Indian Arrival Day is a holiday celebrated on various days in the nations of the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa and Mauritius, commemorating the arrival of people from the Indian subcontinent to their respective nations as indentured labours brought by European colonial authorities and their agents. In Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad and Tobago, where it started, it is an official public holiday.
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 per cent of Fiji's population.
The Syria was a 1,010 ton, iron sailing ship with a length of 207.7 feet, breadth of 34.1 feet and depth of 20.8 feet. She was built by William Pile of Sunderland for the Nourse Line, named after the Syria River in Karnataka, India and launched in 1868. She was primarily used for the transportation of Indian indentured labourers to the colonies.
The Poonah, named after the city of Poonah in western India, was a three masted sailing ship of 1199 tons, owned by Tyser & Haviside and was built in 1867 by William Pile at Sunderland.
Newnham was the first steamship to bring Indian indentured labourers to Fiji, arriving at Suva on 23 July 1884 carrying 575 passengers. The 1296 ton steamer took only 38 days to reach Fiji as it was able to take the shorter route through the Timor sea.
Ganges was the first of three Nourse Line ships named for the Ganges river in northern India.
Boyne was a 1,403 ton, Nourse Line sailing ship that T.R. Oswald of Southampton built in 1877. She was referred to as the "Hoodoo Ship" for the number of mishaps that occurred to her. She wrecked in 1886.
Bruce was a 1,200-ton sailing ship built in 1866 by Aitken Mansell of Glasgow, Scotland. In 1880 the Nourse Line purchased her from the British Shipowners Company.
Hereford was a 1456-ton iron sailing ship with two decks and one cemented bulkhead which was built in 1869 by J. Elder & Company at Glasgow for the Merchant Shipping Company of London. She was chartered by the New Zealand Shipping Company in the 1870s and made three voyages to Lyttelton, New Zealand with approximately three hundred emigrants each time. The first voyage in 1874 took 87 days, and the second took 80 days, arriving in Lyttelton on 19 January 1878. In 1881, she was stranded on Ingleby Reef near Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and towed off on 12 March 1881 by a tug.
Danube, a 1,459-ton sailing ship named after the second longest river in Europe, was built in 1890 for the Nourse Line.
Jumna was a 1,048 GRT iron-hulled full-rigged ship that was built in England in 1867 and went missing in the Atlantic Ocean in 1899. For most of her career she was in the fleet of James Nourse.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India 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 South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
British Peer was a 1428-ton three-masted iron sailing ship built for the British Shipowners Company at the Harland and Wolff yards in Belfast, Ireland, in 1865. She was 247.5 feet (75.4 m) long, 36.4 feet (11.1 m) wide and 22.5 feet (6.9 m) deep. She was bought by the Nourse Line in 1883, and was the fastest vessel in their fleet until British Ambassador was commissioned. In 1878, however, British Peer's sailing power was compromised when alterations were made to increase her tonnage by lengthening her hull by 32 feet (9.8 m), and she was never as fast again. She carried a crew of 23, including her master.
SS Virawa was British India Steam Navigation Company (BI) steamship. She was launched in Scotland in 1890 and scrapped in India in 1921. Her trades included taking horses from Australia to India, and indentured labourers from India to Fiji and Trinidad. In 1899 she was a troop ship in the Second Boer War.
Ganges was the second Nourse Line ship to be named Ganges. The first Ganges was built in 1861 and wrecked in 1881. Ganges was a 1,529-ton iron barque, built by Osbourne, Graham & Company of Sunderland and launched on 25 March 1882. She was 241 feet (73 m) long, with a beam of 37.2 feet (11.3 m) and a draught of 22.5 feet (6.9 m).
SS Ganges was a 3,475-ton steamship, built for the Nourse Line by Charles Connell and Company of Glasgow and launched on 9 March 1906. She made seven trips carrying Indian indentured labourers from Calcutta and Madras to Fiji, ten trips to Trinidad and Tobago and also trips to Surinam and British Guiana.
SS Sutlej was a 3,549 ton steamship built for the Nourse Line in about 1907 by Charles Connell & Company Limited, Glasgow. She had single screw, triple expansion, 425 horsepower (317 kW) engines.
Between 1879 and 1916, tens of thousands of Indians moved to Fiji to work as indentured labourers, especially on sugarcane plantations. Repatriation of indentured Indians from Fiji began on 3 May 1892, when the British Peer brought 464 repatriated Indians to Calcutta. Various ships made similar journeys to Calcutta and Madras, concluding with Sirsa's 1951 voyage. In 1955 and 1956, three ships brought Indian labourers from Fiji to Sydney, from where the labourers flew to Bombay.
The Indian community in Saint Kitts and Nevis is made up of Indo-Kittitians, Indo-Nevisians, non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. Indo-Kittitians and Indo-Nevisians are nationals of Saint Kitts and Nevis whose ancestry lies within the country of India. The community originated from the Indian indentured workers brought to Saint Kitts and Nevis by the British in 1861 and 1874 respectively. By 1884, most of the community had emigrated to Caribbean nations with larger Indian populations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.
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