Meeting on paradise
ON a coral strip, padded with white sand, studded with coconut trees, fringed by a reef and trailed by a great lagoon, Elizabeth Jean Dods found la dolce vita (the good or sweet life in Italian).
Her posting to Tarawa in the then Gilbert and Ellice Islands as secretary to the resident commissioner of what now constitutes the Republic of Kiribati almost immediately after the World War II brought her to the island paradise.
An oasis in the middle of a great and unrelenting ocean, Ms Dods found tranquillity in the beauty of her surrounds, contentment in her own company and friendship in the company of others who called this paradise home.
It is also here that our story of Ms Dod’s life takes a swashbuckling turn because it was also on this atoll that she found love.
Exactly a year after her arrival on Tarawa a new captain had been appointed to the Tungaru, one of the Colony’s ships, which travelled around collecting copra and taking supplies to the communities that made up the population of islands.
She was invited to a dinner party at one of the British officer’s residences one evening and one of the guests was the new captain.
“It took only a few hours to establish a friendship which blossomed under the stars in a setting even Somerset Maugham could not have imagined,” she said of her first encounter with Captain Stanley Branson Brown.
As profiled by Brett Hilder in the July 1968 edition of the Pacific Islands Monthly, Captain Brown was born in England on October 9, 1914.
“He was educated there and served an apprenticeship in marine engineering, which has stood him in good stead since,” Mr Hilder wrote of the good captain.
In 1936 he went to sea in tramp steamers until April 1941, when he joined the Fiji Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and saw active service in the Solomons and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
After the war he became the master of the Tungaru and began work in his element, serving the people of the colony aboard his command.
So seated at this dinner table, Ms Dods – as she was still known then – discovered the captain to be full of surprises, kindness and a great sense of humour – he would have to have had one!
“He loved jazz, all the sports, swimming and diving and a passion for reading,” she said.
“Last but not least, a love for the sea and ships.
“He found I loved reading, playing the piano, reading and poetry.”
Their meeting that evening at a dinner party with full English table etiquette being observed is a moment in time for Ms Dods
“That evening stays in my memory.
“There was that instance of the meeting of two complete strangers.”
She was on Tarawa for a year, the only single white lady among five bachelors who were just a few years older than her, but there was just no igniting spark – no magic.
“Apart from drinks at my house and simple chatting, there was no romance.”
And then here she was, seated next to this man of the sea.
Within half an hour of them being seated together, they began dancing to the whimsical jazz of Louis Armstrong and talked until scolded by their hostess to break it up and be sociable. “There was magic in the air. “After dinner, he walked me home and said goodnight and left for Betio Island with a request that he might return again.”
Their friendship grew, and she found he had married a young war widow, Betty Moore, during the last year of the war and when peace was declared he decided to accept an offer to run the Government hill station at Nadarivatu – based on the hill stations where the colonial wives could go in the summer months.
Captain Brown and Ms Moore had two children who he adored, but the marriage did not work out and she decided to leave Nadarivatu and return to Suva.
Captain Brown resigned from his job at Nadarivatu and went after his wife to try and salvage his marriage, but he was unsuccessful.
Having had his stuffing knocked out of him, the captain confided in a friend who worked in the Western Pacific High Commission. This friend suggested he return to his element, to go back to sea. Being privy to the needs of the colony in the British western Pacific, this friend informed Captain Brown that one of the Gilbert and Ellice Island ships was due to sail there in a fortnight and needed a mate.
And in May 1947, Captain Brown sailed into the lagoon and arrived on Tarawa.
Mrs Brown said they spent two years “blossoming” their “friendship”.
“Quite unorthodox. He was away from Monday to Friday but nearly always managed to return for the weekend.
“After securing his ship and leaving his mate in charge, he would come across the lagoon for Saturday night, either to go out to dinner or to just sit and talk on the white beach with the moon somewhere in the sky. Or cycle up the island for the day.”
One evening they were walking back to her house and just talking generally when she said she heard him utter the “and I am sure we could make a go of it”.
“I thought ‘was he asking me to marry him’?”
It turned he was.
“I was quite startled.”
In Suva, while growing up under the watchful eye of her aunt, Mrs Brown had observed that girls had boyfriends, which entailed going down to the hall where a group organised entertainment for them in the form of dancing and supper, then a walk home to the gate and sometimes a quick kiss.
“In my case, my aunt watched over us like a hawk and we were always home by 10pm where she would be sitting up, waiting for us. I had never thought beyond the next event and suddenly I was confronted with the idea of getting married.”
They decided to do so in Tarawa, but that train ran expressly off the tracks as someone sent unsigned letters to the Captain saying when he left port, one of the administrative officers would take his place.
It’s hard to imagine Mrs Brown angry, but she said she hit the roof. She had often been viewed suspiciously by the wives, who believed she was plotting to steal their husbands, but this was the most outrageous thing she had heard and the last straw.
Adamant on leaving her life there behind, she booked her passage on the next trip to Suva, and the plan changed to be married in Suva. She had resigned as they were to live on Betio Island when they were married and she would be losing her house.
It was furnished by the colonial government and on departure day she only had to pack up her few belongings.
Other than her maid, Maria, drinking all the remaining liquor from the cabinet and causing a big ruckus, and one of the administrative officers who was also leaving on the same boat asking her to marry him as they sailed out of the lagoon – it was not a very eventful day.
She watched Captain Brown as the ship pulled away from the wharf at Betio and began the voyage to Suva.
He sent a telegram to his friend Don Aidney to meet the ship and look after Mrs Brown until he followed on the Tungaru two weeks later as it was due for a six week refit – in time for him to take over again after their honeymoon.
So they married in Suva in 1952, and flew to New Zealand for their honeymoon on one of the old Sunderland Flying Boats, where after only a week into their honeymoon he agreed to skipper a yacht in the Auckland to Hobart trans-Tasman yacht race.
“He accepted with alacrity and off they went, but as ever he returned to finish the honeymoon.” Sailors always have two loves. “Once you agree to share that life, everything falls into place.”
Farewells and reunions were constant in their life.
Mrs Brown remembers the man she gave her heart to as a remarkable one, who loved life and lived it to the full.
“He had humour, compassion, and determination in all tasks he undertook. He had an old fashioned view on behaviour, a sense of honour and love for all his family. Our life together was full of changes, surprises, fun and great happiness.”
■