Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

Next day, in Sydney, I checked with the newspaper offices, but to turn up any story they might have run on the amount of the insurance paid out on the Holland Trader meant searching page by page through the file copies for the last months of 1911 and probably most of 1912 as well. They suggested I contact Lloyd’s agents. This I did, and within the hour they phoned me back to confirm that the Holland Trader had been insured with a Lloyd’s syndicate. The claim was for £8,900, and it had been met in full. Payment, however, had been delayed owing to the owner having been on board and the need to wait for his will to be proved. Settlement had finally been made on January 4, 1913. And they added that, since the ship was a total loss, the Lutine Bell had been rung for her.

I got the name of the Lloyd’s syndicate from them and turned the whole thing over to the solicitors who were looking after the Munnobungle sale for me. The information was sufficient for them to get an injunction in the High Court in Port Moresby restraining the government from impounding any of Hans Holland’s assets pending proof of ownership. That was on August 18, and two days later the LCT was loading copra off a beach in the north of Bougainville for delivery to Rabaul. She sailed with Mac as Master and Perenna on board to keep an eye on him.

It was, in fact, most fortunate that we were successful in freeing the vessel without immediate payment, for I had by then discovered that it was impossible for us as foreigners to obtain a loan in Australia. A few days later I had another piece of luck — quite by accident I was able to arrange a cargo for the ship at Rabaul, a consignment of road-building equipment urgently needed in Guadalcanal. If I hadn’t been invited to the City Club sauna, I wouldn’t have heard about that cargo, and it occurred to me then that Sydney was probably the key to the successful operation of an LCT in the South West Pacific. I rented a room in Strathfield, between the Parramatta Road and the Hume Highway, installed a telephone and within a week I was in business, booking cargoes forward.

Booking them was one thing; however, getting paid for them quite another, and it didn’t take me long to realise we had a cash flow problem. Fuel bills and running costs had to be met, and by the end of September the ship was in Lae and unable to proceed to Madang for her next cargo because of an unpaid fuel bill. By reducing the freight charge, I was able to get payment in advance, but with legal charges to meet and the bank insisting we clear our overdraft, there was only one thing to do if the Holland Line was to survive. That was to return to England and sell everything we had. For Perenna it meant the wood carvings as well as the stamps, also a few other mementoes she had kept out of the Aldeburgh sale; for me it was my boat, my car, my own collection of stamps and the Solomons Seal sheet I had taken from the safe at Madehas.

I had already been notified that Josh Keegan’s big autumn stamp auction was fixed for the two days commencing October 24, and when I phoned him to say I now had a full sheet of sixty of the Solomons Seal ship labels, he said he would decide whether to include them in the auction when he had seen them; he advised me to bring them in my hand luggage, packed flat and in cellophane, and to take great care of them. He had sounded sufficiently interested for me to think we might just scrape together enough to give us the working capital we needed.

Perenna arrived in Sydney on October 20, the day before we were due to fly to England. Those few hours we had together should have been a carefree, happy interlude. The LCT was at sea, Mac was still sober and I had booked sufficient cargoes to keep the vessel going for three months. Also, Perenna had at last got some good news about Tim. The nursing home had written to say that he was much improved, had quite suddenly thrown off his lethargy and was now getting about with the aid of a frame support. But though we did our best, a sense of happy abandon was difficult to achieve, our mood overshadowed all the time by the knowledge that we were both of us putting everything into pawn for the sake of a single aged and rusting ship. We discussed it endlessly. We couldn’t help ourselves.

To my surprise we were met at Heathrow by Tubby Sawyer. I didn’t need to ask him why he was there. Almost the first thing he asked me, after I had introduced him to Perenna and she had gone to phone the nursing home, was whether there were any more sheets of the Solomons Seal, and when I told him all the rest were burned, he said, ‘Marvellous! That’s marvellous! You can tell me all about it as we drive down to the country. But first Josh wants to see you. He’s made the sheet a separate lot and included it in the catalogue.’

Perenna came back radiant. ‘I spoke to him. He even came to the phone himself. He’s so much better.’ Tubby was leading us out to the car park. ‘I’m to ring up again this evening. They say I can see him tomorrow. And to think at one time I despaired of ever seeing him alive again!’

At his office in the Strand, Josh Keegan greeted Perenna as though she were some sort of princess. ‘I have to tell you, dear lady, you’ve made my first big auction. I’ve had acceptances from just about every dealer of importance. I don’t know what it’s going to fetch, that little collection — your great-uncle’s, isn’t it? — but there’s no doubt about the interest it has aroused. I’m serving champagne. There! I’m a businessman, Miss Holland, and I don’t do a silly, show-off thing like that unless I’m on to a winner. And we will have a bottle right now. It’s the best thing after a long flight.’ And as one of the girls came in with a bottle and four glasses on a plastic tray decorated with Penny Blacks under Perspex, he turned to me and in quite a different voice said, ‘Now, where is the sheet? I want to see it.’

While I was getting it out of my briefcase, he picked up a copy of the catalogue, which was lying on his desk, and held it up for us to see. ‘There you are. I’ve taken a chance on what you told me on the phone from Sydney.’ And there it was, on the cover — a reproduction of the two Solomons Seal proofs under the heading: The Incredible Has Finally Happened , and then, below the facsimile of the proofs: The only remaining sheet (60) of the blue Solomons Seal Ship Label is being delivered to the J. S. H. Keegan offices from Sydney in time for this unique auction offering — design collection, proofs, and resulting sheet of the most startling transplant ever perpetrated. ‘There!’ he exclaimed again. ‘You can’t say I haven’t done you proud, eh?’

It was Perenna who asked him what it was all about, but he laughed and shook his head, looking like a learned professor in a relaxed moment as he toasted her, raising his glass and smiling. ‘Commander Sawyer — Tubby — he’s driving you down to Essex, I gather. He’ll explain it.’ And he added hastily, ‘But I think I must say this: The fact that it has aroused a great deal of interest doesn’t mean they’ll bid the price up to a ridiculous figure. They’re businessmen, all of them, and a glass of champagne or two won’t stop them keeping their feet firmly on the ground. We’ve got them to the auction. What happens then … ’ He shrugged. ‘Now, that sheet please.’

By then I had got it out of my briefcase, and he stood looking at it in silence for a long time, the magnifying glass screwed in his eye. Then he shook his head. ‘Pity! All those blotches, and only part original gum. Pity it isn’t mint. If it were in mint condition … ’ He hesitated. ‘But then, I don’t know. Maybe it’s better like this. It’s so obviously been in the heat and humidity of the Solomons. Yes, better perhaps, more real-looking, more genuine. And a nice shade of blue, a genuine Perkins Bacon blue.’ And he winked at Tubby, laughing quietly to himself. ‘It really is quite humorous. He’ll tell you. Very funny indeed. Perkins Bacon, of all people. Such a stuffy, banknote sort of outfit. Theft, forgery … you tell ‘em, Tubby. That’s what I said to Mr Slingsby here when he came to see me months ago, I said I wouldn’t spoil it for you, so you tell ‘em — later.’ He re-filled Perenna’s glass and said, ‘You’ll be attending the auction, I hope, Miss Holland? It could make quite a bit, that sheet.’