled, she vowed she would make those in Apia who were against her regret their words. ''I am a half cast woman," she said, "'and I can do nothing about that. And I am poor, but I can do something about that." She now concentrated on fulfilling her wish. She moved in with Tom Farrell, an Apia waterfront saloon keeper and island trader.
Tom owned the saloon and hotel and operated his own trading schooner. A red bearded Irishman born in Sydney, he was as tough as they came. He drank hard and fought hard, and would knock a man down who crossed him or who looked twice at Emma. He was the man that Emma needed. He was a good trader but a bad business man. Emma had a good business mind. They formed a partnership and sailed away on a trading voyage, maintaining their headquarters at Apia.
When Europeans first began trading with the natives of the South Seas they lacked a common medium of exchange. It was discovered that coconut oil sold well in Europe. Coconut oil, and later dried copra, became that exchange. Oil at first was obtained from splitting coconuts and drying them in the sun. The oil was extracted and sealed into bamboo cane containers of up to three gallons.
The early traders showed the islanders how to process the oil and then sailed among the islands offering cloth and tobacco among some of the more desirable items which they traded. The Germans, who had their headquarters in Apia, were the first to pioneer the dried coconut industry. An innovation that was about to take place was to directly change the lives of Emma Forsayth and Tom Farrell.
More often than not the coconut oil gathered in bamboo containers became foul and rancid, and the Germans found they could better profit by trading for bagged copra rather than oil. The dried copra was sent to crushers. What resulted were coconut plantations on a large scale. But plantations required much labour and Polynesians would not work. Out of this need for labour came a system of recruiting black labour from Melanesia called '"blackbirding."
Blackbirding had some law about it. Generally a chief, in return for trade goods, supplied a stipulated number of labourers for a certain term of years. But, as the demand for more labourers grew as the Samoa plantations expanded, more often than not natives were simply trapped and carried off by unscrupulous Europeans. Blackbirding became an ugly business.
When the new plantation on Samoa opened up, Tom Farrell was one of the first to sail his schooner to recruit labour in New Guinea. Emma went with him. The year was 1877. They sailed into a little attractive harbour called Mioko in the Duke of York Islands across a narrow channel from New Britain. Here they established a small trading post.
One hundred and one years later I sailed my schooner into the harbour at Mioko in the Duke of York Islands. The only vestiges of a trading post were a few concrete pillars, and nothing more. The natives could not explain the pillars. But here, certainly, was Queen Emma's first foothold in the western Pacific. The beauty, with its soft beaches and low palms, and water so clear we could see our anchor at ten fathoms, was unsurpassed. Sitting on our aft deck under an awning, I read the accounts of Emma at Mioko, and I could see the station clearly and the trading schooners at anchor, and both savage and white man coming to trade.
Next week I will continue the story of Queen Emma.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens. I hear that this is the rainy season and not a good time to visit Thailand. Can you comment on that? Jenny, Auckland
A. Dear Jenny. Thailand is in the monsoon belt, and there are two monsoons—the northeast and the southwest. They do not blow at the same time. Thus, you can escape the monsoon by traveling to another area. Most people think of the monsoon as rain. It is not rain. It is a wind. Generally, however, the winds bring the rains, but no always. --HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
