Bislama is an English-lexifier radically restructured contact language spoken in Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific which initially developed as a distinct variety over about half a century between the mid-1800s and the end of the nineteenth century. Soon after the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales in 1788, a pidgin developed which was used between settlers and Aboriginal peoples along the ever-expanding frontier. Features of this pidgin made their way into what has often been referred to as South Seas Jargon, which was spoken by ships’ crews and individuals on shore in a wide variety of locations around the Pacific islands in the early 1800s.