native tribes as well as between natives and visiting ships. Whippy deserted his ship in 1820 and lived among the cannibal Fijis for the rest of his life. The Fijis would sometimes capture the crew of a stranded ship for ransom, and eat them if they resisted. Whippy would try to rescue them but sometimes found only roasted bones. Ultimately he became American consul to Fiji, and left many descendants among the islands. There had always been a small number of castaways in the South Pacific since the earliest Spanish explorers, but the numbers increased dramatically in the early 19th century with the beginning of the whaling era circa 1819. It is estimated that 75% of beachcombers were sailors, particularly whalemen, who had jumped ship. They were predominantly British but with an increasing number of Americans, particularly in Hawaii and the Carolines. Perhaps 20% were English convicts who had been transported to Australia and escaped from the penal colonies there. It is estimated that in 1850 there were over 2,000 beachcombers throughout Polynesia and Micronesia.<ref>K.R.Howe, Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Ruler (1984), 103.</ref> The Polynesia and Melanesia communities were usually receptive to beachcombers and castaways who were absorbed into the local community, usually by formal adoption or by marriage, with the beachcombers and castaways often being considered a status symbol of the local chief. Beachcombers who returned to Europe conveyed tattoo styles of the Pacific islands. The social and commercial role of beachcombers ended when missionaries arrived, and with the growth of a commercial community with European (palagi) traders, resident on each island, who were the representatives of trading companies. Many beachcombers made the transition to becoming island traders. Other languages In Uruguay, a similar term has been naturalized into the Spanish form Bichicome. According to folk etymology, the word traces its origins to the English term and refers to poor or lower-class people. The Spanish form also draws on the similarities to the Spanish bicho (small animal/insect) and comer (eat). Similarly, the term has entered the Greek slang through sailors, in the form "pitsikómis" (πιτσικόμης). The Russian word бич (and a rarer form бичкомбер, бичкомер) appeared not later than 1930s, in the sense of temporarily unemployed sailor, hanging about in the port and living from hand to mouth; nowadays it means a vagabond or a hobo. Archaeology In archaeology