Life
Robert Dean Frisbie was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 17, 1896, the son of Arthur Grazly Frisbie and Florence Benson. As a young man, he left his parental home to serve in the U.S. Army during World War I. After discharge from the military, doctors told him that his health was so bad that he would not survive another American winter. So, in 1920, he decided to explore the islands of the South Pacific Ocean.
He arrived at his first destination, Tahiti, in that year, settled down to lead a life as a plantation owner in Papeete, and began to write about his travels. He also established the South Seas News and Pictorial Syndicate and began sending stories back to the U.S. for publication. In later voyages through Polynesia (spanning his entire lifetime), he regularly visited the Cook Islands, Samoa and French Polynesia.
In writing down his observations of life in the Pacific, Frisbie followed the footsteps of other famous 19th century South Sea writers. One of his major influences was Robert Louis Stevenson. [1] He was also well informed of the work of fellow travel writers in his time, with whom he kept in touch.
Life on Puka–Puka
In Tahiti, Frisbie (dubbed: "Ropati," a phonetic approximation of "Robert" [en: Writer]) met Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, well-known co-authors of the Mutiny on the Bounty series. This encouraged Frisbie to write his first complete narrative, which marked the starting point of his career. The Book of Puka Puka, published in 1929 by The Century Company, related the tale of his eternal search for solitude on the far-flung Northern Cook atoll of Pukapuka. Frisbie writes that life on Pukapuka [2] enabled him to escape "the faintest echo from the noisy clamour of the civilised world."
On Pukapuka Frisbie met 16-year-old Ngatokorua (Also known as Inangaro which, when translated, means "Desire"). They were married in 1928 on Penrhyn, Northern Cook Islands. [3] "Nga" became the mother of their five children: Charles, Florence, William, Elaine and Ngatokorua. In 1930 the family sailed back to Tahiti and Frisbie started working on his second novel, My Tahiti (Little Brown & Co., 1937) and worked on another book, A Child of Tahiti, [4] which was never published.
Hurricane at Suwarrow
In the 1940s, after the death of Frisbie's wife, the family visited the uninhabited Northern Cook atoll Suwarrow and lived there for almost a year. The celebrated story of their hurricane survival on a tiny motu (islet) was serialized by in the Atlantic Monthly as The Story of an Island: Marooned by Request in 1943 and later in Frisbie's memoir The Island of Desire. [5]
Another notable character in Frisbie's life was Tom Neale. [3] [6] A loner inspired by Frisbie's tales of isolation on Suwarrow, he also lived alone on the atoll on three occasions (1952-1954, 1960-1964 & 1967-1977). After he returned from his second visit in 1964, he wrote the book An Island to Myself (Doubleday, 1966), in which he credits Frisbie as his inspiration. The book was republished in Great Britain as An Island to Oneself (Collins, 1966).
Johnny Frisbie
Florence Frisbie (better known as Johnny) was born on June 19, 1932, in Papeete, Tahiti, the second child of Robert Dean and Ngatokorua Frisbie. As a youngster encouraged by her father to write, Johnny kept journals in three languages (including Pukapukan). At the age of 12 she began an autobiographical children's novel based on these journals, Miss Ulysses of Puka-Puka, which deals with her life on the atoll and her bond with her father and family. Miss Ulysses was published by Macmillan in 1948.
After her father's death in 1948, Johnny wrote another biography of her family, The Frisbies of the South Seas (Doubleday, 1959).
Death
In 1943, diagnosed with tuberculosis, Frisbie was evacuated by then U.S. Navy Lieutenant James Michener to a hospital on American Samoa. [4] His recovery was spotty, but he continued to travel, write and publish until his death at age 52, on November 18 (or 19), 1948, in Avatiu (Cook Islands), from an apparent tetanus infection. [7] He was survived by his five children, whose mother had already died in 1939 and who were subsequently raised by friends and relatives in New Zealand and Hawaii.
The Cook Islands are named after Captain James Cook, who visited the islands in 1773 and 1777, although Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendaña was the first European to reach the islands in 1595. The Cook Islands became aligned to the United Kingdom in 1890, largely because of the fear of British residents that France might occupy the islands as it already had Tahiti.
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Bora Bora is an island group in the Leeward Islands. The Leeward Islands comprise the western part of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, which is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic in the Pacific Ocean. Bora Bora has a total land area of 30.55 km2 (12 sq mi). The main island, located about 230 kilometres northwest of Papeete, is surrounded by a lagoon and a barrier reef. In the center of the island are the remnants of an extinct volcano, rising to two peaks, Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu; the highest point is at 727 m (2,385 ft). Bora Bora is part of the Commune of Bora-Bora, which also includes the atoll of Tūpai. The languages spoken in Bora Bora are Tahitian and French. However, due to the high tourism population, many natives of Bora Bora have learned to speak English.
The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extending over an area roughly the size of Western Europe. Their combined land area is 850 square kilometres. This archipelago's major islands are Anaa, Fakarava, Hao and Makemo.
Suwarrow is an island in the northern group of the Cook Islands in the south Pacific Ocean. It is about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) south of the equator and 930 kilometres (580 mi) north-northwest of the capital island of Rarotonga.
Pukapuka, formerly Danger Island, is a coral atoll in the northern group of the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most remote islands of the Cook Islands, situated about 1,140 kilometres northwest of Rarotonga. On this small island, an ancient culture and distinct language has been maintained over many centuries. The traditional name for the atoll is Te Ulu-o-Te-Watu, and the northern islet where the people normally reside is affectionately known as Wale ('Home').
The Gambier Islands are an archipelago in French Polynesia, located at the southeast terminus of the Tuamotu archipelago. They cover an area of 27.8 km2 or 10.7 sq mi, and are made up of the Mangareva Islands, a group of high islands remnants of a caldera along with islets on the surrounding fringing reef, and the uninhabited Temoe atoll, which is located 45 km south-east of the Mangareva Islands. The Gambiers are generally considered a separate island group from Tuamotu both because their culture and language (Mangarevan) are much more closely related to those of the Marquesas Islands, and because, while the Tuamotus comprise several chains of coral atolls, the Mangareva Islands are of volcanic origin with central high islands.
Pukapukan is a Polynesian language that developed in isolation on the island of Pukapuka in the northern group of the Cook Islands. As a "Samoic Outlier" language with strong links to western Polynesia, Pukapukan is not closely related to any other languages of the Cook Islands, but does manifest substantial borrowing from some East Polynesian source in antiquity.
Thomas Francis Neale was a New Zealand bushcraft and survival enthusiast. He spent much of his life in the Cook Islands, and a total of 16 years – in three sessions – living alone on the island of Anchorage in the Suwarrow atoll, the first two of which were the basis of his popular autobiography An Island To Oneself.
Tikehau or Porutu-kai is a coral atoll in the Palliser Islands group, part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. It is included in the commune of Rangiroa.
The Northern Cook Islands is one of the two chains of atolls which make up the Cook Islands. Lying in a horizontal band between 9° and 13°30' south of the Equator, the chain consists of the atolls of Manihiki, Nassau, Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Rakahanga and Suwarrow, along with the submerged Tema Reef.
Written Cook Islands literature has in some ways been a precursor to the development of Pacific Islands literature. Cook Islander Florence Frisbie was one of the Pacific Islands' first writers, publishing her autobiographical story Miss Ulysses of Puka Puka in 1948. Tongareva poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell published his first collection, Mine Eyes Dazzle, in 1950. In 1960, Cook Islanders Tom Davis and Lydia Davis published Makutu, "perhaps the first novel by South Pacific Island writers".
Severe Tropical Cyclone Oli marked the first occurrence of a severe tropical cyclone within the South Pacific basin since Cyclone Gene in 2008.
The South Seas genre is a genre of literature, film, or entertainment that is usually escapist fair set in the islands of the southern Pacific Ocean. Stories may sometimes take place in tropic settings like the Caribbean or Bermuda. Many Hollywood films were produced on studio backlots or on Santa Catalina Island. The first feature non documentary film made on location was Lost and Found on a South Sea Island, shot in Tahiti.
Frederick O'Brien was an American author, journalist, hobo, peripatetic world traveler, and public administrator. He wrote three best-selling travel books about French Polynesia between 1919 and 1922: White Shadows in the South Seas, Mystic Isles of the South Seas, and Atolls of the Sun. A movie was made in 1928 of White Shadows in the South Seas.
Florence Ngatokura "Johnny" Frisbie, also known as Johnny Frisbie Hebenstreit, is a Cook Islands author. Her autobiographical children's novel, Miss Ulysses of Puka-Puka (1948), was the first published literary work by a Pacific Islander woman author.
Motu Kotawa is one of three islands in the Pukapuka atoll of the Cook Islands. It forms the western apex of Pukapuka's triangular atoll, and is the smallest of the three islands. The island is low-lying, with a maximum elevation of 3m above sea level. The island is uninhabited and used as a food source. It is home to numerous Frigatebirds, as well as plantations of taro, papaya, breadfruit, coconuts and bananas, and is regulated by the village of Yato. A reef extends from the west of the island, connecting it to the islet of Toka.
Motu Kō is one of three islands in the Pukapuka atoll of the Cook Islands. It forms the southern apex of Pukapuka's triangular atoll, 10km south of Wale, and is the largest of the three islands. The island is low-lying, with a maximum elevation of 5m above sea level and most of it only one or two metres. It is uninhabited and used as a food source, regulated by the village of Ngake.
The Central Polynesian tropical moist forests is a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests ecoregion in Polynesia. It includes the northern group of the Cook Islands, the Line Islands in Kiribati, and Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Kingman Reef which are possessions of the United States.
