Pago Pago, American Samoa, January 1968

When we left Apia, the famous Samoan hotelier Aggie Grey boarded the Tofua to travel to Auckland. An excited dance troupe performed on the wharf to farewell her.  In the past there had been hearsay rumours that Aggie had been the model for both James Michener’s Bloody Mary in Tales of the South Pacific and Sadie Thompson in Somerset Maugham’s Rain but neither of these rumours were ever substantiated and both highly unlikely. With regards to Somerset Maugham, he visited the Samoas well before Aggie’s time. Aggie had established Aggie Grey’s Hotel in Apia in 1933 and, during World War Two, it had catered for American servicemen stationed in Samoa. It has been a popular institution ever since. Keith and I visited the hotel bar during our time in Apia.

Dance troup performing on the wharf at Apia, January 1968

 Our next port of call was Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila and capital of American Samoa.  This is, perhaps, the best deep-water harbour in the Pacific, and is dominated by Rainmaker Mountain which lived up to its name. The town is one of the wettest in the Pacific and was the inspiration of a short story by Somerset Maugham, appropriately called Rain, written in 1920: “It was not like our soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed.”

One of the world’s longest single-span cable-cars, built a couple of years earlier to service a TV transmitter, trundled across the harbour and up Mt Alava but unfortunately, for unknown reasons, was not operating on the day of our visit.

The cable car over the harbour at Pago Pago, American Samoa  1968

The Tofua arrived in Pago Pago about the same time as the American cruise ship Mariposa operated by Matson Lines which, along with its sister-ship Monterey, regularly sailed to New Zealand and Australia via the Pacific Islands. Our ship was moored close to the Intercontinental Hotel and we were able to use the hotel swimming pool as a welcome relief from the hot muggy tropical heat. During the morning, we walked along a surprisingly vehicle-clogged road to a park in central Pago Pago to watch as a belated Father Christmas (who had arrived on the Mariposa) distributed presents to a large gathering of excited Samoan children.  

Gathering in central Pago Pago to meet  a belated Father Christmas  January 1968

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

                Excerpt from my book  One Step in Front of the Other - First Steps