Lockerby, partly to restore morale and also to show that his men who had so far served the guns could also fight, led an attack of six volunteers to the gate of the fort. Reaching the moat surrounding the stockade, the seamen were able to start several fires with the aid of lighted bamboo. But this was a type of attack that was well understood by the Tacilevu men, and the fires were just as quickly extinguished.
Rushing the gate, the seamen now started to fire through the narrow opening and were able to pick off their victims. Seeking a counter to this new threat, the defenders pulled down a section of the fence and poured through this large opening to take their attackers from the rear. Lockerby ordered his men to retreat and stayed with Berry to cover them. In a desperate battle he barely made his way back to the guns, wounded in the side. Berry was killed as he attempted to follow Lockerby's example.
In the confusion the fort defenders attacked again with a desperate rally but were content to break out to their hilltop allies and leave the fort deserted. Their resistance at last broken, they divided themselves into small groups and dispersed.
The battle, by the Fijian standards of that time, was now over. All that remained was to loot and fire the fort and collect the bodies of enemies for the cooking pots. When the men of Bua at last entered the fort they were finally convinced of the efficacy of firearms. Strewn around the defences were the bodies of more than two hundred defenders killed in positions where they would have been completely safe from all types of Fijian weapons.
During the huge cannibal feast that followed, the men from the ships gave Berry a Christian burial. The enemy being not only bested, but dispersed, the sandal-wood trade could now continue, and the thoughts of the sailors switched rapidly from conquest to commerce.
Lockerby procured a cargo for the Favourite and, when she sailed, stayed on to perform a like function for the General Wellesley. He was well paid by both ships. After an arduous collecting voyage during which he was nearly lost when his boat was driven on a reef during a gale, he finally departed from Fiji in the latter ship.
As though the period on the sandalwood coast were not sufficient for his adventurous spirit, he left the ship at Canton and shipped as first lieutenant on a Chinese river gunboat, and then returned to Boston to claim his wages from Dorr and Company, where he met his former captain and was formally paid off.
He sold a chart of Sandalwood Bay which he had surveyed. The original has been lost but it may have been the basis of the chart of Bligh's Islands produced in 1814 by Arrowsmith of London. With a rough outline of some of the islands and the tracks of Bligh on his two voyages and of the missionary vessel Duff, the chart shows Sandalwood Bay in some detail.
Lockerby was therefore present at the first full-scale use of firearms in Fijian wars. He could probably have stayed on and become a great chief, but he preferred to return home where he ended his days, a prosperous merchant, writing his memoirs and leaving a description of this early use of powder ball and shot.
Sa duidui na kaiualagi. White men are different from each other indeed, and not all men would lose the chance to lead the Fijians in battle, or to take the honours and titles that would follow.
Soldier of Fortune (1808-13)
Lockerby and the men of the sandalwood ships had shown the Fijians the power of the musket and the cannon and their advantages over the primitive weapons of the Fijians. But the seamen had used their ammunition in such a wasteful way that no Fijian chief could think of employing this new arm himself, without a shipful of reserve supplies on which to draw. Furthermore, no Fijian could be persuaded to carry these arms into battle. Lockerby once did persuade Tui Bua to discharge a pistol, but the latter never again attempted this.
Even so, had Lockerby desired the position, he and his friend Tui Bua could have built up a large stock of arms and armament stores from the sandalwood ships, and made themselves masters of the sandalwood coast with the help of beachcombers and deserters, whose numbers were already increasing. But Lockerby, although brave and resourceful enough in battle, was not anxious to stay and be the commander in chief of the forces of Bua; he wanted mostly to return to his home and desired no native lands or title.
Tui Bua, his lands already showing the depredation of the sandalwood cutters, had only a short time left in which to trade before all his assets would be gone. This he did not realize, nor did he heed the lessons he had taught his enemies. He never regained the power that had been his before the attack on Tavea.
But another chief was to learn and utilize the advantages of the new arm of warfare through another sailor, who not only waged war on the chief's behalf but also was able to service and repair the weapons he used.
This chief was Ratu Naulivou Radonodono, or Ra Matenikutu (the lice killer), and chief of Bau, and his gunner was to become famous as Charlie Savage.
Little is known of Savage's early days except that he was Swedish and hailed from Udwala. His real name was Kalle Svenson, the first name becoming easily corrupted to Charlie when he subsequently served on American or British ships. He arrived in Fiji in the American brig Eliza in june, 1808, while Lockerby was at Bua. Savage had joined the ship at Tongatapu a few days previously, having been beachcombing in Tonga, for how long is not known, but at least long enough to acquire a smattering of the language of Tonga and a few words of Fijian. There were at that time a considerable number of whites in Tonga-shipwrecked sailors, deserters and beachcombers. It is not certain from which of these categories Savage was recruited, but he appears to have been a competent seaman as well as an interpreter for the Eliza after the brig was wrecked at Nairai.
It is probably at about this period that he had adopted the name "Savage" which may have been the diminutive of a nickname "Charlie the Savage." His later actions seem to bear out the possession of a roistering, undisciplined character. Anyone earning such a name among the depraved men on the beach would have had to be as fierce and ruthless as Savage was shortly to prove himself to be.
When the Eliza was wrecked the crew was, for a while, marooned at the village of Lawaki on Nairai Island. Soon afterward, the captain persuaded the chief to allow him to take the whaleboat and some of the officers and crew to try to reach Sandalwood Bay about eighty miles away. During this period on the island, Savage lived with the Tui Lawaki away from the remainder of the crew. The men complained bitterly of their treatment at Lawaki, but the red-haired giant Swede as the chief's guest was suffering no such discomforts. He seemed to have had the knack of getting along well with Fijians. When the other crewmen left to go to the island of Batiki, Savage stayed on as the chief's guest, though he had left the island before the captain of the Eliza returned in his attempt to recover the lost dollars.
While Savage was living in splendour at Nairai, an impressive fleet of canoes called there, manned by Levuka people, a clan that formerly resided at Bau but which was now scattered all over the islands. Under their chief, Daulakeba, they were on their way from Lakeba to install the Vunivalu of Bau, Ratu Naulivou, as Tui Levuka.
Daulakeba suggested to Tui Lawaki that he should take the vigorous red-haired young man, who was so attractively coloured, to serve the Vunivalu. So when the fleet sailed from Nairai in the chief's canoe there traveled a young man far from his own home and people, entering an almost unknown world. For Bau was at that time a small chieftaincy surrounded by larger and much more powerful neighbours-Rewa and Verata.
Ratu Naulivou had had several of his canoes aiding the enemies of Tui Bua, and his warriors had brought back reports of the superiority of firearms over the conventional weapons of the Fijians. On arrival at Bau, Savage was quick to realize the ambitions of Ratu Naulivou