James CHALMERS

CHALMERS, JAMES (b. Ardrishaig, Argyll, Scotland, 4 Aug 1841; d. Goarihari, British New Guinea, 8 April 1901). LMS missionary Rarotonga and British New Guinea.

The son of a stonemason from Aberdeen and a Highland mother, James Chalmers grew up amid devout Presbyterians but drifted away from the church during an unruly youth. A later application to the LMS gives an account of a 'conversion' experienced in 1859 which, although conventional in its evangelical phraseology, motivated a missionary career of remarkable courage and dedication: 'I was pierced through and through with conviction of sin and felt lost beyond all hope of salvation ... After a time light increased, and I felt that God was speaking to me in His Word and I believed unto salvation'.

After his conversion Chalmers joined the Glasgow City Mission, hoping to become a minister of the United Presbyterian Church. But conversations with a missionary, Dr George Turner from Samoa, acquainted him with the work of the LMS to which he then applied, believing that the needs of the 'Heathen brethren' outweighed those of the Glasgow poor. In 1862 he entered Cheshunt College where he studied for two years, completing his training at Highgate Academy. Ordained and married in October 1865, he arrived at Rarotonga with his wife Jane (née Hercus) in May 1867. Although disappointed that Rarotonga did not afford the opportunities for the pioneering work of which he dreamed, Chalmers remained there for ten years supervising its missionary institution and waging war against orange-beer drinking.

In 1877 Chalmers was appointed to New Guinea. With his colleague W G Lawes (q.v.), who had preceded him by three years, he set up mission stations along the south-eastern coast. Particularly after the death of his wife in 1879, Chalmers threw his energies into exploration and contact with the coastal peoples, leaving to Lawes the consolidating work of teaching and translating. Because of Chalmers' unsurpassed knowledge of the country and its peoples, his services were used in 1884 during the ceremonies establishing the British protectorate, an exercise that Chalmers regarded with some ambivalence. In 1886-87 and 1894-95 he visited Britain on deputation, to be acclaimed as both missionary and explorer - the 'Livingstone of New Guinea'. He published several accounts of his work and travels.

Chalmers' bases took him progressively westward along the coast of British New Guinea, from Suau in the south-east, to Port Moresby, then Toaripi in the Gulf of Papua, Saguane in the Fly River delta and finally Daru. His second wife, a widow, Elizabeth Harrison (née Large), whom he married in 1888, joined him at Toaripi but died in October 1900 as she was being carried from their isolated, fever-saturated home at Saguane. Deeply depressed after her death and himself in broken health Chalmers set off on 4 April 1901 with a young colleague, Oliver Tomkins, and nine mission students for Goarihari Island where, on 8 April, they were clubbed to death and eaten by the inhabitants of Dopima village. Their deaths provoked two major punitive expeditions and the recovery of Chalmers' skull.

A flamboyant, impetuous and unconventional missionary, Chalmers, known as Tamate from the Rarotongan pronunciation of his name, was much loved by New Guineans and Europeans alike. Robert Louis Stevenson, who counted him a friend, wrote of him as 'a man whom I admire for his virtues and love for his faults.'

R Lovett, James Chalmers: His Autobiography and Letters (London, 1903); D Langmore, Tamate - a King: James Chalmers in New Guinea 1877-1901 (Melbourne, 1974); D Langmore, Missionary Lives. Papua, 1874-1914 (Honolulu, 1989)

DIANE LANGMORE