James Morrill (castaway)

James Morrill (20 May 1824 – 30 October 1865) was an English sailor aboard the vessel Peruvian which became shipwrecked off the coast of north-eastern Australia in 1846. He survived a journey in a makeshift raft to the mainland near where the modern city of Townsville is now situated, and was taken in by a local clan of Aboriginal Australians. He adopted their language and customs and lived as a member of their society for 17 years. By the early 1860s, British colonisation had reached the area and Morrill decided to return to the European way of living. Morrill wrote a memoir of his experiences and died soon after in the town of Bowen in 1865. Morrill is regarded as the first white man to have resided permanently in North Queensland and is one of only a few European people to have lived for an extended period completely within traditional Aboriginal culture.

Early life

Morrill was born in 1824 at

In February 1846, Peruvian, commanded by Captain George Pitkethley, departed Sydney with 130 cedar logs for export.[3] On board were 16 officers and crew including Morrill, as well as six passengers including the captain's wife and two other families. Just over a week into the voyage, at around 4 o'clock in the morning, the vessel crashed into a submerged reef near Minerva Shoal in the Coral Sea. The ship was unable to be floated off the rocks and of the two long boats, one was smashed to pieces and the other detached prematurely, floating away with the first mate and a sheep. A raft equipped with a sail was constructed and the remaining 21 people were placed on board with only a few tins of meat and a small keg of water as provisions.^[2]

The raft and its occupants set off in an attempt to reach safety, supplementing their meagre rations with rainwater and fish and bird meat. After about 4 weeks adrift in the ocean, the castaways started to die off. During the following days, legs of the dead were used as bait to catch sharks for consumption by the remaining survivors. Eventually they encountered and sailed through the Great Barrier Reef, and about a week later they made landfall at Cape Cleveland. After 42 days on the raft, only seven people had survived which included Morrill, the captain, the captain's wife, two other crew members, a male passenger and a boy. Despite the survivors being able to construct a camp on the beach and finding water and oysters, the two crew and the passenger soon died.^[2]

Inclusion into Aboriginal society

After two weeks onshore, people from the local Cape Cleveland and Mount Elliot Aboriginal clans came to find out who they were. They were given food and water and were assisted in travelling to the nearby main camp of one of clans. Here over the next few days they were introduced to numerous members of local and distant tribes and became the subject of several corroborees. During the following months, Morrill and the other survivors were taught how to gather food, snare wildfowl and were able to speak some of the language.^[2]

After a time, a large gathering occurred, which consisted of over a thousand people, some of whom were from tribes a fair distance to the south. Morrill, together with the captain and his wife, decided to join with these people when they returned south.

Morrill continued to live around Mount Elliot as a member of this tribe, living a traditional Aboriginal lifestyle, for year after year. He was given the name Karckynjib-Wombil-Mooney, learnt eight local dialects[2] of the Biri language^[4] and shared in their customs, which he later documented. Occasionally, his fellow tribespeople would advise him that other white men had passed near to shore on ships. In 1860, George Elphinstone Dalrymple landed at Cape Cleveland during an expedition and encountered the local people. Morrill later wrote how tribesmen attempted to explain the presence of Morrill to Dalrymple through signs and gesticulations but Dalrymple interpreted this as hostility and members of his group shot dead one of the Aboriginal men and wounded another.^[2]

Encountering British colonisation

With the coming of Dalrymple by sea, Morrill and the Mount Elliot people also noticed other Britishers coming by land. A neighbouring tribe reported to them how a white man came with horses and shot dead a man participating a funeral ceremony. They later approached the man on the horse, who was probably missing colonist Mr Salisbury Humphrey, and killed him. Stray cattle also entered the region. Another report was given to them of how a lot of white and black people on horseback were "shooting down" the Port Denison tribe which Morrill had lived with previously.^[2]

By this stage it was 1863 and Morrill decided to shift away south from the Mount Elliot tribe to live on the

Morrill firstly washed himself in a creek to make himself "as white as possible" and then climbed on top of the boundary fence of the sheep station to avoid being bitten by the station's dogs. From this position he yelled out "What cheer, shipmates" to some stockmen in a hut, who seeing a naked "red or yellow man standing on the rails", came out armed with a firearm. Before they had time to use the gun, Morrill managed to yell in his near forgotten English: "do not shoot me, I am a British object - a shipwrecked sailor." The stockmen took him to their hut where they fed him bread and tea. The bread got stuck in his throat and the tea was too sweet with Morrill later writing that he wasn't hungry anyway because he and his tribe had caught and feasted on 20 small wallabies earlier that day.^[2]

Morrill came to the conclusion that if the Mount Elliot tribe were to approach the sheep station they would certainly be killed. He told the stockmen that before he returned to British society he would first have to warn his tribe to move toward the coast and stay away from the farms. The stockmen agreed but warned him that if he didn't return by the morning they would contact the

Morrill later accompanied a number of surveying expeditions to exploit his local knowledge. He was utilised by George Elphinstone Dalrymple in his 1864 expedition to Rockingham Bay where he was told to convey the message to the local Aboriginal people that they had come "to occupy the land and would shoot any who approached." Apart from this though, Morrill's life became unassuming. He took a job as a warehouse keeper and looked after the churchyards at Bowen, and in September 1864 he married a domestic servant by the name Eliza Ross.^[6]

Death and legacy

Morrill's health rapidly declined once he had returned to British society.

Before he died, Morrill and his wife had a son named Ross Morrill. It is claimed that he also had a daughter with an Aboriginal woman while he was living with the Mount Elliot clan, but Morrill never admitted to this. Descendants of Morrill continue to live in North Queensland.[6]

Morrill is one of only a few Europeans to have lived extensively within traditional Aboriginal Australian society. Other colonial figures who had similar experiences include William Buckley and Narcisse Pelletier.^[9]

Revised editions of his memoirs were reprinted several times up til 1896, and a few biographies have since been published. Author David Malouf used Morrill's experiences as a platform for his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon.^[6]

In 1983, a statue of Morrill was made as part of the centenary celebrations of the Pioneer Sugar Mill. This statue is located in the City Botanic Gardens.^[10]

Film

A film that was meant to be released in 2022, The Wild One, is based on the story of Morrill and the people who took him in. It is directed by Australian filmmaker Nathan Colquhoun and stars Matt Oxley, John Jarratt and Marlena Law.^[4]

References