Biographical entry: Butler, Tom ( - c. 1918)

Died

c. 1918

Details

Tom Butler was an Irish sailor who was shipwrecked in the Solomons in the early 1890s and made his way ashore at Santa Ana Island, where he spent the rest of his life. He began as a beachcomber, married a local woman, worked as a trader, owned a cutter, the Newfoundland, and started a plantation. He lived in local style, drank too much and by about 1909 had deteriorated markedly. He sold his holdings to Lever Brothers in about 1911. He died around 1918, a wreck of a man with an unknown number of children. (Golden 1993, 287)

Published resources

Books

• Golden, Graeme A., The Early European Settlers of the Solomon Islands, Graeme A. Golden, Melbourne, 1993. Details