always friends with us and did not despise in the least a single one of us." Well liked by many, his name is still handed down from father to son, and in 1961, young Melanesians were still being named for him at baptism. In March 1864, Patteson visited Australia. In Sydney, he addressed a large meeting of British colonists, who pledged systematic support of the Melanesian Mission. Patteson devoted his private fortune to the mission, including money inherited from his father, and income from his Merton College fellowship. In 1867, he moved the Melanesian Mission to Norfolk Island, where it was called Saint Barnabas. In that milder climate, the school could continue in the winter months. Native foods, such as yams, could be grown so the students would feel more at home. Death The years of the slave trade in the late nineteenth century created problems for Patteson and other missionaries. Numerous merchantmen, known as "blackbirders", sailed to the islands to recruit, often by deception and force, labourers to work on plantations in Australia or Fiji, under extremely harsh conditions. Sometimes ship captains ordered crews to cut off the heads of resisters, selling the heads at other islands and entering into the headhunter cultures. The slave-trade was technically illegal in the South Pacific at that time, and the traders called the natives indentured workers. Laws for their protection and return to their home islands were rarely enforced; the men were severely treated and many died; thousands of others were abandoned in the work islands. Patteson worked with the colonial government to suppress the blackbirders and their trade. His task was made harder when traders from Australia began to visit the islands, keen to get men to go and work on their sugar plantations. Usually they kept the law and agreed proper terms of employment: but some simply kidnapped the islanders and carried them off in what became known as "snatch-snatch" boats. On 20 September 1871, Patteson was killed on the island of Nukapu in the Solomon Islands, where he had landed alone. At the time, it was thought that natives killed him as revenge for the abduction of five men by illegal blackbirders a few days before, who had also killed one man. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says that Patteson was taken for a blackbirder and killed, but the natives realised their mistake and treated his body with respect, as