AN ISLAND PATRIARCH.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1921, Page 5

AN ISLAND PATRIARCH.

DEATH OF MR. R. H. HEAD, OF NIUE. When the Tutanekai arrived at Niue recently the passengers learned of the death of the oldest white inhabitant of the island, Mr. R. H. Head, who was 83 years of age, and had lived on the island .for half a century. In his young days he was an officer in the Navy, but threw up his career as the result of one of those incidents which are now happily absent from that branch of the service. He was instructed to supervise the flogging of a seaman with the lash, and got such a deep impression of the brutalising effects of the system of punishment that he decided to give up his commission. Young Head was much interested in missions in the South Sea, and took a passage on the schooner John Williams, the vessel of the London Missionary Society. While on the voyage the schooner was wrecked on Niue Island, and here the young Englishman decided to make his home. The late Mr. Head was always a strong supporter, both financially and morally, of the L.M.S. Before the New Zealand Government took over the island he was British Resident. He was one of the real old Englishman type, whose word was his bond, and his character had a marked effect on the natives among whom he lived. As a man and a trader he won respect and regard right through the Pacific. To a thorough knowledge of the islander and his ways Mr. Head added a high character which is not always found in out-of-the-way places of the Pacific, and during his long and honorable life occupied an almost patriarchal position on the island which it will be impossible to fill.