Early Career
Peter Dillon was born in Martinique, the son and namesake of an Irish immigrant. Not much is known of his early life. He claimed to have joined the Royal Navy at one point and to have served at Trafalgar. He left the Royal Navy and made his way to Calcutta as a young man, eventually becoming a trader in the South Seas.
In 1813 he sailed to Fiji as third mate in the Hunter under Captain James Robson to look for sandalwood. While there, tensions between the Europeans and the Fijians escalated into violence; many people on both sides of the conflict lost their lives. Dillon recounted the events of this battle in his Narrative and Successful Result of a Voyage to the South Seas (1829). In it he describes holding out with five other people, including Charles Savage, on a rock that was later called "Dillon's Rock" while native Fijians prepared a cannibal feast at which they devoured Dillon's fallen comrades. Recent scholarship has cast doubt on the veracity of Dillon's account, particularly as it pertains to his supposed eyewitness account of mass cannibalism (see Gananath Obeyesekere's Cannibal Talk).
During his time as a trader he wrecked at least three ships — The Calder, St Patrick and on 9 July 1821, Phatisalam.
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