ʻAta

Ata is a depopulated island in the far southern end of the Tonga archipelago, situated approximately south-southwest of Tongatapu.

It is distinct from Atā, an uninhabited, low coral island in the string of small atolls along the Piha passage along the north side of Tongatapu. An unrelated traditional chiefly title from Kolovai is "Ata". Although superficially spelled in similar ways, Ata means ''reflection'' in Tongan; Ata means ''dawn'' and is the title of a chief; and Atā means more room or expanding.

Myths

Although Ata must have been known to Tongans from times immemorial, as it features in old myths, it may have been confused with Atā, and it is alleged not to have been remembered until the Tongans were told about it by the Europeans.

According to Tongan myths it was, together with Eua, the first island hauled up by the Maui brothers from the bottom of the sea. It originally had seven hills, but Maui stamped on the highest mountain until it was flattened into its surrounding valleys, and he did likewise with the next mountains. By the time only three hills were left, he was weary and left. With the following islands he hauled up, starting with Tongatapu, he was more careful to keep them flat. The deity Laufakanaa was the first ruler of Ata.

History

Archaeologist Atholl Anderson spent 18 days exploring the abandoned village of Kolomaile in 1977, which is accessible via a steep trail from the island's cobbled northern beach. Although it had been abandoned for over a century, remnants of stone walls and other evidence of human inhabitants were still visible; radiocarbon dating led Anderson to conclude that human settlement on Ata dated back to the 1500s or 1600s. Another archaeological survey was conducted in August 2001; fragments of pottery found during the later survey were of a type that had ceased manufacture in Tonga by 400 BC, meaning the settlement on Ata was considerably older than previously thought.

According to oral tradition, the diviner Hama discovered Ata, but the first Tongans to live there were Motuapuaka and Tapuosi, who had eloped there to escape the wrath of Tapuosi's father, the Tui Tonga Fakanaanaa; when they arrived in the early 1700s, the aboriginal inhabitants played a rough game which frightened Tapuosi, and Motuapuaka drove them into a cave, then suffocated them by building a great fire at its mouth. The two lovers were presumably accompanied by attendants, befitting their high status. They and their descendants were joined by other exiles throughout the 1700s.

The first European to access Ata was Abel Tasman on 19 January 1643. Because of the many tropic birds he saw near the island, he gave it the name of ''Pylstaert Eylant'' or in modern Dutch ''Pijlstaart'', meaning ''arrowtail'', an apt description for, and in that time the name of the tropicbird. Adverse winds prohibited him from coming closer and no native people were seen coming to him in canoes either. From his position looking towards the northeast the shape of the island resembled to him the breasts of a woman.

The island was visited by Captain James Cook during his second voyage on October 7, 1773, and its coordinates were corrected by Lapérouse, who referred to the island as ''île Plistard''.

Because of its remote location from the main islands of Tonga, Ata was largely self-governed; the ''Official Report on Central Polynesia'' by Charles St Julian stated its population was 150 in 1857. It is one of the three islands in Tonga to have been affected by the Peruvian slave trade of 1862 to 1864; of the three, it suffered the most.

Slavers and evacuation

In 1862, the Peruvian government had decided to invite indentured labourers to collect guano on Peru's Chincha Islands. A fleet of ships spread out over the Pacific, ostensibly to find willing migrants, but they quickly switched to plain kidnapping tactics instead. In June 1863 about 350 people lived on Ata in a village called Kolomaile (of which remnants were still visible a century later). Captain Thomas James McGrath of the whaler ''Grecian'', having decided that slave trading was more profitable than whaling,Open-access PDF
/ref>  came along and invited the islanders on board for trading. But once almost half of the population was on board, doors and rooms were locked, and the ship sailed away. 144 people never returned.

In 1929, anthropologist Edward Winslow Gifford interviewed two ex-Kolomaileans who were schoolchildren when the ''Grecian'' took its slaves; they said that "aulVehi ayor of Atawent aboard and presumably arranged the kidnapping. When he was returned ashore, he made a proclamation that each family was to send a good-looking man aboard with provisions to sell. There was to be no selling on shore, and furthermore the selling on the ships was to take place below decks. Once the Ata people were aboard they were sent to various rooms to select the goods they wanted in exchange. After entering the rooms the doors were locked." 

The whaler-turned-slaver ''Grecian'' next tried to kidnap more slaves from the Lau Islands, but was not successful there. At Niuafouou, the second island in Tonga to be affected, ''Grecian'' was able to kidnap only 30 people.  Uiha was to be the third, but there the islanders had actually been able to reverse roles and ambushed the slaver ''Margarita'' instead.

''Grecian'' never made it to Peru. Probably near Puka-Puka in the Tuamotus it met another slaver, the ''General Prim'', which had left Callao in March. Because ''Grecian'' never obtained a labour licence from Peru, ''General Prim'' was more than willing to take the 174 Tongans back to port, where it arrived on 19 July. Meanwhile, however, the Peruvian government, under pressure from foreign powers and also shocked that its labour plan had turned into a slave trade, had already cancelled all labour importation licenses on 28 April. ''General Prim'' and other ships were not allowed to land their captured South Pacific slaves on Peruvian soil, but instead the Peruvian government chartered ships to take them home.

By the time the '' Adelante'', chartered to return the Tongans, finally left on 2 October 1863, many had died or were dying from contagious diseases. In addition, Captain Escurra of the ''Adelante'', which had been one of the most successful slavers before the licenses were revoked, had no intention to take them home after being paid $30 per head. Instead, he marooned them on uninhabited Cocos Island, well off the route to Tahiti, claiming the 426 kanakas were affected with smallpox, endangering his crew. 200 survivors were left when the whaler ''Active'' passed along and found them on 21 October. Finally, in November, the Peruvian warship came to save the survivors, who had dwindled to just 38. They were brought to Paita, where they apparently were absorbed in the local population.

Meanwhile, in Tonga, King George Tupou I, having heard of the kidnappings, sent three schooners to Ata to evacuate and to resettle the remaining population of Kolomaile (about 200 people) to Eua, where they would be safe against future attacks. Until modern times, the Vehi family were wrongfully dogged by rumours they had sold the villagers into slavery. McGrath was arrested in Bluff, New Zealand, for tax evasion at the end of November 1863, and the owner of the ''Grecian'' laid additional charges that McGrath had disappeared with the ship after being commissioned in 1861 for a whaling expedition.

Tongan castaways

Running away from boarding school

From June 1965 to September 11, 1966, six Tongan youths, Sione Fataua (17, the eldest), "Stephen" Tevita Fatai Latu (17), "David" Tevita Fifita Siolaa (15, the youngest), Kolo Fekitoa (17), "Mano" Sione Filipe Totau (16), and Luke Veikoso (16, later a boxing champion), all natives of Haafeva island, were shipwrecked on Ata after running away from their strict Catholic boarding school, St. Andrew's College, in Nukualofa on Tongatapu.

They had stolen a small boat on short notice and with little preparation; David, the youngest, later joked the other boys had brought him along because he was the only one who knew how to sail. After they anchored for the night (approximately north of Tongatapu) and an evening of fishing, they fell asleep; during the night a storm broke their anchor rope. The boat's sail and rudder were destroyed quickly by the wild winds. Over the next eight days, they drifted a meandering course almost long bearing generally southwest, bailing water from their disintegrating boat until they sighted Ata; at that point, they abandoned their ship and swam to shore over the next 36 hours, using planks salvaged from the wreck.

Coming ashore on Ata

Mano was the first to reach land; weak from hunger and dehydration, he could not stand but called out that he had safely reached shore, and the rest followed him. After escaping the sea, the boys dug a cave by hand from the sea cliff for protection from the elements and hunted sea birds for meat, blood, and eggs.

Surviving and thriving

Initially desperate for food and water, their situation improved after three months when they discovered the ruins of the village of Kolomaile in the island's volcanic crater, following a two-day climb. They revived the remnants of this 19th century habitation, surviving on feral chickens, wild taro, and banana; they captured rainwater for drinking in hollowed-out tree trunks. The boys divided up the labour, teaming up in pairs to work garden, kitchen, and guard duty. The two eldest served as leaders: One spiritual, the other practical; although the boys occasionally argued, they agreed they would always reconcile after spending four hours apart. Stephen (who would go on to become an engineer) managed to start a fire using two sticks; the boys kept the fire burning continuously for more than a year while marooned.

At night, they sang and played a makeshift guitar (built by Kolo from salvaged scrap wood, wire, and coconuts) to keep their spirits up, composing five songs during their exile. Once, they attempted to sail away on a raft they made from logs, but it broke up approximately offshore, and they were forced to return. The breakup of their raft was fortunate in retrospect, as the boys believed they were in Samoa and had started sailing south into the open ocean.

Although they had lit signal fires each time a ship passed, four failed to sight the boys.

Rescue

On 11 September 1966, the Australian fishing boat ''Just David'', captained by Peter Warner (son of Sir  Arthur Warner), approached Ata after Warner noticed unusual patches of burned grass on the island's cliffsides. Warner, at the time still helping to run the family business, Electronics Industries, also had been moonlighting as a fisherman with a small fleet of boats based in Tasmania. Once the local waters had been played out, he asked permission to fish in Tongan waters, but he was denied and was sailing near Ata on the return trip.

After spotting the unkempt, naked boys through binoculars, ''Just David'' approached cautiously, as Warner was told that serious criminals were sometimes marooned on remote islands. When the ship was close enough, Stephen dove in and swam to the boat, telling the crew, "We are six and we estimate that we have been here for fifteen months", in perfect English. The boys' count turned out to be only two days off the actual date.

To verify their story, Warner radioed their names to Nukualofa and after a 20 minute wait, was told "You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!"

Return to Haafeva

Upon later examination, all six boys were healthy; Stephen had broken a leg during their stay, which had since healed, and a Tongan doctor later marvelled at the perfection of its setting by the other boys. Initial news reports mistakenly stated that they had only stayed on Ata for 13 months.

After an enormous celebration and minor legal drama on Haafeva, when the owner of the boat pressed charges for theft and had the boys arrested, the group was hired by Warner to crew a lobster boat. During the feasts celebrating the boys' return, he noticed the meals often featured copious portions of Pacific spiny lobster. The families of the castaway boys promised to teach Warner the secrets of how and where to fish for them, and Warner was given a royal concession to trap the spiny lobster in Tongan waters as a reward for rescuing the group, leading to a long friendship between Warner and King Tāufaāhau Tupou IV.
Several documentary films have been made about the boys' ordeal.

Minor legal drama concerning the stolen boat

Warner learned the boys had been incarcerated when they did not show up to a party he was holding to honour them. Warner then arranged with Channel 7 in Sydney to film their story; he used from the sale of the rights to compensate the stolen boat's owner for its loss, and in return, the owner dropped the charges.

Several documentaries

The television crew then sailed with Warner and the boys back to Ata to film a re-enactment of their story, which was broadcast in October 1966. Only one copy of the 1966 documentary, filmed on 16 mm, survives today. Steve Bowman, who owns that copy, interviewed the boys in 2006 and 2007 for another documentary, but it was never released because his distributor went bankrupt.

In 2015 Spanish explorer Alvaro Cerezo spent 10 days on Ata island with Kolo Fekitoa, one of the six teenage castaways. They both lived there alone and survived from coconuts, fish, and seabirds, exactly as the boys did back in 1965. In summer 2020, Cerezo launched a documentary of his experience with Kolo and a book describing in detail the 15 month ordeal of the Tongan castaways. The 1966 documentary ''The Castaways'' is available on YouTube.

Current locations of the castaways

The former castaways are now (2020) all in their 70s.
* Kolo Fekitoa died in approximately 2017, aged 71.
Four of the others now live overseas:
* Mano Totau (Australia),
* Luke Veikoso (United States),
* Sione Fataua (United States),
* Tevita Siolaa (New Zealand).

Current status

The descendants of the original Ata island dwellers still live in the southern village of Haatua on Eua, of which a part has received the name Kolomaile. Their wish to return to Ata was still alive in the mid-20th century, but it is considered unlikely to happen, as the island does not have a harbour, making shipping to it a dangerous and uneconomical adventure. Currently Ata, still part of the kingdom of Tonga, remains uninhabited.

Geography

Most of Ata's land is a high plateau above sea level, with steep cliffs and rocky beaches ringing the shoreline of the entire island. There are three minor peaks: two on the west side and one on the east side of the island, ranging in elevation from (eastern) to (western). It has a total land area of approximately . Although it was apparently formed by volcanic action, no record of volcanic activity exists. The anchorage for Ata is on the west side of the island.

There was only one settlement on Ata, named Kolomaile, meaning "Myrtle town", near the eastern hill. There were three sections of the village; the western section was Hihifo, and the other two were Auloto and Pea.

Ecology

Since 1863, the island has not been inhabited by a residential human population. Surveys of animal populations have been conducted in 1925 (Whitney South Seas Expedition, 13–14 July) and 1990 (Rinke, 5–8 April).

Fauna

The only mammal native to the island is ''Rattus exulans'', the Polynesian rat. In a survey conducted in 1990, the most common seabird present was '' Puffinus pacificus'', the wedge-tailed shearwater, with an estimated 20,000 present.

Flora

The plateau of Ata is heavily forested with fig trees.

See also

* Desert island
* List of islands

References

Further reading

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Open-access PDF
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* Tells the 1966 story
excerpt

External links

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Alternate image
same session
* . Peter Warner and Mano Totau
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* . ''Channel 7 Documentary'' (1966)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ata
History of Tonga
Uninhabited islands of Tonga
Tongan mythology
Former populated places in Oceania
Forcibly depopulated communities
Populated places disestablished in 1863