AN ISLAND ROMANCE.
WHITE MAN CHOSEN KING. A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR. The officers of the R.M.S. Marama, which arrived back at Wellington on Sunday from San Francisco, tell of a most romantic experience by a member of the crew of an abandoned barque, who was a passenger from Papeete by the Marama on her recent run to San Francisco. The officers and crew of the Italian barque Monte Bianco abandoned their vessel on fire and ultimately reached a remote island in the Solomon Group. All the members of the crew of the Monte Bianco were Italians with the exception of two Swedes, Knut Uddgren and Gunnor The former was a man of great stature and not illfavored in looks. It seems that on the island there were about 540 natives, mostly women. When these native women. many of them very good to look at, saw this blonde giant they fel] in love with him. I'hey were fifty-four, days on the island, and when the trading schooner called in and Knut Uddgren started to climb into the boat, the women made a concerted rush to hold him back. They implored him to stay and said they would make him king of the island.
Uddgren fought the swarm of femininity away and jumped into the schoner’s dinghy, singing out that he would return. He left San Francisco by the Marama, on her way to Wellington, and disembarked at Papeete. At the latter port he intended to take passage by a trading schooner to his fufAiro kingdom, Tubuai, where he expects to spend the rest of his life as king of the island. He said: “Why not? The climate is wonderful. I can have the pick of several hundred beautiful women for a queen, and I can run that island on up-to-date methods and make something out of those natives. I believe that, with better communication with the larger islands and with the outside world generally, it is possible to build up a very prosperous community. There is plenty to eat, a little something to drink that the temperance people would not approve of. and a-number of simple but loyal friends.”
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Taranaki Daily News, 19 October 1921, Page 2
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357AN ISLAND ROMANCE. Taranaki Daily News, 19 October 1921, Page 2
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