Ben Pease

Ben Pease (c. 1834–1870) or Benjamin Pease, was a notorious blackbirder, engaged in recruiting and kidnapping Pacific Islanders to provide labor for the plantations of Fiji.

Pease was born in about 1834 in Edgartown, Massachusetts. He was youngest of seven children of Henry A. and Mary A. (Fisher) Pease. Pease was a ship's captain operating in the Pacific during the 1850s and 1860s. His elder brother was Captain Henry A. Pease Jr., (1824–1892), who became a whaling ship master and was involved in the whaling disaster of 1871 and was later the U. S. Consul to Santiago, Cape Verde (1882–1892).

Life Pease was described as "a satanic looking rascal with a black spade beard – [who] was a more openly piratical operator than [Bully] Hayes". Pease may have greater claim than Bully Hayes as being a South Sea pirate and "the last of the buccaneers," as Pease appears to have been engaged in filibustering in his activities in the opium trade after China's defeat in the Second Opium War in 1858, when it was forced to legalize opium and allow the importation of opium. However details of Pease's involvement in this trade is uncertain. There are stories told that he was a captain of a gunboat in the Imperial Chinese Navy; and that he was engaged in action against pirates along the coast of China; as well there are stories of Pease raiding trading junks along the coast of China.

On 5 July 1865 Pease received the first license to providing 40 laborers from the New Hebrides to Fiji. Alfred Restieaux, an island trader who had dealings with both Hayes and Pease writes that in late in 1866 or early 1867, Pease was introduced to Mr. C. A. Williams, a ship owner of New London, Connecticut who bought a schooner that he renamed the Blossom. As captain of the Blossom, Pease traded in the Marshall Islands.

Pease purchased the Water Lily, a 250-ton brig that was built for the opium trade into China, and later fitted it out to engage in the blackbirding trade in the Pacific. While there was some voluntary recruitment of Pacific Islanders, the activities of blackbirders predominantly involved kidnapping, coercion and tricks to entice islanders onto ships, on which they were held prisoner until delivered to their destination. In 1868, while the Water Lily was in Manila in the Philippines being repaired, he renamed it the Pioneer.