Cruising ‘Treasured Islands’

By Amy Geiszler-Jones

In recounting the six-year, South Pacific adventure of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson in the book "Treasured Islands," Lowell Holmes, distinguished professor emeritus of anthropology, has found a way to combine several of his longtime interests – a deep respect for a writer who embraced another culture, a lifelong love of sailing ships and Holmes’ insight into Samoan life and culture.

It’s a book that offers a fascinating account of the last years of Stevenson’s life, spent in exotic locations among native people and aboard schooners with interesting crews and characters. (One, an island trader named "Tin Jack" Buckland, later served as a basis for a character in one of Stevenson’s books.)

Stevenson is probably best known for his books "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When he and his family set sail from San Francisco in 1888, he was hoping he would find relief from a lifelong respiratory ailment in the warm South Seas climate.

He and his family, which included his wife Fanny, mother Maggie, stepson Lloyd and a French maid named Valentine, spent the next six years cruising the islands of the South Pacific, visiting the Marquesas, Tahiti, the Tuamotus atolls, Hawaii and Samoa. He eventually built a villa, named Vailima, on Samoa and was buried atop Mount Vaea on the island.

Stevenson, his wife and mother kept journals of their travels, which Holmes studied for his research. According to "Treasured Islands: Cruising the South Seas With Robert Louis Stevenson," Stevenson also wrote some 700,000 words for publication in the four years he lived on Samoa.

While some 30 biographies have been written about Stevenson – about half of which continue to perpetuate some misleading information, according to Holmes – "Treasured Islands" does offer some new insights, particularly of the ships and even of Stevenson’s ailment.

Stevenson and his traveling party spent considerable time on three schooners: the Casco, the Equator and the Janet Nicoll. No blueprints, plans or specifications existed so Holmes enlisted the help of a friend, maritime historian and former ship captain Ray Aker, to provide renderings of the ships’ designs. The aged and well-worn Equator actually still exists in Everett, Wash.

Stevenson was ill for most of his life with a respiratory ailment that many, including the author, had come to believe was tuberculosis, a highly contagious disease. In "Treasured Islands," Holmes suggests another diagnosis, after consulting with pulmonary specialist Dr. Curtis Drevets of the Wichita Clinic. As part of his research, Holmes compiled Stevenson’s medical history, which Drevets studied.

"There is substantial evidence that he may have been afflicted with ... bronchiectasis, which is an irreversible dilation of the bronchi," the book says. Part of that speculation is based on the fact that TB is contagious and bronchiectasis isn’t, and no one Stevenson came in contact with – even in the close confinement of ships – came down with a similar ailment.

For Holmes, writing this book was a culmination of many interests. As a young boy growing up in Minneapolis, he spent summers in Seattle, visiting his mother’s relatives. He became fascinated with the tall ships that sailed into Lake Union with their cargo of Alaskan timber.

Like Stevenson, Holmes has cruised South Pacific islands aboard inter-island trading ships, and on one occasion, a ship Holmes was aboard anchored in the same spot as the Casco had when Stevenson had been aboard. Holmes and his wife Ellen, also a retired WSU faculty member, continue to sail aboard charter schooners.

Holmes, who received a bachelor’s degree in English literature, hadn’t read much of Stevenson’s work in college. However, Holmes’ visits to Vailima, while on field trips in Samoa, inspired him to read more of the literary giant’s work and led him to have a deep respect for the writer.

"Stevenson was a remarkable person for his time," notes Holmes. "He was more accepting of native people than even the anthropologists were in that time."

Indeed, Holmes, the namesake of WSU’s anthropology museum, would know about researchers who studied that part of the world. He himself is a leading expert on Samoan culture. His first field research study in 1954 was done in the same Samoan village where famed anthropologist Margaret Mead studied adolescent girls. While at WSU from 1959 until 1990, Holmes conducted four more research trips to Samoa. During a 1974 trip, he scaled the 1,000-foot Mount Vaea to visit Stevenson’s tomb.

This is Holmes’ second work on Stevenson’s travels in the Pacific – his first was a 1990 documentary film.

"Treasured Islands" has gotten good reviews for its writing and because of Holmes’ knowledge of both ships and Samoan culture.

A Wichita Eagle review said, "At its finest moments, then, ‘Treasured Islands’ reads like a novel, giving voice to Stevenson’s urgent quest – a tale bristling with drama and intrique, adventure and romance. ... Holmes tells this noble, haunting story passionately and precisely."