America's Forgotten Pacific Gem — the most dramatic natural harbour in the South Pacific, surrounded by jungle-clad volcanic peaks, in the US territory that Somerset Maugham called the finest harbour in the Pacific
Pago Pago (pronounced 'Pango Pango') is the capital of American Samoa — a US territory tucked into the South Pacific whose harbour is consistently described as the most spectacular in all of Polynesia. The port sits in a drowned volcanic caldera: sheer jungle-covered ridges rise 500 m directly from the water on three sides, creating a natural amphitheatre of green that encircles the blue harbour like walls. Mount Rainmaker (524 m) — so named by sailors because it reliably generates cloud and rain — looms directly above the town. W. Somerset Maugham spent time here in 1916 and used the harbour…
Samoa has been inhabited by Polynesians for at least 3,000 years — it is believed to be one of the dispersal points for the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific. Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen was the first European to visit in 1722. The islands were the subject of intense colonial competition between the US, Britain, and Germany in the 1880s, culminating in the 1899 Tripartite Convention that divided the archipelago: Germany took the western islands (now independent Samoa); the US took the eastern islands, establishing naval control over Pago Pago's harbour — recognised even then as stra…