HMS Sandfly was a schooner of the Royal Navy, built by John Cuthbert, Millers Point, New South Wales and launched on 5 December 1872.

In October, under Lieutenant W H Nowell, she seized the brig Aurora for breaching the Imperial Labour Act, which banned the practice of blackbirding.

A group of four islanders from Gaeta led by Vuria who was the son of Kalekona, a big man, saw them and attacked Bower and his party.

The surviving sailor managed to elude the attackers and swim 16 kilometres to Honggo on Nggela Pile where he was rescued and taken to safety by another islander.

Being unable to do so the crew of the Emerald set fire to numerous islanders houses, cut down fruit trees and destroyed canoes in reprisal for this and other incidents.

With this turn of events Bishop John Selwyn, who was visiting the islands intervened and persuaded Kalekona to give up the perpetrators, including his son.

[21] On 3 December 1892, while loading copra at Makira the Sandfly, under Captain Fitzgerald, was swept onto rocks by the tide and wrecked.

All 5 crew on board the Sandfly were able to leave the boat as the weather was calm at the time and make there way to the settlement on Ugi Island.

[23] In late September or early October 1886 the French steamer Decres notified authorities in Fiji that it had witnessed a volcanic eruption on Niuatoputapu, Tonga.