King of Apemama and adopted son

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

20256

Title

p. 27, King of Apemama and adopted son

Description

King of Apemama is seated in a wooden chair wearing a naval uniform. At his side stands his adopted son holding a cap in his hands. They are outside and a hut can be seen in the background.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Equator' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around the Gilbert Islands and Samoa in 1889.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1889

Size

22.9 x 18.8 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Abemama is an atoll in the Gilbert Islands, just north of the Equator. Robert Louis Stevenson arrived aboard a ship called The Equator on 30th August 1889 and he stayed there while the ship went on trading visits to other islands. Accommodation was constructed for the Stevenson party, which they called Equator-Town. They stayed there until 25th October, briefly returning to Butaritari before sailing to Samoa.

King Tembenoka was King of the triple kingdom of Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, and although considered a tyrant, was a man of culture. He died in 1891 and in 1892 the Gilberts became a British Protectorate.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Garments > Uniforms

People > Children > Boys

People > Politics and government > Kings

Places > Oceania > Gilbert Islands

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