Solomons Gold

Lands full of the golden promises

This Naval History continues on from: "Landguard Fort"

Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and for most of the eighteenth-century there persisted a strong belief that an undiscovered paradisal continent lay in the southerenmost parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Bit by bit, successive explorers crossed off pieces of land which were shown on some maps of the time. They are all, islands and continents that are well acknowledged today. But none of these were the Solomons continent, that continent, that paradise which held so many mysteries and desires was sought after by most explorers of the day.

But still it continued to elude them, as if hidden cunningly away, to be just a story of a shapeless and shadowy mass in the far distance, until Cook reduced its confines to the Antarctic.

No geographical myth had been talked about so much; or has had such a magical an attraction for explorers of all nations, as the islands with Solomons gold, the heaven of the ultimate abode did.

In one form or another the legend may be traced back to the writings of the Greek philosopher Theopompos, who flourished in the fourth-century B.C. Nearly all later academic geographers sanctioned it because the idea had a plausibilty about it.

Landguard fort

It was believed to exist in the South

It was considered unlikely that so vast a stretch of water as the Pacific Ocean should exist without a land-mass somewhere in its confines. Moreover the symmetry of the earth's sphere, demanded the exitence of such a continent. For it was believed that there must be an equivalent weight of land to balance the world.

Behaim's globe of 1492, shows nothing to the south at all, since he preferred the alternative theory that the earth was surrounded by water.

Ever since Marco Polo had written vaguely of Beach and Lochoc (by which he presumably meant the Malay peninsular) the elusiveness of the continent preyed upon many minds of the successors of Magellan; who described its shape, climate, vegetation and the mineral wealth that was there.

Don Pedro de Sarmiento de Gamboa

At the time when the northern route to the philipines was being worked out. One of the Spanish conquistadores of Peru, Don Pedro de Sarmiento de Gamboa, had no doubts about the existance of the great continent of riches to the south.

He based his belief in Inca tradition (on which he was a leading authority); the fact that his evidence was provided by slaves under pain of death, did not diminish his confidence. He was a person who had a great reddiness to believe things.

He was by nature cruel and a bully, his merciless character does not endear him to us, but he was a skillful navigator and had his ideas been followed; it might have changed the history of the pacific.

Early in his career in the New World he found himself the subject of the attention of the Holy Office, about some matter of using magical ink and a ring with certain properties which declared women to be irresistible and emotionally susceptible.

He was sentenced to hear Mass in the cathedral where he was stripped to his skin and banished forever from the Indies.

Natives in powerful canoes came

When a Spanish expedition set-out to discover the Solomons continent, Herman Gallego was the Captain of the largest ship. On 7th February 1568 he saw something that looked like land, and headed in that direction.

As they approached a wide bay with dazzeling sweeps of pale sand and a fringe of palm trees opened before them. Long before they dropped anchor powerful canoes with about thirty natives in each sped out to meet them.

The natives cautiously clambered aboard and mixed with the Spaniards who went ashore and built a camp. The voracious appetites of a hundred and fifty men soon taxed the natives generosity. It was obvious that the problem could only be solved by an expedition into the interior. Here the discoverers climbed a mountain and checked their bearings.

It became obvious that what they took to be a whole continent, had turned out to be an island in the centre of the Solomons.

Animosity eventually set-in between the two sides, the natives disliked their new companions and their attitude changed; they became more threatening with several of the warriors appearing hideously streaked in white and danced war-like postures.

The soldiers were ordered to treat the savages as they had treated the Incas at home, to burn and massacre on the slightest provocation.

When they searched the other islands for gold and silver, the same situations arose. When the Spaniards demanded clean drinking water fighting began, whole villages were burnt and everybody in them was indiscriminately slaughtered; it was time for the discoverers to move on.

They continued to search for the Solomons Gold

The Spanish expedition continued sailing round the Pacific searching for riches but finding only storms and hostilities wherever they landed. The only option left was to return to Peru.

On 8th February 1569, a letter was written and sent to the Spanish King, he received it on the 20th March that year: "there put into port of Santiago near Colima, two battered ships without masts or victuals, which had set-out from port of Lima, in Peru, in quest of the Solomons continent - discovered were the Solomons Islands...."

"In my opinion they there are of little importance, although they say they heard of better lands; for in the course of other discoveries they found no specimens of spices, nor gold and silver, nor of merchandise, nor of any other source of profit, and all the people were naked savages."

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Solomons Islands mentioned

The interesting thing about this letter is that this is the first time the name "Solomons Islands" is used to describe what had been discovered. How did the name originate? None of the natives of the expedition refers to them in those terms.

It has been suggested that popular opinion on the Pacific water- fronts was excited by these highly colourful stories of the survival of these western islands. They had come to be identified in popular imagination with the Solomons tales, whence they drew inexhuastable stories of wealth and gold in abundance.

Obviously the islands were already known by that name because the letter dated 8th February 1569 was too short a time for a nickname to become current in official circles. It is also possible that the islands were known by that name by the members of the ships crews.

Moreover, like "king Solomons Mines" the Solomons Islands came to represent gold, frankincense and myrrh, where there remained for centuries; the mystery of the missing lands of paradise the lands of golden promises, but a promise was all that it ever was.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Early Actions"

Solomons Gold Early Actions

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