3. THE TERRIBLE ISLANDS: HISTORY

Slave-raiding pirates have existed in Southeast Asia from the distant past. However, with the decline of the Srivijaya maritime and trading empire on Sumatra after the 12th century, piracy became a way of life for many coastal communities. Pirate populations such as the Celates (Saleites) and Aru of Sumatra as well as various Orang Laut (sea people) throughout the Sunda Islands and Malaya provided sundry kingdoms from Java to Siam with the prestigious black slaves. The chief victims of this peculiar hunting-gathering were the primitive forest dwelling tribes, including the Andamanese. They were regarded by the more advanced groups not as human beings but as a natural resource to be harvested. It was Andamanese resentment against being harvested that must have contributed powerfully to their violent reaction to intruders.

If the British experience with captured Andamanese aborigines is any guide, the survival rate of those Andamanese who fell into the hands of a slaver would have been very low. The British captured natives in order to teach them Hindi or English and to impress them with the might of Empire before sending them back to their groups as intermediaries. While in captivity, the Andamanese were treated well and received the best medical care that contemporary science could provide. Despite all efforts, a large percentage of adult captives pined away and died soon. On a slaving ship the survival rate would have been much lower. Although Andamanese slaves undoubtedly existed, they can never have been numerous; indeed their very scarcity limited their use to only the very grandest of aristocratic houses and royal courts. The historical records are of course biased in favour of the outside world: for obvious reasons, details of atrocities committed by outsiders on Andamanese have not been recorded in writing with quite the same fervour as when the shoe was on the other foot.

Andamanese hostility was not entirely unvarying. A few occasions are on record when visiting ships actually met friendly and happily singing Andamanese boats whose crews even went so far as to help the visitors stock up with water, food and wood. We can only speculate that this uncharacteristic behaviour was caused by the cessation of slave-taking for long enough periods for local memories to have faded - until business as usual resumed.

Even more difficult to fathom at this distance in time is the erratic behaviour of the Aka-Kede on Interview Island. When on 1st September 1849 the ship Emily was wrecked on the coast of this island, the Andamanese behaved in classical style when they attacked the moment the survivors reached the supposed safety of the beach. The shipwrecked crew fought them off, happily getting away from the island in two salvaged boats. One of the boats was never heard of again but the other, after much hardship, reached Burma to raise the alarm. In late October the ship Proserpine set off to look for the wreck of the Emily and to search for possible survivors. It discovered a looted Emily and the corpse of the second officer who had earlier chosen to remain behind on the wreck. He had been murdered and his corpse badly mangled, the top of his skull removed with a blunt sawlike instrument. Nevertheless, there was no indication of cannibalism. While the crew of the Proserpine investigated the wreck, it had to keep the hostile natives at a safe distance with cannon shot. So far it had all been Andamanese textbook behaviour. In November 1849 and again in June 1850 another ship, the Sea Serpent, twice visited the wreck of the Emily to salvage what she could. No account of the first visit has survived but on the second visit, the captain found oddly friendly natives. The Andamanese showed no aggressiveness at all, mixed freely with the crew, even going so far as to help in the crew's work and voluntarily returning looted items. Only after the Sea Serpent had left in this untypical cloud of good-will did the Andamanese set fire to the wreck, probably to get at the remaining lootable pieces of iron. The description of some Andamanese customs, of scarifying and of the use of knives made of sea shells in the captain's report were too accurate to have been invented: the crew of the Sea Serpent had indeed been on very close terms with the locals. The answer to the mystery may lie in the first visit of the Sea Serpent which we are unlikely ever to find. It may be noteworthy that the Interview islanders later showed similar unpredictable changes of mood between visits from outsiders.



In 1771 the surveyor, Ritchie, was reported to have been on friendly terms with an Andamanese group but no details are known and the friendly local group cannot be identified. Better documented and definitively involving the Interview islanders was the experience of Dr. Mouat in 1857/58 who found the locals relentlessly hostile. During a skirmish, Dr. Mouat's party captured an Andamanese boy who was taken to Calcutta in 1858. Unfortunately, no conversation was possible and the boy soon started to pine and fell ill. He was returned to the place where he had been captured and released with many presents. He vanished into the jungle and was never heard of again. While Dr. Mouat found the Interview islanders hostile and aggressive, less than 10 years later in 1867 the next known visiting party under the British Officer in Charge of the Andamanese, Mr. Homfray, received an unexpected friendly welcome. From then on, the Interview islanders remained friendly until disease had exterminated them all before the end of the century. In 1880, British officers tried to get to the bottom of the Interview islanders' odd behaviour. They made inquiries among the few survivors but there was no memory of these incidents alive then, nor could or would this last generation shed any light on the unpredictable behaviour of their ancestors.

It is true that the west coast of the Andamans has fewer suitable anchorages and in consequence may have suffered less from slavers but this cannot be the whole answer.