New Museum Acquisition - convict made chest of drawers

The Norfolk Island Museum Trust recently purchased a convict made chest of drawers that had been locally put up for tender. Made of Norfolk Island Pine it is stamped BO ↑ CD. The BO is for the Board of Ordnance and CD Commissariat Department. The broad arrow was used as an identification of British government property. As the museum is located in the basement of the Commissariat - it has made its way ‘home’ to the building it would have been issued from!

The Museum Trust were able to make this purchase as a result of accumulated profits from the Trial of the Fifteen play and the arrangement made by the late Peter Clarke, the author of the play, on how they could be expended. Peter’s son Stephen now holds the rights to the play and each year he agrees with the Trust on a program of expenditure. This year that included the purchase of acquisitions for the museum collection. It is so gratifying to see such a direct link between the efforts of the Museum to Produce, our Actors to perform, visitors purchasing tickets each week - and our collection.

Its purchase complements a few other pieces of furniture that also show similar markings including two convict settles or bench seats.  Most likely these were made for the verandahs of the houses and buildings for the Officers.  One of the settles has graffiti on it from an officer of the 99^th Regiment stationed here during the 2^nd Settlement.  The other piece is a cedar table that is actually part of a sectional table and may date from as early as 1825. While we don’t know the date that the chest of drawers was made, we will be researching its design to see if we can identify the most likely period. 

 Broad arrows are on many of the items in the museum collection. Being found in possession of marked objects without good cause was a serious offence. The symbol has been documented back to the 16th century to mark Royal property, and was occasionally referred to as a ‘Royal cipher’. An 1806 proclamation stated that:

“The Board having been pleased to direct that in future all descriptions of Ordnance Stores should be marked with the broad arrow as soon as they shall have been received as fit for His Majesty’s Service; all Storekeepers and Deputy Storekeepers and others are desired to cause this order to be accordingly attended to, in the Department under their direction, reporting to the Board in all cases when articles are received to which this mark cannot be applied”. [28th July 1806. Quoted from the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps website]

As a result the broad-arrow mark appears on everything from furniture to cooking pots and cutlery, packing crates and barrels, construction materials from timber to bricks and tools – and convict clothing. However an object that has a broad arrow on it doesn’t necessarily mean it has an association with convicts.

What is the story of this object?

One of the delights of working at the Norfolk Island Museum is that we get to immerse ourselves in Norfolk’s never-ending stories that range from the time of Polynesian settlement, through two penal settlements and of course since the arrival of the Pitcairn Islanders in 1856. At the Museum we also have our displays and collection of artefacts that help to us to understand and tell those stories. However our stories are never really complete – new information and objects continue to come forward and we know that at the museum we need the help of our local community to tell us about the objects they have that are ‘part of the story’.

 Danny Forsyth has recently helped us to do just that! He brought in a stone object that was discovered under his house back in the late 1990’s. It looks to be a stone pestle or pounder – the same sort of object as we have on display and on loan from the Museum of Tropical Queensland that was recovered from the wreck of the Pandora, possibly belonging to mutineer Peter Haywood and collected by him in Tahiti. As Danny’s object looks to be old the first thought we had was that it could have been a pounder from the Polynesian settlement on Norfolk. We have never seen a similar type of pounder found on Norfolk from this period – which would make this an extremely important object and help with more of the story from this period of time. We were obviously thrilled to have been shown it.

There are many questions that this object raises. Firstly, pestles are not usually made of sandstone – but perhaps it was used for mashing rather than pounding so it didn’t need to be made of a harder substance such as coral or basalt? We also need to establish if it is made of the local calcaronite, and if it is not from here – then where? The shape is unusual and not typically Polynesian. It has a rather flat top to it and the base kicks out right at the bottom – both of which are uncommon in Polynesian pestles. However a search through the Te Papa Museum on-line collection in Wellington shows a very similar shaped pestle from the Cook Islands with a flat top – is it linked to this region? A search of Melanesian shaped pestles may rule out if it was perhaps brought to the island by a scholar from the Mission. Another idea is that it may have been made locally by one of the early Pitcairn Islanders. A small indentation at the top of the neck could have been a scratch mark? Atholl Anderson who led the 1990’s Polynesian excavations at Emily Bay has seen photos of it and is unsure about its Polynesian origins but is checking with his colleagues at the Australian National University.

We would love to know if any other similar shaped objects have been found across the island. We would really appreciate the opportunity to have a look at any further pieces to help us not only make sense of Danny’s object, but to potentially expand our knowledge of the Polynesian settlement on Norfolk Island. Danny’s pestle will be on display at the Commissariat Store Museum in the Polynesian cabinet if you would like to come and have a look. If you have found a similar type of object please consider giving me a call on 23788 so we could see it, take a photo and do some more research. You never know, together with Danny you might be providing an important new chapter to one of our Island’s stories.