Captain Gardner’s 1864 landing on Christmas Island – In his own words

On 14 April 1864, Captain E. G. Gardner of the 145-ton British brig Guyon departed Western Australia, bound for Singapore with a cargo of 77 tons of sandalwood, 37 tons of flour, and eight horses.¹ During that voyage, on 30 April, he stopped at Christmas Island. On arrival, he thought he was probably the first visitor since a party from the British East India Company ship Pigott had come ashore in 1771.

The assumption was understandable. Christmas Island was, at the time, a peril to mariners. Rising vertically out of the deep ocean floor with no shallow anchorage to speak of, most ships steered well clear of its treacherous cliffs, a caution borne out in 1852 when the Dutch barque Vice Admiraal Rijk was wrecked at Egeria Point. Why Gardner stopped at the island is unknown, but once ashore he and his crew explored the bay, collected shells, and encountered wildlife with no experience of humans at all. He also corrected a common misconception, noting that despite the island’s appearance on charts as a perfect circle, its coastline was in fact irregular, indented by two deep bays.

The Guyon reached Singapore on 15 May 1864,² and within a week Gardner had his account ready for the Straits Times, where it appeared on 21 May.

Readers should note that some encounters with the birdlife may be confronting. Gardner’s letter to the paper follows. Text in square brackets has been added for explanatory purposes.

To the Editor of the Straits Times,

Sir, As Christmas Island, lying in the Indian Ocean in Lat. 10° 31′ South and Long. 105° 33′ East, is almost unknown, the following account of a visit to it may be of interest to your readers and the public.

April 30th, 1864. Approaching the island from the southeastward with smooth water and a light breeze off the land, I stood close in to get a better view of it. It rises steeply from the sea in one continuous hill, of apparently the same height throughout, which I guess to be about twelve hundred feet, covered with wood. Though always represented in charts as a round island, it has no claim to such regularity, being indented by two large bays, one on the S.E., the other open to the N.W. The former is terminated to the northward by a bold bluff broken off into cliffs, and here I stood in and kept the land close aboard thence to the N.W. bay. No soundings could be obtained at a quarter mile distance. The coast consisted of projecting cliffs of black rocks from twenty to thirty feet high, very much undermined by the action of the waves, perforated by numerous deep caverns, and affording no landing place.

On opening the N.W. Bay I left the vessel in a boat and found a small bay within the large one, with a coral beach of dazzling whiteness where we landed. Within fifty yards of the beach we first got soundings, or rather saw the bottom, which was covered with zoophytes and corals of fantastic shapes, the form of an inverted mushroom being the most common. On striking the beach, which was very steep, a young man was about to jump into the water to hold the boat, but as he was wise enough to “look before he leaped” he saw a shark occupying the very place he was about to leap into.

A forest of large timber, but unfit for spars and without brushwood under it, approaches the sea within twenty yards; thence the hill ascends gradually for a short distance, then becomes steeper, ending in a stupendous range of cliffs backing the little bay, and taking its form. Looking southeastward, this fine semi-circle of inaccessible rocks, the woody slope, the coral beach, and blue water, formed a magnificent piece of scenery.

The air was clouded by immense numbers of sea-fowl wheeling over our heads, while boobies flew round within reach of a stick. Many large bats were flying among the birds; one which I shot measured two feet seven inches from point to point of wings. Large sand-crabs were walking about, and boobies standing in our way, or sitting in their nests with the most perfect indifference to our approach. They were so unacquainted with man that their tameness was shocking, to Alexander Selkirk, as Cowper says. Along the edge of the wood, and in the lower branches of the trees, were numbers of boobies sitting in their nests; some had young ones just hatched, others young ones as large as themselves but only covered with white down. One of the boat’s crew, an American, cut off a booby’s head with a single stroke, the head flying away, and the bird continuing to sit quietly in her nest. The same man, who had been a shipmate of mine in the barque Sur Vile Clod [perhaps a joking nickname?], filled his hat with their eggs, which are as large as duck’s eggs, but longer.

Of the many kinds of birds, the largest was nearly all black, and had a swallow-tail and double-pointed wings like an albatross. One which I shot measured seven feet one inch across the wings. I got tired of shooting birds, as it was easier to knock these down. It is strange to walk about “Where human foot hath ne’er, or rarely, trod,” with the inhabitants of the forest as tame as barn-door poultry, with land-crabs and many kinds of Crustacea swarming in every direction. According to Horsburgh [a hydrographer whose sailing directions were standard reference for ships in these waters], a landing was made here from the ship Pigott in 1771, and most probably no person had landed from that time to this, so that the birds might reasonably be surprised at our intrusion.

We picked up various shells, and returning to the boat, saw two land-crabs dragging away a dead booby from the beach. During our absence the mate had, in the pursuit of discovery, accomplished the feat of getting soundings which had been considered impossible, for he threw the deep sea lead overboard without making fast the end of the line and I presume it has found the bottom by this time.

Yours truly,
E. G. GARDNER.
Singapore, 18th May, 1864.

Gardner closes his account on a humorous note, seeing the irony of the situation: the sounding was thought impossible, and yet, by losing the line entirely, the lead had likely reached the bottom.

Captain Gardner was not alone in finding Christmas Island a difficult place to land. A similar description, appears in the fifth edition of Horsburgh’s India Directory (seen below), published between 1841 and 1843. The parallels are striking: no anchorage could be found anywhere around the island, and the only practical landing place was a small beach on the northwest side, just as Gardner would discover nearly a century later. One detail, however, had changed. Captain Richardson’s party found wild hogs roaming the island in 1771, while Gardner makes no mention of them during his own visit. Horsburgh’s entry also described the island as being of square form, at odds with the circular shape shown on the charts of Gardner’s day.

1. Shipping intelligence – The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 22nd April 1864.
2. Singapore shipping – The Straits Times, 21st May 1864