Who was "German Harry"?

 

" ............. we reached the welcome shelter of Deliverance Island. Perhaps half a mile or so in circumference, ringed with a beach of white coral sand, crowned with coconut palms dancing in the breeze, and surrounded by a wide fringing reef, it resembled an island such as might be imagined in a boyhood adventure book ........"

Deliverance Island, the island in Torres Strait where German Harry lived for many years, is the nearest part of Australia to Indonesia. Although it is about 100 miles from the Australian mainland, it is only 25 miles from the coast of Papua. It is about 35 miles from the mouth of the Bensbach River which forms the southern part of the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The island was so named by Captain William W. Bampton of the ship "Shah Hormuzear", who spent 73 nerve-wracked days trying to find his way through reef-studded Torres Strait in 1793 in company with the whaler "Chesterfield". It was at Deliverance Island that the two ships finally reached clear water.

 

The story "German Harry" was one of W. Somerset Maugham's briefer efforts. After Maugham's visit to the Torres Strait, it first appeared in the "American Cosmopolitan" for January 1924 and was republished in the book "Cosmopolitans".

Maugham gathered the material for the story in 1922 when he was making a leisurely journey from Indonesia to Torres Strait and back. He had heard about German Harry - he was really a Dane called Henry Evolt - when he visited Thursday Island, off the northern tip of Australia. He was so intrigued by what he learned that he resolved to pay Harry a visit.

German Harry was a hermit and the last of New Guinea's beachcombers. For almost forty years he had lived on Deliverance Island, a small cay, some thirty miles from the mouth of the Bensbach River which divides West New Guinea from the then Australian territory of Papua.

Born at Helsingfors, Denmark, in 1848 (or 1849 or 1854), he shipped before the mast as a lad of 16 and for many years sailed the oceans of the world. Coming to Newcastle, New South Wales, in the eighteen-eighties, he joined the Austrian ship Gibraud bound for Batavia (now Jakarta). The ship was wrecked on Woppa Reef in the Torres Strait and German Harry finished up in Thursday Island.

There he met an old shipmate, Louis the Greek, bought a half-share in his beche-de-mer boat, and fished and traded off the New Guinea coast for the next six years. The partnership prospered. By 1890 they had established their headquarters in Deliverance Island, to where they could retire from the pest- and fever-ridden coast, and also be safe from the fierce Tugeri headhunters who made periodic forays along the coast from West New Guinea.

It was to be out of reach of wild New guinea natives such as these that German Harry and his friend Louis the Greek settled on Deliverance Island in 1890. John Earnshaw took the photograph on the Koembe River, west of Merauke, in 1927 when he spent some time with Dick Roche, a bird of paradise hunter.

For another nine years all went well until another adventurer came to the island to work for them. This was "Joe Austen", or Joseph Augustin de Paoli, also known as "French Joe". He was a Corsican soldier of fortune who had fought in the Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars, had joined the Communist uprising in Paris in 1871, and had been arrested and exiled to New Caledonia. However, on the voyage to New Caledonia, he escaped from the transport at Melbourne, and from there began a wandering life in the Pacific which eventually took him to Deliverance Island.

His arrival at Deliverance Island broke up the partnership between German Harry and Louis the Greek, for one night he decamped with their boat loaded with turtle shell and other trade, and sold the lot in Thursday Island. After this bitter blow Louis the Greek drifted away and German Harry was left alone on the island.

This ramshackle building was German Harry's dining hut. Outside, where he cooked his meals, was a mound of turtle-flipper bones several feet high - the midden of half a life of solitary meals

Except for a few months spent in Thursday Island in 1912, his solitude was almost unbroken for the twenty-eight years. In later years his greatest fear was that authority might wrest him from his little island and send him to the frightening care of a home for the aged near Brisbane. He was therefore always sour and suspicious when strangers arrived at Deliverance, and it was thus that Maugham found him when he reached the island in 1922 in a lugger that he had chartered in Thursday Island to carry him across the island-studded waters of Torres Strait to the Dutch settlement of Merauke.

In writing of his encounter with the old hermit, Maugham also prophesied his end. He wrote, "And then I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and suspicious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there, lying on the bed, unrecognizable, he would see all that remained of what had once been a man."

In March 1928, some four years after Maugham's story was published, John Earnshaw and Dick Roche called at Deliverance Island. The time of their arrival was just right for them to play the final role in the German Harry story a la Maugham:

 

"German Harry" Henry Evoldt or Henrik Enevoldsen, born on 14 October 1848, his remains found on 24 March 1928
Published January 1943 in PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY

 

"Deliverance Harry" Johannes Henrik Enevoldsen, born in 1854, died on 27 January 1928 which was the last date marked on his "calendar"
Published June 1946 in PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY

 

I let John Earnshaw have the last word:

 

Indeed, German Harry's end is a story in itself.

 

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So as not to spoil a good story, I am adding this as a postscript because the "real" German Harry was another Dane by the name of Soren Christensen (or Jep - or Jeppe - Soren Christiansen) who was a(n) (in-)famous man in North Australian waters and who lived in Australia, New Guinea and different island and died in Sydney in 1912 or 1913. A well-known Danish author, Mr. B. Rosenkilde Nielsen, wrote a book, "Danish Pioneers in the Pacific Ocean" which was published in Copenhagen in 1944 (in Danish, of course). In it he mentions both German Harries, Maugham's "Deliverance Harry" who died on his island in 1928, and the "German Harry" who died in Sydney in 1912 or 1913. A Swedish book about the latter, "The Last South Sea Trader" (Swedish title "Den Sidste Sydhavstrader"), was mentioned to me by Patrick Lindahl in 2013 - click here. A blog about the "real" German Harry, Soren Christensen, may be the story for another blog for another day.

 

 

Alleinsein muss gelernt sein!

 

 

Ich hatte es auch in über dreißig Jahren sehr gut gelernt, bin aber in meiner jetzt schon fünfundzwanzig-jährigen Ehe ganz schön aus Übung geraten. Jetzt geht es mit dem Üben wieder los denn bald fliegt Padma für fünf Wochen nachhause und ich gehe dann auf mein altes Junggesellenleben zurück und vereinfache alles.

Mein erster Akt wird in der Küche sein wo ich dann nur noch einen Teller, eine Tasse, einen Löffel, eine Gabel und ein Messer brauche. Alles andere geht wieder in den Schrank. In demselben Schrank stehen dann noch Dutzende von Büchsen mit 'baked beans' und mehr Päckchen von 'MAGGI 2-Minute Noodles' als ich sie in zwei Stunden zählen könnte.

Von weiteren Vereinfacherungen werde ich hier prompt berichten! ☺

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This discovery sealed it for me

 

Click on Watch on YouTube to watch the movie

 

Could you ever image "Casablanca" or "The Third Man" in anything but black-and-white? I love watching black-and-white movies, despite the fact that they often put actors' lives in danger during driving scenes, as they aren't able to tell if the traffic light is red or green.

No such danger in the medieval allegory "The Seventh Seal" which is set in fourteenth-century Sweden during the time of the Black Death, long before motor cars and traffic lights, and tells of the journey of Antonius, a medieval knight, who challenges Death to a game of chess, with his life as the prize. It is one of the greatest movies of all time which established Ingmar Bergman as a world-renowned director.

A regular movie-goer watching this movie may pick up on a few things: the terror, the suspense, the artful composition of the shots. A chess player, though - and that includes me - sees only one thing: that the chess board that decides Antonius’s fate is set up totally backwards.

Here is a correctly set up chess board ...

... .. and here is the (still) correctly set up board early in the movie:

But then things begin to go wrong. You see, when you set up the board, you're supposed to orient it so that the square nearest to each player's right side is light-coloured - the mnemonic "right is light" might help.

The next rule: when you array the pieces, the white queen always goes on the white square, and the black queen always on the black square.

So what do you see halfway through the movie? A black square nearest to each player's right side which changes the game completely!

It also positions the queen on the wrong side of each player's king at the start of the game (always provided the white-queen-on-white-square and black-queen-on-black-square rule is still correctly followed)

To think that Antonius may have lost his life due to an incorrectly set up chessboard ...

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Tomorrow is D-Day

 

 

I feel more and more like a newborn baby: I want to pee all the time, have almost no hair left, and almost no teeth either. To keep on smiling, I have an appointment tomorrow with Brett, my friendly prosthetist at the Hancock Denture Clinic in Milton.

I saw him on two previous occasions when he took several impressions, and tomorrow will be D-Day when I get my first set of partial chompers. And get this: unlike the two denture makers in Batehaven and Moruya who quoted me $1,700 and $2,100 - and charged me $85 just for the quote! - Brett's price is $1,200 - and he didn't even ask for a deposit!

Unlike those two local denture makers, Brett never charged me for the initial quote either which made me almost overlook the "Book your complementary appointment with our friendly team today" on his website - well, almost but not quite because when I sent him an email today to confirm tomorrow's appointment, I added, "My life is a constant battle between wanting to correct grammar and wanting to make friends. I hope I don't lose you as friends by pointing out to you that the sentence 'Book your complementary appointment with our friendly team today' on your website should have the word 'complementary' spelled with an 'i' :-)"

 

Click here

 

Let's hope I'm still smiling after he's fitted me with my new teeth!

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Are you suffering from Bougainvilleitis?

 

 

Well today I thought I would check out the net, as I did about a year ago and was amazed to find your site. I am pleased to have the chance to email you. In late 1969, I arrived in Bougainville, after arriving in Port Moresby by DC3. That in itself was an experience for me but the trip to Panguna was indeed something else. That road , the land slides, the mud, the bulldozers, the rain, the stuck trucks of Kennelly's waiting for a push it was like a dream I never will forget. I loved the experience. Of course for a twenty one year old recently qualified Diesel Mechanic from N.Z. who had always wanted to try his hand on big equipment , Bougainville really was right up my alley, and I worked at the site for 18 months before deciding it was time open the page of a new chapter in the great life I have had, in wild places, cosmopolitan places and the good luck I have had with my family. Do you remember the removal of Mount Tangye (I think) behind the camp? Pioneer Concrete used it for aggregate. I do have some photos however I do wish I had taken more. Well,I would like to hear from you too!"

This email from Brian Schou prompted me to read again through some of the many comments I received over the years from men (and women) who had worked on the Bougainville Copper Project. Brian arrived on the island in December 1969 and stayed for only eighteen months, others stayed for years; all had their lives changed by the experience.

 

Brian Schou arriving at Sydney airport on 3 December 1969 in transit to Bougainville

 

As one contributor put it so aptly, "You only have to scratch the surface and you bleed PNG ..." So next time you bleed a little and feel a bout of "Bougainvilleitis" coming on, read through some of these comments.

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