‘and like children, they will get over it…’

Invincible Strangers 31 Chapter 13.5

By January 1919 the epidemic was done with Sāmoa even if people were to die of its effects months and years later. Nelson’s four-year-old son Ta’isi was among them, one of 2500 Sāmoan children to die.

‘Many families have been wiped out altogether, while a large number are only represented by very young children, on whom the epidemic has been rather lenient,’ Nelson said.

People were questioning how it had happened. Dermandt noted in his diary on 24 November: ‘The people are terribly depressed. Everywhere one hears the question: Why the hell did Peletania (Britain) let in here such a disease?’ Dermandt said a doctor had attended Talune, naming him as Lieutenant Frederick Appleby, a 25-year-old doctor who had only arrived in Sāmoa on Talune’s previous voyage, leaving Auckland on 21 September. He had only been registered as a doctor the previous May.