Alexander Salmon

An example of this was Captain Henry Byam Martin, commander of HMS Grampus, who in 1847 described Salmon as, "... a low swindling bankrupt Jew from London."

Considered one of the highest ranking chiefesses in the land, she was head of the Teva clan, the traditional rivals of the Pōmare family, and descended from Chief Amo and Queen Purea who received the first European explorer to Tahiti Samuel Wallis in 1767.

For four decades from the 1840s, the Alexander Salmon and John Brander families, who were of English, Scottish and Tahitian ethnicity, were important socially, commercially and politically in Tahiti.

Commercial naivety, familial distrust, poor staff management and infighting over inheritances led to the disappearance of the clan within a generation.

This adventurer rose late, dressed theatrically in calico and trinkets, assumed a dictatorial tone in conversation, and was evidently on excellent terms with himself.