This is the story of an rather unusual emigration. In 1853 the young 33 year-old sea captain Niklas Hedström left Myckleby on the island of Orust in Sweden for Austrailia. There he sailed as skipper of his own ship the Hercules, and later other vessels, earning money from the freight traffic between Australia, New Zealand, India and the Philippines. He married in 1868 and moved, with his young wife, to Fiji where he planned a future as a plantation owner growing cotton. Things did not work out as planned, cuclones damaged newly planted crops, the couple’s young daughter died of dysentery and to cap everything up they were attacked by cannibals.
But Niklas soon had a new career as harbour master and pilot in the then capital of Fiji, Levuka. Here the couple raised four children, of whom the oldest, Maynard , was to become a successful buisnessman and founder of the South Pacific’s largest trading company. In 1922 Sir Maynard was the first Fijian to be knighted by the British King.
