Review by Morag MacInnes
The Adventures of Jack Renton, a Victorian Sailor’s South Seas Odyssey Ceramics by Eric Marwick
25 Jun 2009 in Heritage, Orkney, Visual Arts & Crafts
Stromness Museum, Stromness, Orkney, until September 2009
Stromness Museum
OUR MUSEUM sits opposite George Mackay Brown’s council house. It’s a treasure house, an old fashioned place and all the better for it – stuffed with things sailors brought home – the cases all feel as if they are bursting at the seams and there’s none of this pretty pretty one-object-carefully-lit nonsense. It’s a celebration of Orkney-ness, there’s lots of it, and, in the time I was there, three separate groups of folk from abroad told the curator how wonderful they thought it was.
This exhibition looks at the extraordinary life of John Renton. His father was a tailor in Melvin Place (just down the road – a good location, near the Hudson Bay Company agent’s office – he got good business) – and his mother an island lass from Stroma. He was one of twelve children, and as soon as he could he went to deep sea sailing – India, Australia, China. Not an unusual story, for a local lad.
But Renton’s life took an unexpected turn. He signed onto a steamship bound for Sidney, and was shanghaied onto another, unseaworthy ship by a ‘crimper’ – a man paid to dope unsuspecting sailors. He woke up to find himself bound for McKeans Island in the middle of the Pacific, to quarry guano for fertiliser.
The tale reads like something just slightly sub-Moby Dick. There was an escape plan – the bosun and the three shanghaied prisoners stole provisions, a frying pan (someone was thinking ahead), a harpoon and a boat – and set out into the unknown. They had no navigational instruments, so they were directionless. They filled the sailcloths with water when it rained, and Renton landed a shark by using his legs as bait.
They spent 34 days on the open sea, only to land on Malataia, an island full of head hunters and cannibals. Renton was sold to a Chief – his ‘light skinned boy’ slave. As the property of Chief Kabou, he was allowed to bathe privately, in order not to display his pale privates; he wove palm leaves into a ball and introduced football to the Pacific. ‘If anyone harms this young man,’ the Chief said, ‘his backside will hang from my wall.’
He did get back home – as the sugar cane plantations opened up, European ships came by looking for workers – Renton wrote a message on a canoe with a charred stick, telling his story, and he was picked up.
In 1876 he came back to Kirkwall, but he never settled – folk talked about his love of swimming, and his amazing ability to hold his breath under water. He went back to Queensland, and died in a senseless native attack in 1878. His Chief went to Renton’s Pool – his bathing place – and ‘the whole village wept as he washed himself.’
There’s a picture of his own graffiti in a kirk pew; there’s the necklace of human teeth he was given to protect him; to keep his life sacred, as an adopted member of the Chief’s tribe. We see his parents; we see him; we see the hunting bows; and we see the ceramics inspired by the story.
Eric Marwick is a relative. If you live in a small community you learn the importance of connections. His grandfather was J G Marwick, who wrote the first book on Renton – The Adventures of John Renton. Eric wanted to ‘gladly embrace a tradition of figurative storytelling, that spans history, and whose purpose is to engage, communicate and enjoy.’
These little essays in storytelling, his ceramic pieces, are like netsuke – shiny, elegant, bright, Chinese, full of play and at the same time paying attention to the sharp end of the Renton story. They’re rhythmic – lots of arms and legs writhing about – and yet tidy. The colours are kind – blues and creams – but the faces have a medieval look to them. It’s caring, intelligent work, well worth looking at very carefully. They complement the exhibits perfectly. They’re small but perfect; there’s agony in some of them, and homecoming, and fear.
Who wouldn’t want to visit this place? An amazing story; artefacts; and a new take on an old tale. Stromness Museum is a hidden treasure, and the Renton exhibition is, typically, an understated, perfectly researched, carefully put together gem.
