From Matangi Island venture north about ten miles. Scan the horizon to the north-east. On the ebb tide, you may perceive surf breaking. Whatever the state of the sea, you can't help but notice a rusty freighter lying on its port side on a reef some ten or fifteen miles distant serving as a warning to all that sail the northern passage to Taveuni. Freighter Reef is a reminder of South Pacific perils. I am uncertain as to how long that the freighter has been stranded there. I do know with certainty that at some time in the twentieth century it had collided with the reef.
In this age of satellite navigation, it should be possible to avoid large reefs. It wasn't always so. One hundred and seventy two years ago, and 3,000 miles to the north-west, in the midst of a howling gale on the darkest of all nights, and with no idea of the ship's position, Captain Bernard through incompetence placed the whaler Mentor in peril on the high seas. Setting course on a tack a few degrees west of their track made good would have meant clear sailing clear to Guam. Meredith writes, "At exactly an hour before midnight, on the twenty-first of May, 1832, the Mentor struck Ngaruangl Reef, in latitude 8 degrees, nine minutes north, longitude 134 degrees, 37.8 minutes east in what are now known as the waters of Palau, first visited by Sir Francis Drake in 1579(5) and then not for another two hundred years, an observation that was germane to the likely sojourn of the survivors of the Mentor.
At daylight the crew of the Mentor rowed themselves ashore and were soon greeted and given food and drink by the local people. They were then escorted to a village. It was then that they received their first surprise. Along the path came a tall somewhat elderly man, liberally tatooed on chest, arms and legs, who greeted them in English.
"It is a miracle you weren't killed in coming ashore here" were his opening words (28).
It seems that Charles Washington had jumped a ship of the East India Company some thirty years previous to the present encounter with the Mentor survivors. Washington soon gave them the bad news. "The Pelew Islands (Palau) are completly cut off" (29). From Washington's perspective, it was a good thing because it meant that it was highly unlikely that a ship would come looking for him in order to bring him to justice. For the crew of the Mentor, it was viewed as a dismal indicator of their likely fate.
