Gerald Gallagher

Gerald B. Gallagher was a British colonial officer of Irish extraction who was assigned to the Crown Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, arriving in 1937. He subsequently became Administrator of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, and was responsible (with Magistrate Koata and other colonists) for the 1940 discovery of human bones on Nikumaroro that may have been Earhart's. See "Gallagher of Nikumaroro: The Last Expansion of the British Empire" by TIGHAR's lead archeologist, Tom King.

"Gerald B. Gallagher is the twenty-nine year old Colonial Service cadet who has recently been made Officer-In-Charge of the new Phoenix Island Settlement Scheme. Known to his fellow officers as Irish and to the Gilbertese islanders as Karaka, Gallagher is a remarkable character. He is well over six feet tall, a Roman Catholic (unusual in the Colonial Service), and utterly dedicated to the impoverished islanders who are trying to carve out a life on the previously uninhabited islands of Sydney, Hull and Gardner in the Phoenix Group. Colonial officer Eric R. Bevington describes Gallagher as 'the most Christ-like man I’ve ever known.' Gallagher and Bevington had come out from England as Cadet Officers together in the spring of 1937."[1]

• A Gallagher photo gallery (family photos).
• Gallagher’s Eighth Progress Report, July – September, 1940.
• Gallagher’s Ninth Progress Report, October – December, 1940.
• Clues to location of bones site.
• Dr. Macpherson's Report on the Death of Gerald Gallagher.
• Inventory of Gallagher's Effects: box contents.
• Inventory of items in Gallagher's house.
• A letter to Gallagher from Ruby Margetts.

Gallagher's Burial Service (1941)

"The coffin was draped with a new Union Jack and was carried on the shoulders of representative numbers of Europeans, Fijians, Ellice Islanders and Gilbertese.

"At the graveside Lieut-Commander Mullins read the burial service of the Roman Catholic Church and the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” was sung by the Europeans present. Lieut-Commander Mullins spoke a few simple and appropriate words (a copy of which have already been given to His Excellency). The Protestant natives sang a hymn in Ellice, and subsequently Maheo, an Ellice Islander, and one of the native wireless operators, paid a simple, eloquent and most touching tribute (in English) to Mr. Gallagher’s memory. After the grave had been filled in, the native women on the station placed garlands of bush flowers around it."[2]

At his mother's request, Gallagher's body was exhumed when Niku was abandoned in 1963 and buried on Tarawa in a Catholic cemetery.

From Bones II research

• Gallagher had a pet gannet, "a bird of character called Honk" (Maude, 116).
• Gallagher's whaler was called the Fiafia, a word that signifies "a dance, a party, a jollification, making whoopee and any other form of social gaiety within that order of ideas" (Maude, 130).
• Neither Mrs. Brown nor Stan remember Gallagher having a fiance, but it wouldn't surprise her if he did. "Many of those young men came out in the service, went home on leave and returned with a bride. The wives usually disliked the area."
• Rumor--Gallager was engaged to the secretary of Jack Charles Barley, resident commissioner, GEIC. b. 1887. BA (Oxon.). We weren't able to make any progress with this rumor. We never found out the name of the alleged fiance.
• Where is Gallagher's diary from Niku? Where are his photographs?
• Where is the correspondence about moving his body from Niku to Tarawa? The letter was not in his WPHC file. Did they open a new file on him in Tarawa?

Missing trunks

TIGHAR has not been able to track where the trunks containing Gallagher's personal property were shipped. We know from WPHC records that shipment was delayed until late in the war. The WPHC wrote W.R. Carpenter Shipping on August 7, 1945, to ask them to pick up four trunks containing Gallagher’s belongings and ship them to his mother in England. The notes that follow were taken during an interview with [Tofiga]'s daughter, who had a long and very successful career with W.R. Carpenter.

• There was a fire six years ago that destroyed Carpenters' office building. But Carpenters is owned by an Australian company (Carpenters Holdings). Walter Carpenter, the old man, loved to keep records and he may have had them moved to an Australian university. His son, Randolph, is in Australia.
• Tofiga's daughter worked at Carpenter's in 2003. She was sure that there would be no records available from the 1940s. It is just not the way a shipping company does business. If they have any archives, they're just boxes in some old garage. The company has been restructured several times since 1945, most notably through the acquisition of Morris Hedstrom Ltd. in the 1950s. Each one had its own shipping company, so many changes had to be made for the company to reach its present form.
• The London office closed about 10 years ago.

Two watches and a signet ring missing

• McGusty wrote Dr. Duncan "Jock" Macpherson's dad to say that his son had cirrhosis of the liver. Three days later, Jock died at age 42 on July 10, 1943. On 4 October 1943, a silver pocket watch, a silver wrist watch, and a gold signet ring were sent to the Secretary of the WPHC: "It was Dr. Macpherson's intent to take these items to Mr. Gallagher's parents when he next went to England on leave."
  • Were these items included in the trunk inventory? Shipped separately? Lost?
• Terence Hugh Gallagher: sole executor of GBG's will.

Settlement of the Estate

1229259 F.49/26: Gallagher, G.B. (deceased): - claims against the estate of. 1942-1945.
1229259 WPHC 9/II F.49/26 Gallagher, G.B. (deceased): -
Claims against the estate of.

Last paper 3597/1936 (S. of S.). See also main files.

Last entry: 2nd October 1945, GS Barrack pays the Hercules Cotton Company in Sydney, Australia. It took him 5 years and many letters to collect his 29-2-10.

The estate got charged for Gallagher's mess bill from his last trip on the Viti in 1941--the voyage on which he died.

Harry Evans Maude was the administrator of the estate (30 May 1945) according to D.C. McKee.

24 September 1944 "Constable Esele makes a claim for the Gilbertese canoe on the grounds that five months before his death Mr. Gallagher said to him these words, "When I leave the Colony you shall have this canoe" of course this is no legal claim, but meanwhile the canoe referred to is in the boat shed on Gardner Island awaiting disposal. The Ellice type canoe was given to Aram in trust for his son BENATI who was a kind of God-son of the deceased."

Last minute: C.A.? ARPPKC. AS(G) 8.4.48

Two lines below, initials or abbreviation that have not yet been deciphered.

Plaque left on Niku by TIGHAR