 A fleet of ships spread out over the Pacific, ostensibly to find willing migrants, but they quickly switched to plain kidnapping tactics instead.In June 1863 about 350 people lived on Ata in a village called Kolomaile (of which remnants were still visible a century later).Captain Thomas James McGrath of the whaler "Grecian", having decided that slave trading was more profitable than whaling,  came along and invited the islanders on board for trading.