The Strange Odyssey of Princess Louisa
A royal daughter from the Gambier Islands, held in forced labor in Port Townsend, finds her way to freedom through the help of a sympathetic sergeant.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Princess Louisa is a daughter of the king of Gambier Island. While visiting Tahiti in 1890, she was induced to take a voyage on the bark George Thompson to Australia. Capt. Barnston, who was to return her, instead brought her to Port Townsend, where he was a resident. Louisa declares she was held as a slave for eight months, brutally beaten, and forced to perform mean housework. She eventually escaped to Whatcom, where she met a Tahiti woman, but was forced to labor in a house of ill-repute. After coming to New Westminster, she met Sergt. Carty, who placed her in a respectable family. Carty proved the truth of her story, confirming her royal status, and secured funds from San Francisco to send her home. She departed on the steamer Umatilla, finally free from her captors.
“Louisa’s terrible tale awakened the sympathies of the stern old sergeant.”
This account of human trafficking and forced labor in the 1890s Pacific Northwest reveals the dark underbelly of the maritime industry, where colonial exploitation and local indifference allowed a foreign royal to be treated as a slave in our own ports. It serves as a stark reminder of the long history of systemic abuse against displaced women in the region.
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