Summary

William Bairstow Ingham (1850-1878) left Yorkshire, England for Australia in 1873 where he bought a sugar plantation in 1874 on the Herbert River in North Queensland. The first township, surveyed late in 1875, was named after him on the petition of the residents. When the plantation crops failed, he became a general carrier on the Herbert River and later moved to Cooktown doing similar work.

In 1877, having heard reports of gold in Papua New Guinea, Ingham chartered a ship and offered to be an unpaid government agent in Port Moresby. When natives of Brooker Island (Utian) in the Calvados Chain massacred a party under Captain Edwin Redlich, Ingham promptly left for the island but he and his crew suffered the same fate.