Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a man (or ship) working in the Pacific forced labour trade; thus blackbird v.; also attrib.

1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Apr. 4/3: Three well-known ‘blackbirders’, alias Government labour agents [...] are known as ‘The world, the flesh and the angel’.
1883		All the Year Round 22 Sept. 355: Blackbirders, the kidnappers for labour purposes on the islands of the Pacific.
1888		W.B. Churchward Blackbirding In The South Pacific 44: Bruce, you killed the best blackbirder in the whole Pacific.
1898		(con. 1875) F.T. Bullen Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ 280: I once shipped, unwittingly, as sailing-master of a little white schooner in Noumea, bound to Apia, finding when too late that she was a ‘blackbirder’ – ‘labour vessel,’ the wise it call.
1898		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Mar. 20/8: The men are all used up on the islands, and the black-birders have to fall back on children.
1906		Sun (NY) 16 Sept. 34/3: In former days the hold of a blackbirder often presented a horrib spectacle.
1908		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 17/1: Things happened pretty suddenly those days on board a black-birder.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Aug. 14/2: One of the oldest and best-known ex-blackbirders in the country told me that once he was handed over a pigmy at one of the Queensland ports, with instructions to land him on Aoab, in the New Hebrides. Pyg was [...] a jolly likeable little customer.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 7 Feb. 12/5: The black-birders of the South Seas are taking advantage of the unfortunate terror-stricken volcano-cursed natives to capture them.
1922		A. Gonzales Black Border 8: [in Caribbean context] The ‘blackbirders’ bartered their human cargoes for West Indian molasses, which [...] became New England rum.
1928		New Statesman 28 July 507/2: Polynesians in their wild state [were] shipped to Australia by enterprising gentlemen called blackbirders.
1934		R.E. Howard ‘General Ironfist’ in Jack Dempsey’s Fight Mag. June 🌐 Gunrunner, blackbirder, smuggler, pirate, pearler, or what have you, but always a scrapper.
1936		R.E. Howard ‘The Purple Heart of Erlik’ in Goodstone Pulps (1970) 145/1: Wild Bill Clanton, sailor, gun-runner, blackbirder [...] and fighting man de luxe.
1941		(con. late 18C) Yorks. Post 12 Apr. 6/8: They [i.e. Pacific Islanders] were exposed by the discoveries of Captain Cook and others to [...] ‘blackbirders’ or slave traders.
1949		I.L. Idriess One Wet Season 52: A blackbirder smoked lazily while on watch.
1951		(ref. to 1871) Sunderland Daily Echo 13 June 10/5: Patterson [...] was martyred at Nukapu on September 20, 1871, in revenge for the killing of five islanders in a blackbirder raid.
1967		S. Hugill Sailortown 3: The insect-crawling deck-houses of the sandalwood-traders and the blackbirders.
1979		Maledicta III:2 167: blackbirder n Formerly a person or ship illegally engaged in the Pacific slave trade. [...] blackbird v Kidnap a person for selling as a slave, especially in the Pacific region.
1993		G. Disher Deathdeal [ebook] [A] Melanesian whose forefathers had been dragged to Queensland by blackbirders.