Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), Saturday 29 April 1922, page 2


SAMOAN MILLIONAIRE

LEADS SIMPLE LIFE. DECKHAND ON WINDJAMMER. SYDUEY, To-day.

In Sydney -to-da(j- ene *i-e dapper e&d island crew of the Pacific * windjammer Ajax. Among the crew is one Peter Jennings, a. millionaire, but Peter doesnt care much about being a millionaire. He is

a big brown Satnoan, sad on a little Pacific Island that he owns— *n island where there is a fortune all for himaeS— mocey doesn't count for much after all. About 200 miles north of Samoa he owns, a cocoanut island called Genie Hermosa, a little speck of earth that has in some unaccountable way clipped through the dragset of mighty European nations. Thi6 little speck is worth weil over a million pounds. Each year it turn6 out about 1,000 tons of copra, and when copra is worth about £30 a ton, and the 40 men Korkiiig on the island live for the love of living, that U a handy little income. Peter doesn't seem to worry about it. A pressman fished him out from among bin mates down at the Sailors' Home in George Street North to-day, and asked h;m vrhy he was a seaman on a windjamjaer when Genye Hermosa was turning in a fortune for him up behind Samoa.

Peter laughed. ''You see,' he said, ?'I've only just got tbe island. The Ole ^fan died and left it to me, and I'm etQl a seaman with Cap'D Williams, but I'm aoin' to sign off as soon as I can. ' Then I'm goin' up to Genie Hermosa.' 'And what's happening to the island in the meantime, he was asked. 'Ob, me' brother's running it,' rVfaer explained. 'And how did your father come to possess it?' Peter_ looked surprised. 'The Ole Man 'ad it long long ago,' he fisid. P«t^r, of course, seemed anxious to get back to the islands, but it was net merely because the little speck of Gente Herfaoea. was making thousands of pounds a j^ear for him. In a few weeks be will be .back among the cocoanute with hfe 40 dusky mates, piling up the copra by the loo. There he will live in contentment— 1 about tbe only contested millionaire in I the woHd— because be is not so much a I jniilionaire as a Samoan living op an island with, the cocoanuts. ? , ,