D'Entrecasteaux Islands - History

History

The group was named for the French navigator Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux who, in his ship the Espérance, passed through the area in 1792 while searching for his missing compatriot, Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. Almost a century latter in 1874 Captain John Moresby of HMS Basilisk made a running survey of the west coast of the islands and became the first European to make landfall.

In 1891 the Methodist Church of Australia established a mission station on Dobu Island. There natives were recruited to work in gold mines and on copra plantations. Another mission was established in 1898 at Bwaidoga, Mud Bay, on the south coast of Goodenough Island.

The island group became a focus of activity in World War II when Imperial Japanese troops were marooned on Goodenough Island briefly in 1942, before being attacked by the Australian 2/12th Battalion. In 1943 RAAF mobile works squadrons constructed an airfield with a 6,000 ft (1,829 m) airstrip and other facilities at Vivigani Airfield on the site of a smaller, pre-war airstrip that existed at that location. It was used by allied forces from June 1943 to August 1944 as a staging point for operations in New Guinea and nearby occupied islands. Vivigani airstrip has been open to commercial service since 1963. A US Navy PT-Boat base was established on Fergusson Island in June, 1942. Normanby Island may have been a secret British military base during the war.