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[oval stamp, very faint]
COLONIAL [GOVERNMENT?]
QUEENSLAND

M^r Chester
2499:
26.Oct.71.
Narration [if to train?], N.E. Channel

Notwithstanding that a considerable portion
of our commerce with India and China passes annually
through Torres Strait, it has rarely attracted public
attention since the Surveys of Capts. [Captains] Blackwood and
Stanley in 1843-46, and except for a passing paragraph
in an Eastern newspaper recording some wreck or mas-
Sacre [massacre], which tended to keep up the high rate, 12^1/2 per
cent:, charged by Insurance Companies it was, perhaps,
seldom thought of except by those whose business it was
to encounter its risks and dangers - The foundation of
the Settlement at Port Albany in 1864 seventeen years after
it had been strongly urged upon the home Government
was the result of newly awakened public interest. It was
fully anticipated that besides affording a harbor of refuge
to vessels wrecked in those waters, it would act as a
check upon the treacherous and bloodthirsty natives of the
neighbouring islands, and prevent in future such mas-
Sacres [massacres] as are recorded in the book of sailing directions
for Torres Strait and the Coral Sea. So far from this
having been the case, so late as the beginning of 1869 a
vessel was taken within thirty miles of Somerset, and
her crew cruelly murdered by natives who for the
preceeding [preceding] five years had constantly maintained friendly
intercourse with Europeans.

During all this time the people at the
Settlement were without the means of ascertaining what
was going on in their immediate vicinity, and where,
three months afterwards the news reached Somerset
there was not a boat fit to venture outside Albany.

More recently, news of the wreck of the Schooner
"Honolulu" in the N. E. channel reached Somerset from
Batavia via Sydney three months after it occurred,
and, but for an accident, - the discovery of the valua

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[signature in left margin]
HMC