In November 1918, the first major disaster of Queen Sālote’s reign happened – the Spanish flu.
The ship Talune from the Union Steam Ship Company had arrived in Nuku’alofa on 12 November 1918, and quarantine regulations had not been properly enforced. It had also stopped at Fiji, Western Sāmoa, Vava’u and Ha’apai before arriving in Nuku’alofa. Within days, the first cases of influenza appeared in all the places the Talune had stopped. As the disease spread, all travel between the islands ceased.
Tonga has around 30 inhabited islands, and on some islands, the loss of life was so severe that no one was left to record the deaths.
In the Royal Palace, normally bustling with life, everything came to a stop, and it became deserted. People returned to their homes to look after their families or because they were sick themselves. The chief medical officer had gone to Fiji for supplies, and the medical officer of Vava’u was the only doctor left in the kingdom. On 25 November 1918, Queen Sālote’s yacht sailed to Fiji to look for help, but they were also hit hard by the epidemic and could not offer any help.
Queen Sālote’s government broke down and took no action to limit the effects of the epidemic. The Tongans looked after their own families, and missionaries of various denominations and other foreigners tried to organise food supplies and do whatever nursing was possible. The church bells of Nuku’alofa rang with each death but soon stopped as there were just too many. Young adults were particularly affected by the disease as they often left their beds too early to care for other relatives. They soon developed pneumonia, which became their ultimate cause of death.1
A person living in Tonga wrote, “The head Tongan dispenser in Nuku’alofa fell ill, and the hospital, with its stock of medicines, was closed. The disease spread everywhere. The people, accustomed to go several times a week to their gardens (farm allotments), lay sick and without food in their homes. Soon, the sick were dead and dying. A party of sailors from a British barque anchored in Nuku’alofa dug graves, and then a long trench for common burial. One or two Tongan ministers stayed in the cemetery to pray over the bodies brought in quick succession for burial. The dear familiar movement of everyday life was stilled.”2
Queen Sālote’s experience was recorded by Elizabeth Bott Spillius: “Her Majesty was upstairs with Tungī [her husband] and Taufa [the Crown Prince – four months old]. Tungi was very ill. For three days, he was unconscious, lying very still with his face very red and all smooth and shiny. Her Majesty was ill too, but had no fever. If she tried to walk, her knees bumped into each other, but she could feed Taufa and wash him and herself. Taufa wasn’t sick at all, and fortunately, he was very good and spent most of the time sleeping.”3
Queen Sālote’s stepmother, Queen Takipō, died during the epidemic at the age of only 25, leaving behind Queen Sālote’s six-year-old half-sister, Princess Fusipala. Almost all the families in Tonga had suffered a loss. The estimated death toll in Tonga was 8% of the population or around 2,000 people. In Western Sāmoa, the death toll was at a horrific 35%.
Queen Sālote and Tungī proposed to go on a royal progress through several villages, much to the horror of colonial administrator Islay McOwan, who warned that this would cause even more deaths. The chiefs of the villages would likely command sick villagers to prepare on a grand scale, and McOwan wrote a stern letter advising them to abandon the plan. Queen Sālote learned from the epidemic and was a main supporter of the establishment of the Department of Health the following year.
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