Garove Island

Garove is the largest of the Vitu Islands, north of New Britain in the Bismarck Sea. These waters attracted an ambitious American trading venture in the 1830s. Benjamin Morrell hoped to exchange iron, beads, mirrors and cutlery for pearl shell, pearls, dried sea cucumbers, gold and sandalwood, and eventually establish a trading colony on Garove.

His plans depended on relationships with neighbouring islanders. In 1830 he had abducted Dako, the son of an important leader on Uneapa, and taken him to America. Dako returned on Morrell's later expedition, which reached the Bismarck Archipelago in November 1834. Through him, Morrell developed trading connections with communities on New Britain, the Siassi Islands and the New Guinea mainland. The proposed Garove colony remained an ambition: Morrell stopped visiting the region after 1835, and his ship was wrecked off Madagascar on its homeward voyage. Garove's waters lay within an existing island trading world that foreign merchants sought to enter and redirect.