Irish-born David O’Keefe arrives on Yap, apparently aboard the junk Catherine, and starts trading.

What happened

Hezel writes that O’Keefe, a ship captain from Savannah, Georgia, came to Yap in late 1872 or early 1873 on a Chinese junk named after his wife, Catherine, to trade, and that he stayed for thirty years. Hezel rejects the popular story, used in the MicSem ship list, that O’Keefe washed up on Yap in 1871 as the only survivor of the wrecked Belvidere; he shows O’Keefe had left that ship in Manila.

Why it matters

Hezel argues that the legend of O’Keefe as “King of Yap,” spread by a 1950 novel, has eclipsed the real copra trader.