Post #629789 by TikiTomD on Fri, Mar 23, 2012 4:11 PM

That “cheerful livers” ad is a hoot, Sven!

Okay, back to topic...

Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS or Louis, as known to family and acquaintances), together with wife Fanny, step-son Lloyd Osbourne, and mother, Maggie Stevenson, sailed from San Francisco on June 28, 1888, for the South Seas aboard the chartered yacht Casco, seeking a healthier climate for the frail Louis, who suffered frequent respiratory ailments...

Boston Evening Transcript February 21, 1889 (page 4)

In the years ahead, RLS was to journey all over Oceania, as traced on this map of the region...

On the way to Hawaii, they visited the Marquesas Islands, as well as Tahiti. In Hawaii, they spent some time with Fanny’s daughter (by a previous marriage) Belle, as well as Belle’s artist husband Joe Strong, and their son (Louis and Fanny’s grandson) Austin. In the latter part of June, 1889, Louis, Fanny, Lloyd Osbourne and Joe Strong departed Honolulu on the schooner Equator, heading to the Gilbert Islands and eventually reaching Samoa in December of 1889.

On the schooner Equator was a young deck hand and cook by the name of Thomson Murray MacCallum (Murray), a New Zealand farm boy who dreamed of adventure in the South Seas and acted on that dream by stowing away on an island trading steamer, the Janet Nicol, which dropped him off in Samoa. After initially working as an apprentice carpenter and blacksmith in Apia, he was hired by the British trading firm McArthur and Company, a local competitor to the German Firm. McArthur and Company trained him and put him to work as a copra trader. Eventually, chance would place him as a crew member of the Equator for the voyage with Stevenson and his family. Murray MacCallum subsequently immigrated to the United States, residing in Los Angeles. In 1934, he published a memoir of his experiences, Adrift in the South Seas – including Adventures with Robert Louis Stevenson. I’m lucky to have a copy of this, signed by the author.

In the beginning of his book, Murray experiences the allure of the exotic South Sea maiden...

While on Apia, Samoa, one of his colleagues at McArthur and Company, a young man recently arrived from Auckland, became quite ill, so MacCallum called on someone uniquely qualified to help, our good Dr. Funk...

The last statement, ”He was a clever physician, but his love for cocktails and craving for the favours of young girls was his finish”, is interesting in that even the Peter Maubach article in the Mosaik did not elaborate on what the “long illness” was that required Dr. Funk go to Berlin for treatment in the last year of his life. Could it have been a failing liver from too many cocktails?

From MacCallum’s book...

While on board the Equator, RLS celebrated a birthday. Lloyd Osbourne, Louis’ step-son, photographed the party on the deck of the schooner, and that photo is in MacCallum’s book. Louis is standing in the back on the extreme left (wearing no hat), while Fanny is seated to the right of center, wearing a straw hat and polka-dotted Mother Hubbard dress; Captain Dennis Reid of the Equator is standing behind and to the right of Fanny, wearing a Tam o’Shanter and holding the ears of the cabin boy...

MacCallum’s book is dedicated ”to the memory of Robert Louis Stevenson”. In recalling Louis, MacCallum stated that ”The familiar sight of the ‘Frail Warrior’, as Carré calls him, propped in his bunk with a writing pad against his knees, either with a pensive faraway look in his eyes, or else feverishly covering page after page with his manuscript, will always linger in my memory.” He also found remarkable Stevenson’s ”happy faculty of always seeing the bright side of everything.”

When the Equator arrived in Apia, Samoa in the early part of December, 1889, the Stevensons stayed for a while at the home of Harry Jay Moors, an American businessman and long-time Apia resident who had befriended them on arrival. Louis found the climate highly agreeable and decided he would make a home there. After a while they rented a cottage, while Moors negotiated the purchase of land on which they would eventually build their Samoan home. In February, 1890, they departed Samoa for Sydney, Australia aboard the steamship Lübeck, with plans to soon return to England.

Robert Louis Stevenson graphic portrait from Vailima Letters...

To be continued...

-Tom

Edit Note: Added newspaper notice of RLS arrival in Honolulu.

[ Edited by: TikiTomD 2012-03-27 10:09 ]