George Lewis Becke
BiographyGeorge Lewis “Louis” Becke (June 18, 1855–February 18, 1913) was an Australian Pacific trader, short story writer, and novelist. His work was also published under the pen name Rolf Boldrewood, though not by his choice.
He was born at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, son of Frederick Becke, Clerk of Petty Sessions, and his wife Caroline Matilda née Beilby. Both parents were born in England. The ninth of twelve children, he had a tendency to wander; he has stated that before he was 10 he had twice run away from home. The family moved to Hunters Hill, Sydney, in 1867, where Becke was educated at Fort Street High School. In 1869 Becke travelled to San Francisco with his brother William Vernon and was away for nineteen months. At 16 years of age Becke was a stowaway on a ship bound for Samoa. In Apia he took a job as a book-keeper in the store of Mrs. Mary Mcfarlane, which he held until some time after December 1872.
Under orders of Mrs. Mcfarlane, Becke sailed a ketch, the E.A. Williams, to Mili Atoll to deliver it to William “Bully” Hayes, the notorious blackbirder (now called human trafficking). Beck arrived at Mili Atoll in January 1874. Becke remained as a passenger on the Leonora until the ship was wrecked in March 1874 during a storm while in Lele harbour at Kosrae. It was seven months until HMS Rosario rescued Becke and the others. Becke was later arrested for piracy, but was acquitted in Brisbane at age 19. Many of his stories and novels are based upon his experiences with Bully Hayes. Then he tried his luck at the Palmer River goldrush, was employed at Ravenswood station, and from 1878–79 worked as a bank clerk in Townsville, Queensland. From about April 1880 Becke was in the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu) working with the Liverpool firm of John S. de Wolf and Co. on Nanumanga until the trading-station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. In February 1881 he opened his own store in Nukufetau, where he married Nelea Tikena. Later in 1881 a shipwreck on Beru Island in the Gilbert Islands caused him to lose all he had; he then worked in New Britain and was in Majuro by November 1882. For the next ten years Becke moved about the Gilbert Islands, Ellice Islands, Caroline Islands and Marshall Islands acquiring a knowledge of the customs and beliefs of the islanders and meeting palagi traders and beachcombers that Becke later used in his stories.
Becke returned to New South Wales late in 1885 and in February 1886 married Mary Elizabeth (Bessie) Maunsell, the daughter of Colonel Maunsell, of Port Macquarie. On November 9, 1888, his daughter, Nora Lois, was born. In June 1896 he left Sydney for London with Nora Lois and Miss Fanny Sabrina Long. Becke and Fanny Long had 2 daughters, Alrema (born October 30, 1897) and Niya (born September 27, 1898). Bessie obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion in October 1903. In 1908 he and his family went to Auckland, New Zealand, via Fiji; then in 1909 the family travelled to Sydney, Australia. He died at the Hotel York in Sydney and was buried in the Waverley Cemetery near to the graves of Henry Lawson and Henry Kendall.
Bibliography (wildly incomplete)
’Tis in the Blood (1893)
By Reef and Palm (1894)
His Native Wife (1895)
The Ebbing of the Tide (1896)
A Modern Buccaneer (as Rolf Boldrewood, 1894)
The Jalasco Brig and Other Tales of the Sea (1902)
The Strange Adventure of James Shervinton (1902)
Other links
Australian Dictionary of Biography
marshall.csu.edu.au
Wikipedia