The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.
Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins and originally starring James Garner as an adroitly articulate poker player plying his trade on riverboats and in saloons while traveling incessantly through the 19th-century American frontier. The show ran for five seasons from September 22, 1957, to July 8, 1962 on ABC.
Niutao is a reef island in the northern part of Tuvalu. It is one of the nine districts (islands) of Tuvalu. It is also one of the three districts that consist of only one island — not counting the three islets inside the closed lagoon. Niutao has a population of 582.
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.
Wrecker, The Wrecker or Wrecking may refer to:
Abemama (Apamama) is an atoll, one of the Gilberts group in Kiribati, and is located 152 kilometres southeast of Tarawa and just north of the Equator. Abemama has an area of 27.37 square kilometres and a population of 3,299 as of 2015. The islets surround a deep lagoon. The eastern part of the atoll of Abemama is linked together by causeways making automobile traffic possible between the different islets. The outlying islands of Abatiku and Biike are situated on the southwestern side of the atoll.
Sugarfoot is an American Western television series that aired for 69 episodes on ABC from 1957-1961 on Tuesday nights on a "shared" slot basis – rotating with Cheyenne ; Cheyenne and Bronco ; and Bronco. The Warner Bros. production stars Will Hutchins as Tom Brewster, an Easterner who comes to the Oklahoma Territory to become a lawyer. Brewster was a correspondence-school student whose apparent lack of cowboy skills earned him the nickname "Sugarfoot", a designation even below that of a tenderfoot.
John Augustus Kelly Jr. was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the television series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962.
Robert Louis Colbert is an American actor best known for his leading role as Dr. Doug Phillips on the ABC television series The Time Tunnel and his two appearances as Brent Maverick, a third Maverick brother in the ABC/Warner Brothers western Maverick.
The New Maverick is a 1978 American Western television film based on the 1957–1962 series Maverick starring James Garner as Bret Maverick. The New Maverick also stars Charles Frank as newcomer cousin Ben Maverick, Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick, and Susan Sullivan as Poker Alice Ivers.
Samuel Lloyd Osbourne was an American author and the stepson of the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he co-authored three books, including The Wrecker. He also provided input and ideas on others. Osbourne wrote a number of stories and essays on his own, including An Intimate Portrait of R L S By His Stepson (1924).
Frances Matilda Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson was an American magazine writer. She became a supporter and later the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the mother of Isobel Osbourne, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, and Hervey Stewart Osbourne.
Island Nights' Entertainments is a collection of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1893. It would prove to contain some of his final completed work before his death in 1894.
The Ebb-Tide. A Trio and a Quartette is an 1894 short novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne. It was published the year Stevenson died.
John Wilberforce "Jack" Buckland (1864–1897), also known as "Tin Jack", was a trader who lived in the South Pacific in the late 19th century. He travelled with Robert Louis Stevenson and his stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892).
Fredrick George Whibley (1855–1919) abandoned a career as clerk in a London bank to escape from the constraints and social expectations of respectability in the Victorian era. He ended up as a copra trader on Niutao in the Ellice Islands in the central Pacific Ocean.
In British history, a remittance man was an emigrant, often from Britain to a British colony, who was supported by regular payments from home on the expectation that he would stay away.
Alfred Restieaux (1832–1911) was born in Paris, France, and came from a family of French descent. His grandfather was a French nobleman who escaped the guillotine during the French Revolution. At the age of 16 he migrated to Australia and later he travelled to South America and North America. He later became an island trader in the central Pacific. From 1867 to 1872 he had dealings with Ben Pease and Bully Hayes, two of the more notorious captains of ships and blackbirders that operated in the Pacific at that time.
