WILLIAM MA​RSTERS
Patriarch of Palmerston Island

A new book about an English farm boy who became a Cook Islands legend

A TRUE LIFE ADVENTURE STORY
This story of English farm boy William Marsters could easily be an adventure from the imagination of a many a modern author. Instead it’s the true tale of a young man who ran away to sea to seek his fortune and ended up making his mark on history. William was born in the Midlands of England in the early 19th century but ended his days founding a unique dynasty on the remote South Pacific island of Palmerston. And although it's governed as part of the Cook Islands, the law says William's descendants own it forever. This is a story with three wives, lots of children, two murder attempts, a war of words with the colonial government and a captivatingly beautiful Tahitian Princess

The Marsters story spans nearly 200 years and has been told and retold with many conflicts between oral history and documented facts. This book aims to tell the definitive story of a young man of no particular standing who became outstanding and iconic

AN EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK
The author's introduction...

“The story of this Englishman on his lonely island, one of the outposts of Polynesia, is as remarkable as any in the Pacific. Someday it will be considered worthy of a book.” That’s what was printed nearly 80 years ago in ‘Pacific Islands Monthly’, one of the many magazines and newspapers I read as part of my research. For not quite as many years I’ve also considered it was worthy of a book and this is the result. It’s difficult to give an definitive account of the story of William Marsters because he’s become almost a legend about whom myth has mixed with fact over the course of nearly 200 years... This is not an academic work but an attempt to create a readable story. The aim has been to use my journalistic skills to navigate the difficult path between oral history and documented fact using official records, contemporary accounts, other publications mentioning Marsters and insights from William’s descendants. I leave the reader to decide to what extent I have succeeded in telling the remarkable story of a remarkable man"  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Cook Islands guide book author

John Roberts (also author of this website) spent much of his working life as a journalist, first on newspapers and then in radio and television. A lot of that time was at the BBC in the UK, where he reported and presented for local, national and World Service radio, and regional and national TV news. His love of the written word continues to this day and is on a par with his passion for the Cook Islands. Down the years he’s made multiple trips, and written and broadcast in New Zealand, Australia and the UK about the Islands. More about the author

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND AS AN EBOOK
31 MAY 2026

Contact the author for more details or to pre-order a copy (without obligation to buy))