On 17 April Captain Bully Hayes (the notorious blackbirder) arrived on the brig Rona, with 109 islanders from Niue (then known as Savage Island) who were being transported to Tahiti. Hayes agreed to rescue Sterndale and the islanders, notwithstanding the Rona was already crowded, with Sterndale and the Islanders being delivered to Rakahanga (Reirson island), from where they eventually were able to travel to Tahiti. Sterndale sold the pearl shell, beche-de-mer, copra and equipment to Hayes. Sterndale later discovered that Evans had travelled to Samoa and sold the ship and departed to Sydney, and concealed that Sterndale and the islanders were on Suwarrow with a limited supply of provisions and no boats capable of leaving the island. In 1876 the atoll was leased to Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, which built a wharf, installed a light on a wooden pyramid, and commenced to gather mother of pearl. The firm's agent, Handley B. Sterndale, in 1877 enacted a dubious transfer to his colleague William J. Hunt, who in turn offered in 1886 to sell the island to Russia. British sovereignty was proclaimed 22 April 1889. In 1903 the atoll was leased to Lever Brothers, "for the purpose of removing guano or other fertilising substances therefrom, and of planting the land with coconuts, and for collecting pearl-shells, and for other purposes of a like nature." They maintained about thirty persons on the island until a cyclone in 1914 so severely damaged operations that the island was abandoned. In April 1890 Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson, and her son Lloyd Osbourne were passengers on the trading steamer Janet Nicoll, which called at Suwarrow during a trading cruise around the central Pacific. The journal of Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson was published under the title The Cruise of the Janet Nichol. Jack Buckland was also a passenger on Janet Nicoll; he later returned to Suwarrow to be the island trader. During World War II, Robert Dean Frisbie and several Coastwatchers lived on the largest islet, Anchorage. Frisbie wrote about his experiences in The Island of Desire. In 1942, a cyclone washed away 16 of the 22 islets in the atoll. The coastwatchers left a hut with water tanks behind, and left wild pigs and chickens on the islet. Later, cats were allowed to run wild on Anchorage Island, to control Polynesian rats which were documented to occur there since the island was discovered