James Munro (sealer)

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Henry Laing: James Munro's Preservation Island Estate (1831)

James Munro (born around 1779 in England , † December 1844 or January 1845 on Preservation Island , Tasmania ) was an English convict, sealer and sandpiper . Most recently he was considered the "King of the Straitsmen" .

Life

Convicted of theft in January 1799, Munro was taken prisoner on the ship "Royal Admiral" on November 22, 1800 via Port Jackson to Sydney . After serving his seven-year sentence, he was released in 1806 and worked as a seaman and sealer until 1819. He then settled on the Tasmanian island of Preservation Island ( Furneaux Group , eastern Bass Strait , southwest of Cape Barren Island ). He lived there for the next two decades with up to four Aboriginal wives and children at times until his death.

As early as 1824, when John Boultbee met him, he was the master of several huts, some wheat, barley and potato fields and a vegetable garden. He kept pigs, goats, sheep and chickens, raised rabbits and employed 14 Aboriginal women and 13 European men with the "mutton-birding" known catch of shearwater nestlings , a traditional favorite dish of the locals. He sold the down from these birds to Launceston (Tasmania) and some of their meat was kept as salted stock for the winter. He also sold his products, including vegetables, to passing ships and bartered with sealers, whose hides he had sold further. In 1825 he was officially appointed as a police officer by the governor of Tasmania and recognized as the spokesman for the local population, the "Straitspeople".

On Preservation Island, Munro sought "peace with his Creator," studied religious treatises, read the Bible to children, and taught an Aboriginal woman to pray.

For the colonial sailing ship captains Munro was simply the " King of the Sealers" , for the Tasmanians the "King of the Straitsmen" or "King of the Eastern Straits" .

In 1830 Munro's peaceful life was severely disrupted. All his Aboriginal women and also those of the other seal hunters on the islands along Bass Strait were to be brought to Aboriginal reservations for their protection on behalf of the colonial administration. But James Munro achieved a little later that every seal hunter could keep an Aboriginal woman. After some confusion, the Aboriginal woman Drommernerloomer, called "Jumbo", was able to stay with Munro. He had stolen her as a child before 1830 and lived with her. She had been taken from Munro in 1830, had spent time in Launceston Prison, and had reported to authorities the usual seal hunter raids on Aboriginal settlements and the gruesome and brutal rapes. But she eventually got back to Munro on Preservation Island. Her further life is unknown.

The Examiner newspaper in Launceston reported James Munro's death on January 29, 1845, which had occurred in December 1844 or January 1845. Munro was buried near his home. His widow, Margery, an Australian Aboriginal woman, and two of their children stayed on Preservation Island. An obituary by the Hobart Town Courier praised his hospitality, among other things.

Mount Munro and Munro Bay on Cape Barren Island are named after James Munro.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lyndall Ryan: The Aboriginal Tasmanians . Verlag Allen & Unwin 1996, ISBN 1-86373-965-3 , p. 70 or ISBN 978-1-86373-965-8 ( digitized version )
  2. ^ A b c d Barbara Valentine: Munro, James (1779–1845) . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966–2012 (English).
  3. ^ Lyndall Ryan: The Aboriginal Tasmanians. P. 70 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ Bill Wannan: A Dictionary of Australian folklore. Lore, Legends, Myths and Traditions . Verlag Viking O'Neil 1987, ISBN 0-670-90041-9 , p. 336 or ISBN 978-0-670-90041-1 ( digitized version )
  5. ^ Lyndall Ryan: The Aboriginal Tasmanians. P. 222–225 ( digitized version )
  6. ↑ Norman James Brian Plomley (Ed.): Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834 . Tasmanian Historical Research Association 1971, p. 24.
  7. ^ Gregor Smithers: Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s-1890s . Taylor & Francis 2008, p. 133.
  8. ^ Lyndall Ryan: The Aboriginal Tasmanians. P. 222 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Munro, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English sealer and adventurer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1779
PLACE OF BIRTH England
DATE OF DEATH December 1844 or January 1845
Place of death Preservation Island , Tasmania