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The reality is rather different, and in some ways even more remarkable. For if O’Keefe was never a king, he certainly did build the most successful private trading company in the Pacific, and—at a time when most Western merchants in the region exploited the islanders they dealt with, then called in U.S. or European warships to back them up—he worked closely with them, understood them and made his fortune by winning their trust and help. This itself makes O’Keefe worthy of remembrance, for while the old sea-captain was most assuredly not perfect (he had at least three wives and several mistresses, and introduced the Yapese to both alcohol and firearms), he is still fondly recalled on the island. It doesn’t hurt, so far as the strangeness of the story goes, that O’Keefe ingratiated himself on Yap by securing a monopoly on the supply of the island’s unique currency: giant stone coins, each as much as 12 feet in diameter and weighing up to four and a half tons. But wait; we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s start with the convoluted history that brought O’Keefe to Yap. So far as it is possible to tell, the captain was born in Ireland around 1823, and came to the U.S. as an unskilled laborer in the spring of 1848. [Butler pp.26-7]  This date strongly suggests that he was one of more than a million emigrants driven from Ireland by the potato famine that began in 1845, but—unlike the many Irish who landed in New York and stayed there—O’Keefe continued traveling, eventually washing up in Savannah in 1854. After working on the railroads, he went to sea and worked his way up to be captain of his own ship. During the Civil War, it is said, he worked as a blockade runner for the Confederacy. [Butler pp.