The White Headhunter

About this book

The true story of Jack Renton, a young Scots sailor shanghaied in San Francisco in 1868. Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, he was washed up on the shores of Malatia in the Solomon Islands - where he embarked upon an eight-year voyage into the heart of darkness. "Shanghaied in San Francisco in 1868, a teenage Scots sailor embarked upon a voyage into the heart of darkness. Jack Renton's remains the only authenticated account of a mental and physical ordeal that has haunted the Western imagination for centuries." "Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, he drifted for two thousand miles across the Pacific, only to be washed up on the shores of an island shunned by all nineenth-century mariners, Malaita in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes and possessions by a tribe of headhunters and was forced to 'go native' to survive. Initially a slave to their chief, Kabou, he eventually became the man's most trusted warrior and advisor, loved by him 'as my first-born son'. Renton's own account of his eight-year exile, published after he was rescued, caused a sensation, though it is now clear that it airbrushes out most of the key events that brought about this transformation." "And there the adventure might have been laid to rest, but for one fact - the Malaitans are enthusiastic oral historians, passing detailed stories down from generation to generation. Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent years talking to the Malaitans and piecing together a very different account from Renton's sanitized version."--BOOK JACKET.