LEONIDAS 1877

[aukepalmhof]

The Crown Agent Gazette Vol. 8 No 6/1979 gives by this stamp:
Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister of Britain in the early 1870’s was firmly against any expansion of the British Empire but the dramatic decline in the cotton industry in Fiji was causing severe distress and it was decided that this made Fiji a special case. Two Commissioners were sent out to form a Government and on 10 October 1874, the “Deed of Cession” was formally signed and Fiji became a Crown Colony.
To solve the problem of the workers in the fields a substitute crop was sought and the Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, decided on sugar, which required fewer workers.
Since the native Fijians were unhappy about working regularly in the fields, Indians were recruited and this changed the whole character of life in Fiji.
When the first Indians arrived in Fiji in 1879 it was not anticipated that they would stay long, but eventually they outnumbered the Fijians.

The first ship who brought the indentured (coolies) to Fiji was the ship LEONIDAS.
Built as a iron hulled cargo vessel under yard No 202 by A McMillan & Son, Dumbarton, Scotland for J. Patton Jr & Co., London
Launched as the LEONIDAS.
Tonnage 1,388 gross, 1,326 net, and 1,241 under deck tonnage. Dim. 238 x 37.1 x 22.1ft.
Ship rigged
June 1877 completed.

From her maiden voyage she was under command of Captain McLachlan one of the shareholders in the ship.
The LEONIDAS (Named after king Leonidas I of Sparta) was a labour transport ship that played an important role in the history of Fiji. She had been earlier used to carry indentured labourers to the West Indies, having transported 580 Indian indentured labourers to St Lucia in 1878. Captained by McLachlan, the ship departed from Calcutta, India on 3 March 1879 and arrived at Levuka, Fiji, on 14 May that year. The indentured labourers who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from the Indian Sub-continent over the following 37 years, forming the nucleus of the Fiji Indian community that now numbers close to forty percent of Fiji's population.
A total of 498 passengers made up of 273 men, 146 women and 79 children, less than twelve years of age, had embarked on the ship in Calcutta. While only three days out to sea there was an outbreak of cholera and smallpox abroad the ship. Despite efforts by the Surgeon Superintendent to isolate the infected passengers, 17 died before the ship arrived in Levuka, after a journey of 72 days. Since there was no quarantine facility in Levuka, it was decided to anchor the ship some distance from Levuka on the leeward side. While attempting to reach the selected anchorage point, the ship went aground on a reef. The gravity of the situation was all too vivid in the minds of the Government officials as only four years earlier a measles epidemic had wiped out 40,000 Fijians. Fortunately at high tide the ship floated off the reef and was safely anchored.
The Chief Medical Officer of the Colony, Dr McGregor, devised an ingenious method of effectively preventing the infection reaching the shore, during the process of sending stores, letters, etc., to the ship. A stage was erected on the outer reef using trestles of hardwood, with a moving platform. Stores necessary to the ship were placed on this platform at low tide and taken off by the ships boat. All letters were placed in a carbolic acid bottle, and were fumigated before delivery. At high tide this was cleaned by the sea.
Yanuca Lailai was chosen as a quarantine station but houses on it could accommodate only 350 people. Within days extra bures (Fijian houses) were constructed and the ship's passengers transferred to the island. Armed guards were placed in the narrow passage between Levuka and Yanuca Lailai, to prevent contact with the new arrivals. On several occasions warning shots had to be fired to prevent seamen trying to return to the LEONIDAS after dropping off their passengers. Fifteen more of the new arrivals died on the island due to dysentery, diarrhea and typhoid, leaving only 463 survivors, before they were released from the island on 9 August 1879.
How long the LEONIDAS was in quarantine is not given but after sailing most probably very quickly she changed her name to SOUTHERN MONARCH and was thereafter owned by Royal Exchange Shipping Co., London.
19 October 1882 she sailed from Newcastle N.S.W., Australia bound for Madras under command of Captain Lagalle.
20 December 1882 in a position about one mile from Madras she grounded on the rocks and became a total loss.

Fiji 1979 40c sg571, scott404 (The stamp shows a barque rigged vessel, but I can not find that the LEONIDAS was re-rigged. Also her name is wrong given on the stamp.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_(ship) Lloyds Registers. http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz Trove and various other web-sites. Watercraft Philately

[aukepalmhof]

LEONIDAS update
05/14/2022
It was on May 14, 1879, that the first steamship LEONIDAS arrived in the port of Levuka in Fiji with 522 Indian indentured laborers – a moment that has been permanently scripted into the psyche of the Fiji-Indian community and generated a myriad of emotions.

Arrival: Ship Carrying First Indian Laborers to Fiji
“Girmitiyas” or Indentured Labourers, is the name given to the Indians who left India in the middle and late 19th Century to serve as laborers in the British colonies, where the majority eventually settled. GIRMIT is a corrupt form of the English word “Agreement”. Labor emigrating under the Agreement or Girmit was a “Girmitiya”.
From 1879-1916, 60500 Indian laborers were brought to Fiji
Between 1879 and 1916, a total of 42 ships made 87 voyages, carrying Indian indentured laborers to Fiji. Initially, the ships brought laborers from Calcutta, but from 1903 all ships except two also brought laborers from Madras and Mumbai. A total of 60,965 passengers left India but only 60,553 (including births at sea) arrived in Fiji. A total of 45,439 boarded ships in Calcutta and 15,114 in Madras. Sailing ships took, on average, seventy-three days for the trip while steamers took 30 days. The shipping companies associated with the labor trade were Nourse Line and the British-India Steam Navigation Company.
The most important man on these ships was the Surgeon-Superintendent, who supervised the medical care, ventilation, clothing, cleanliness and exercise of the passengers, and his authority extended over the Captain. He inspected the stores before departure and reported on any defects during the trip. The Surgeon-Superintendent also intervened to prevent passengers from being mistreated by the crew. He was paid a bonus for each laborer landed alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I ... ps_to_Fiji
Fiji 2022 42 C Bark LEONIDAS SG?, Scott?