Vitu Islands

The Vitu Islands /ˈviːtuː/ are a volcanic group with an area of 37 sq mi (96 km2) located in the Bismarck Sea off New Britain, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

The resulting tsunami reached 100 metres on impact on Ningau, wiping out all but two persons of the lowest-lying of three villages - Goru - (they were absent on Garove) and caused major disruption and reduction of population over a wide area of the north coastal areas of New Britain and quite possibly New Guinea and the Western Islands group, plus other islands.

[citation needed] In German times prior to World War I this was - outside of Kokopo, at Rabaul - the stomping ground and major enterprise of the American-Samoan, Queen Emma, whose island group H/Q was Langu plantation, Vitu, and whose manager, a Dane named Peter Hansen, became quite famous for his retinue of concubines, some 26 in number,[1] this the more surprising as the male:female birth ratio in Vitu proper was of the order of 103 males:100 females post-weaning.

That is reversed upon Unea, and the social doyens of the upper Witus are or were the ladies happily bride-stolen by the Mundua and Witu lads on wife raids, there being no bride price to pay, and this keeping the populations pretty much stable and balanced wrt genders and genetic make-up.

Nonetheless, Coast-Watch activities proceeded, and one Tumbuan Tuagolo, or "Talasea" of Mundua acted as guide to Eric Feldt within the New Britain area.

One of the greater claims to international fame of Vitu is that a daughter of the Langu manager for the Coote family, and later, owner, Richard {"Dick"] Doyle became Miss Nuigini.

Under the German Roman Catholic mission at Vuonopope, Kokopo, a mission was established inside the caldera which is the bulk of Garove, a wise choice considering the Group's exposure and sea-states at times of both the NW Monsoon and the SE Trades, the island comprising basically at places only the precipitous higher ground of the caldera rim.