Steamer Pearl wins race for New Guinea

Sir Thomas McIlwraith, Queensland’s Colonial Secretary in 1883, had been advised (by the ‘miracle’ of cable communication from the Agent-General’s Office in London) that the Royal Colonial Institute had discovered an essay in a German newspaper recommending that the German Government annexe and colonise New Guinea.

In the atmosphere of the times, with the scramble for Africa in full charge, the Queensland Agent-General, the Colonial Secretary and the Royal Colonial Institute believed that Queensland should annexe that part of New Guinea not already annexed by the Dutch, ’in Her Majesty’s name and without delay’.

McIlwraith even offered to bear the expense for such an exercise from the colony’s coffers. Anxious for a response from London to his offer and conscious of the possibility of a foreign power on his doorstep, McIlwraith gave the orders.

Of course, the annexation had to be done by the senior government official in the area. On March 20, 1883, McIlwraith telegraphed Henry Chester, the police magistrate at Thursday Island, to commandeer the steamer Pearl and to ’take formal possession in Her Majesty’s name of the whole island with the exception of the portion in occupation of the Dutch’. Chester left Thursday Island and completed his task by 4 April when he reached Port Moresby, read the proclamation, fired the royal salute from the Pearl and, at the close of proceedings, ‘gave three cheers for Her Majesty, the Queen’.

McIlwraith advised the Colonial Office in London of the annexation and received a blistering reply, not from the Colonial Secretary but from British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, declaring that the annexation was ’null in point of law, and unwarranted in point of policy’. McIlwraith recognised Britain’s position but told the Queensland Parliament that it was ’fully entitled to annexe the island without the sanction … of Great Britain’.

McIlwraith had the last laugh. Britain established a protectorate over the southern coast of New Guinea in the next year. In January 1885, the protectorate was declared a colony. By 1888, the Queensland Government was effectively the de facto administrator of British New Guinea.