| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom | |
| Name | Berar |
| Owner | Tyser & Haviside |
| Builder | William Pile, Sunderland |
| Launched | 1863 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tons burthen | 902 tons |
The Berar, named after a region in western India, was a sailing ship of 902 tons, owned by Tyser & Haviside and was built in 1863 by William Pile at Sunderland. [1]
Initially the Berar was used to carry immigrants to Australia and New Zealand. Under charter to the Shaw Savill Company, [2] the ship made three trips to New Zealand, two to Wellington and one to Auckland. Leaving London on 5 February 1865, she reached Wellington on 10 May, a passage of 93 days. Her next voyage was to Auckland. She left London on 22 May 1873, and reached Auckland after a passage of 103 days on 3 September. On this occasion she brought out 308 immigrants, who arrived well, in spite of the fact that it was a large number for a ship of her size. [3] [4]
On 18 October 1874, the Berar left London for New Zealand, arriving at Wellington 96 days later, on 22 January 1875. This trip was marred by 21 deaths due to scarlet fever. A Royal Commission of Enquiry was convened into this outbreak of disease and the consequent deaths. [5]
The Berar arrived in Fiji on 29 June 1882 carrying 424 indentured labourers from Calcutta. This was the second indenture ship to Fiji and its journey was uneventful. This was the first ship to make use of the quarantine facilities built on the island of Nukulau.
The Berar ran aground in 1896 on the south coast of England at Culverhole Point between Axmouth and Lyme Regis and was destroyed. [6]
Leonidas was a labour transport ship (schooner) that played an important role in the history of Fiji. She had been earlier used to carry indentured labourers to the West Indies, having transported 580 Indian indentured labourers to St Lucia in 1878. Captained by McLachlan, the ship departed from Calcutta, India on 3 March 1879 and arrived at Levuka, Fiji, on 14 May that year. The indentured labourers who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from the Indian subcontinent over the following 37 years, forming the nucleus of the Fiji Indian community that now numbers close to forty percent of Fiji's population.
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The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than one million Indians were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large Indian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, to Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
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