Charles Savage (beachcomber)

Charlie Savage, (?– September 6, 1813) was a sailor (most likely of Swedish descent) and beachcomber known for his exploits on the islands of Fiji between 1808 and 1813.

Most accounts place Savage as a sailor aboard a ship registered in Port Jackson (Sydney), Australia, from which he was left on Tonga around 1807. From Tonga he was taken to Fiji by the Eliza which was wrecked near Nairai Island.

Given his fluency of Tongan and Fijian dialects and proclivity for violence, Savage easily insinuated himself in the company of the Bau Island chieftain Naulivou. From the wreckage of the Eliza, Savage was able to salvage a number of muskets which he then demonstrated to the Bauan leaders. This combination of circumstance, personality, and technology allowed Savage to participate in the Fijian wars, allegedly the first time firearms were ever used in Fiji.

Savage led a small group of beachcombers as mercenaries in the service of Naulivou and quickly showed their worth in fights with his enemies. Lacking certain cultural inhibitions of Fijians (such as targeting opposing chieftains at the outset of battle) and leveraging their individual skill with muskets proved Savage and company as a violent and capable force in Fijian internecine warfare.

Savage is credited with using an arrow-proof structure built outside his enemies' fortifications so that he could fire at them with impunity. Other accounts of his lethality depict that his “victims were so numerous that the townspeople piled up the bodies and sheltered behind them; and the stream beside the village ran red.”

For his services, Savage was accorded a certain amount of prestige and rewards from Naulivou, although the scope and magnitude of the more sensational details, to include numerous wives, influence on local politics, and becoming a cannibal chief in his own right, appear to be exaggerated accounts mixed with European yarns of “white savages.”

In 1813 the Hunter reached Fiji to ply in the sandalwood trade and subsequently employed a number of local European beachcombers including Savage. As recounted by third mate Peter Dillon, Savage met his fate in a skirmish with Wailea Fijians on September 6, 1813. Ashore as a member of a party to destroy Wailean canoes, Savage and the other scattered members of the party found themselves the victims of an ambush. They attempted to flee back to the anchored Hunter, but found “it impossible to get to the boat through the crowds of natives that intercepted the pathway.” At this point Dillon directed the men to climb a flat-topped hill of a rock (which later became Dillon's Rock) and organized a defense. Because of its steep and narrow ascent, the rock could only be climbed by a few persons at a time, allowing the defenders to maximize their volleys.

...
Wikipedia