BLACK BILLY is the story of a young samoan boy who was blackbirded from his island home in 1851, at eleven years of age. Rescued by the whaling ship, Lallah Rookh, from the slaver, Velocity, he was dropped at the aboriginal settlement of Putalina, Oyster Cove, Tasmania. There, he took the anglicised name of William Henry Smith from a convict and befriended a young aboriginal, Billy Lanne, who would become the last male Tasmanian aboriginal and who's body would be mutilated in the name of science by the medical and political establishment of Tasmania in a futile effort to prove or disprove, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The two Billy's would be known as King Billy and Black Billy and served on William Lodewick Crowther's whaling ships, and were present on the whaling barque Offley on the ill fated voyage to Desolation Island in the Southern Ocean.
Following the death and mutilation of Billy Lanne, William, (Black Billy) would go on to serve on more than a dozen whaling ships and would be mentioned as the saviour of many shipwrecked sailors but could not escape the half caste tag placed upon him by society. He would rise to the position of Master of ocean going vessels (Captain) of the Marie Laure (pronounced Marii Lowery) and sail the oceans in search of the great Tafola, the giant sperm whale. With his family at his side, they were happy days until the demise of the Tasmanian whaling industry saw him impoverished and heartbroken, before a chance discovery saw him recover his prominence once again.