Ascension Island

Ascension Island was a name commonly used in the nineteenth century for Pohnpei (Ponape), now one of the Federated States of Micronesia and one of the Caroline Islands. The Spanish were the first Westerners to visit the island in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the late 1820s and 1830s that regular visits began to take place. The most evident among these were whalers, first the British sailing out of Australia, largely supplanted in the 1840s by the Americans. In his history of Pohnpei, Dr. David Hanlon states that the American whalers,

plying the northern waters during spring, summer and early fall, … headed east before the onset of winter. After stopping at Honolulu to off-load their cargoes of whale oil, the ships spent the winter months following the whales’ migration routes west along the equator. Reaching the eastern Carolines, the whale ships found Pohnpei and Kosrae [another of the Carolines] ideal places to rest and restock” (Hanlon, p. 73).

Hitherto, it has been little known that New Brunswick whale ships also visited Pohnpei at this time, probably following the same routes as their American counterparts. In Atlantic Canada, the whaling industry lasted for approximately two decades from 1830 to 1850. During that time twelve Atlantic vessels engaged in South Sea whaling, ten from Saint John and two from Halifax (Lévesque, p. 225). The first Canadian whale ship reported (as British) in Micronesia was the Mechanic, owned by the Saint John Mechanics’ Whale Fishing Company and launched in Saint John on 26 May 1836. Her visit to Pohnpei took place in December 1840 during her second voyage to the South Pacific, begun in 1838 (Lévesque, p. 226). The voyage concluded in 1841, and although other Saint John whalers subsequently visited Pohnpei, the Mechanic is the only one that could have brought back the donations for Gesner. The connection of the donors to the Mechanic has not been discovered.

The artefacts themselves present problems of identification common to the majority of Gesner’s international collection. Over time most have lost their accession numbers and because of the minimal descriptions, have been difficult to locate. So far, only two of the five items from Pohnpei have been found, the first being the belt. It has darkened and suffered some disintegration owing in part to the characteristics of its material, but the technique and design are very typical of Pohnpei belts, and it does not incorporate any Western materials as was the case with some later belts.

Very recently the Pohnpei axe (or adze) has been singled out from other adzes in the collection. That it was said to have been dug up from the ruins of a City of Ascension Islands is significant. The ancient city can be none other than Nan Madol, which Captain Allen of the Mechanic is known to have visited in 1840 (Lévesque, p. 226). Described by one writer as “the most dramatic site in all of Oceania,” it is a complex covering roughly 18 square kilometres built over a large group of islets in a lagoon on the southeast side of Pohnpei (Kaeppler, 139-140). The site had been occupied from the second or third century AD, but construction of the stone complex dates from the twelfth of thirteenth century. Its height of occupancy occurred between 1000 and 1500 and, by the nineteenth century, was abandoned and overgrown.

No personal account of souvenir gathering in 1840 has been found, but a later visit was probably similar and gives some insight into the transactions. In late 1847 the Saint John whaling ship Athol, under the command of Captain James Doane Coffin (1814-1885), stopped at Pohnpei for about a week. Crew member Benjamin Doane of Barrington, Nova Scotia, wrote a memoir of the voyage, in which he recalls,

As curios, I bought a number of full native costumes, in exchange for tobacco. The kilts and tippets were cheap and easily obtainable; but the belts, genuine works of art both in color and design, were more valued by the owners, as they deserved to be. Two I acquired after sharp negotiations from different sources, for five square plugs of tobacco apiece. But my especial admiration was for the belt worn by the King himself, which being made known to him, he took it off and handed it to me, and in return graciously accepted the same quantity of the circulating medium as I had given for each of the others (Doane, p. 154).