12 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



do forced labour and open up the country, and started a 

 general programme of misrule. 



This state of things was still in progress when Ross Primus, 

 who had been cruising among the islands for two years on 

 behalf of the Government, met Hare, and was asked by him 

 to superintend the harbour works of Banjarmassem. Ross 

 accepted the position, and leaving the Olivia he commenced 

 his new career by taking command of the Hon. East India Com- 

 pany's cruiser biig il/rM-y ^?r7ie, a vessel of 300 tons and mount- 

 ing twelve 12-pounders. He continued in this famous service, 

 which has numbered in its ranks such men as Clive and Warren 

 Hastings and to whose deeds we owe the British supremacy in 

 India, and he left it only on the British cession of Malaya to 

 the Dutch. Before Malaya was ceded, Alexander Hare went 

 to Java, and left Banjarmassem in the charge of John Hare, his 

 younger brother. During the time that Ross Primus had been 

 engaged in his duties as harbour superintendent he had busied 

 himself in shipbuilding, and had laid down a ship of 428 tons, 

 which he had named the Borneo. The ceding of the British 

 possessions to the Dutch found this his masterpiece still 

 unfinished, and so, rather than leave the uncompleted work in 

 the hands of the Dutch, he remained behind for eighteen 

 months in order that he might in the end gain the fruits of 

 his labour, and have the satisfaction of seeing his own ship 

 launched. 



The Borneo left the slips an accomplished success, and 

 Ross sailed away in her in search of new adventures in some 

 fresh enterprise. 



Although John Ross had built the Borneo, the ownership 

 of her passed largely into the hands of the two Hares, John 

 Hare having 55-64ths, Alexander Hare l-64th, and Ross 

 8-64ths, and Alexander Hare was appointed managing 

 owner. 



It was intended that the Borneo should sail between 

 England, the Cape, and Malaya, and take a share in the trade 

 in spices and coffees, and all those Eastern products which in 

 the early days so easily built up the colossal fortunes of the 



