Boating New Zealand - May 2018

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Many yachtsmen

have speculated on

how the presence of

Onelua in Auckland

from 1919 would

have aected its

sporting history.

BELOW Bill Endean’s

Prize.

FAR LEFT Queen

Salote as a young girl

in 1908.

BOTTOM LEFT

S.S. Talune, the

steamer that spread

the Spanish Flu

through Samoa,

Fiji and Tonga in

November 1918.

But the need became acute to ind a husband for her, acceptable

to the noble class. In 1916 she married Tugi Maileihi, a ine

man, educated in Sydney and of high standing.

By this time the king was himself very unpopular. His

government was corrupt and he had overspent on luxury

items (such as the yacht Onelua of course). here was a large

presence in Tonga of German planters and traders which was

destabilising too.

Some of the king’s ministers were seriously contemplating

asking Britain to annex the country which could well have

happened, had the king not succumbed to his long-standing

tuberculosis and died on April 5, 1918. Salote was crowned

Queen of Tonga on October 11, 1918.

On November 12, 1918 the Union Steamship Company’s

island steamer Talune arrived in Nuku’alofa. On this trip Talune

had already unwittingly brought from Auckland the second,

deadlier, wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic to Samoa and Fiji,

causing devastation to the populations.

Twenty-two per cent of Samoa’s population died, and 10 per

cent of Tonga’s, all this less than a month after Salote took the

throne. he Tongan Government sent “the Government yacht”

(Onelua?) to Fiji for medical assistance, but Fiji was stricken

too. Just a fortnight after Talune docked in Nuku’alofa, Queen

Takipo was one of the dead. here was social turmoil in Tonga,

through which Prince Tugi surefootedly led Salote.

But what of the King’s yacht, Onelua?

In the New Zealand Herald of August 16, 1919 there appeared

an advertisement that “Onelua, the property of the late King”,