Jack Renton’s remains the only authenticated account of a mental and physical ordeal that has haunted the Western imagination for centuries. Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, he drifted for two thousand miles across the Pacific, only to be washed up on the shores of an island shunned by all 19th century mariners, Malatia in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes and possession by a tribe of head hunters and was forced to “go native” to survive. Initially a slave to their chief, Kabou, he eventually became the man’s most trusted warrior and advisor, loved by him “as my first-born son”. Renton’s own account, published after he was rescued, caused a sensation, though now we know that it airbrushes out most of the key events that brought about his transformation. There the adventure might have been laid to rest, but for one small detail – the Malatians are masters of the art of oral history, passing detailed stories down from generation to generation. Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent seven years talking to the Malatians and piecing together a very different account from Renton’s sanitized version. It is the story of a man who not only adopted their customs, terrible as some of them were, but who also transformed their island world. Renowned as a warrior, counsellor and innovator, Renton’s hut and his weapons were long preserved as a shrine – still visited by the islanders a century after he had left. Judged by the values of Western society Renton had sold his soul by becoming a head-hunter, to his new-found friends and family, he was a hero.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘A grisly, fascinating and meticulously spun yarn.’ — The Good Book Guide, July, 2003
‘Compelling and fascinating, this rich reconstruction is history you could not make up.’ —
Scotland on Sunday, July 6, 2003
‘His telling of Renton’s story … is brilliantly done.’ —
Sunday Times, June 22, 2003
‘It is an utterly compelling story.’ —
Daily Mail, June 27, 2003
From the Author
The twenty years between 1975-95 were a golden era for many British documentary filmmakers and we were permitted to pursue our passions. Foreign broadcasters looked with envy on the range and diversity of this countrys documentary output. It was a time when commissioners encouraged risk-taking.
I was drawn to tales of strangeness, of horror and of enchantment. My passions were West Africa and the Pacific Ring: a leper colony deep in the Sierra Leone bush; Liberian leopard cults; the funerary rites of the Dogon of Mali; West African smuggling rings feeding the art markets of Paris and Brussels; ancestor worship in Sumba, Indonesia; the biography of a Japanese cannibal; the fate of an American expedition to the jungles of the Pacific island of Santo and the Cargo Cult worship of America on the island of Tanna.
From Tanna to the Soloman Islands to research their sanguinary headhunting past and a meeting that was to dictate the course of the next four years. I was told the story of a young Scotsman who had been marooned on the island of Malaita in 1868. Under the protection of a local chief he had survived to become the mans most trusted warrior and advisor, loved by him as my first-born son. I didnt believe a word of it.
A few months later my informant, a long time resident of the islands, sent me some tapes of interviews he had recorded from the residents of the village where the man had lived 130 years earlier. Translated and transcribed, they were meticulous narrative passed down from generation to generation. Rich, in not just factual information, but anecdotal detail, they painted a vivid picture of the young mans eight-year exile and his transformation into one of them .an extraordinary chronicle of a journey into the heart of darkness.
After his rescue he had published an account of his ordeal and, although full of ethnographic detail, it bore little relation to the native accounts. Not surprisingly he had airbrushed out any references to his own collusion.
This was far too rich a story to be wasted on television. It would require years of work, not just to fit all the pieces together but to paint a picture of a Pacific world in transition, as it was clear from the young mans subsequent career that he had done his best to equip his hosts for the white onslaught that was to come.
Obsession is the mother of invention. I changed jobs to allow me more time, moved back and forth between London and the Pacific and wrote the first draft, having re-mortgaged my house. Mercifully the first draft found a literary agent and the result of my labours is now yours to read!
About the Author
Nigel Randell spent twenty-five years making documentary films in various parts of the world. This is his first book.
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