Pitcairn's Island  Contents  Source  Whalesite

THE

PITCAIRN ISLAND
REGISTER BOOK

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

SIR CHARLES LUCAS

K.C.B., K.C.M.G.

TOGETHER WITH MAP, INDEX AND
APPENDICES

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

NEW YORK AND TORONTO; THE MACMILLAN CO.

1929

Charles Lucas  Notes

PREFACE

      The S.P.C.K. and myself have been singularly fortunate in securing in regard to the present work the active cooperation of Sir Everard im Thurn, K.C.M.G., K.B.E., C.B., who, after retirement from six years' tenure of the Government of Fiji and the High Commissionership for the Western Pacific, has up to the present day devoted himself to the study of the Pacific, its history, problems and races, and to forming a collection of rare books and pamphlets connected with it. Every part of the present volume has been revised by him, including the map, based upon a map drawn specially for a lecture which he gave some years ago before the Royal Geographical Society, and the Second Appendix is entirely his handiwork.

      The S.P.C.K. were good enough to place at my disposal as private secretary and typist for the purpose of this work the willing and competent services of Miss Ethel Young. I am greatly indebted to her for making necessary researches which I was not well enough to carry out myself and, as noted at the beginning of my Introduction, two of the three Appendices are, in addition to the Index, in whole or part due to her.

      It should be added that the present book is intended to be the first of a series of S.P.C.K. records. The Society possesses archives of considerable interest and value, which it is hoped to publish in due course.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PITCAIRN ISLAND
REGISTER BOOK

INTRODUCTION

      The Pitcairn Island Register Book, now in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, is the earliest record from within of the settlement on Pitcairn Island. The contents of the book are in the first place the Register itself, covering the years January 1790 to February 1854. Much of it has already been printed in various books; but now for the first time, as far as the Society is aware, the whole is reproduced page by page and word for word, exactly as it stands, with all the varied spellings and mis-spellings, and with the facsimile of a typical page, page 39. Following the Register in the Register Book, on a single page, is a list of prices of different articles at Pitcairn. It is undated, unless the figures scribbled in the top left-hand corner can be read as equivalent to 17 February 1834. At any rate, it is given for what it is worth. This list is succeeded by a list of shipping entries recording the ships, or the greater number of them, which called at the island in the years 1823-1853 inclusive, with notes and comments of, in some cases, great interest. The handwriting is most difficult to decipher, as will be judged from the facsimile of page 116, but, so far as it can be interpreted, the information supplements what is given in the Register and is also of value in connexion with the movements of American whaleships in the Pacific in the first half of the nineteenth century. Finally, it will be convenient to give with the Register Book a facsimile of John Adams' famous prayer for Sunday, now in the possession

of the Society. It has already appeared in Pitcairn, the Island, the People and the Pastor, with the following note: "facsimile of a prayer in the handwriting of John Adams, the original of which was presented by his grandson Mr. John Adams of Norfolk Island to the Revd. T. B. Murray."

      It must be repeated that the glaring mistakes and inconsistencies which will at once strike the eye in the Register and shipping entries are not typist's errors or due to want of revision. They represent as nearly as may be the original. Anything that is not in the original is given in square brackets, sic [    ].

      Besides the Register Book, this volume contains a map of the Pacific Ocean giving the principal places mentioned, and an index of principal places and persons. There are also three Appendices; one – compiled by Miss Ethel Young – containing a note on three small volumes of the Proceedings of the Pitcairn Island Fund Committee and the connected correspondence which are in the possession of the Society; a second – by Sir Everard im Thurn – giving a short account of the Pacific whale fishery which brought so many New England whaleships to Pitcairn Island; and a third – compiled by Miss Young and revised by Sir E. im Thurn giving a bibliography of publications relating to Pitcairn Island up to the date of the removal to Norfolk Island.

      The Mutiny of the Bounty and its outcome, the settlement on Pitcairn Island, was a fruitful theme for writers in the nineteenth century. Lieutenant, afterwards Admiral, William Bligh had served with Captain Cook on his second voyage of discovery in 1772-5, and with him had visited Tahiti, then known as Otaheite, in the Society Islands, where they became familiar with the Bread-fruit. Bligh seems to have been a most competent sailor, and a man of exceptional courage and resolution; he attained much distinction in the Royal Navy; but twice in his career he was the subject of and deposed by a mutiny on sea when he commanded the Bounty, and on land at a later date when he was Governor of New South Wales.

      Captain Cook suggested the introduction of the Breadfruit into the West Indies, and the records of the West India Committee show that, in and about the years 1775-6,

the project was taken up warmly by the West Indian planters and merchants, who saw in it the promise of a cheap food supply for their slaves. They offered rewards for successful importation of Bread-fruit plants into the West Indian Islands, and secured the powerful advocacy and support of Sir Joseph Banks, with the result that eventually the Government decided to act, and Bligh was selected to command a ship, the Bounty, an "armed transport" of nearly 215 tons, intended to visit Tahiti, collect the plants and carry them on to the West Indies. The complement of the ship was 44, including Bligh himself, and in addition there was a botanist or gardener, with an assistant, chosen by Sir Joseph Banks to take charge of the plants. There were thus 46 persons in all on board. A start was made from Spithead on the 23rd of December 1787, just a month, it may be noted, before Phillip arrived at Port Jackson with the first English settlers for Australia and founded Sydney. Tahiti was reached – via the Cape and Tasmania, not as had been intended via Cape Horn – on the 26th of October 1788. One sailor died on the voyage, and the surgeon, a confirmed drunkard, died after the ship had arrived at Tahiti. The numbers on board were thus reduced to 44. Twenty-three weeks were spent at Tahiti. The ship left on the 4th of April 1789, and at dawn on the 28th of April 1789, when she was in the neighbourhood of Tofoa among the Friendly Islands, afterwards known as the Tongan Islands, a mutiny took place. Bligh with 18 others was cast adrift in a small boat, which after great sufferings was by his indomitable courage and tenacity brought to the island of Timor in the East Indian Archipelago. Twelve out of the nineteen lived to reach England in safety.

      Bligh himself landed at Portsmouth on the l4th of March 1790, and the Government lost no time in sending out a frigate, the Pandora, commanded by Captain Edwards, to follow up the mutineers and bring them back to England for trial. Twenty-five had remained on board the Bounty out of the forty-four, and they were, according to Bligh, "the most able men of the ship's company." After attempting to settle in the Tubuai islands due south of Tahiti, but being prevented by the hostility of the natives, they returned to Tahiti; they then

made a second attempt to settle in Tubuai, and again went back to Tahiti. Here there was a further division of numbers. Sixteen out of the twenty-five stayed there or were left behind. Two of them were killed, one by the other, and the murderer by the natives: the other fourteen surrendered or were rounded up by the Pandora, which reached Tahiti on the 23rd of March 1791, after visiting and naming Ducie Island – thus passing close by Pitcairn. The prisoners seem to have been treated on board the Pandora with gross inhumanity, being heavily chained and kept in a kind of cage. The Pandora was wrecked on the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, just east of Torres Straits, and four out of the fourteen were drowned. The other ten were brought home and placed on trial, with the result that three were executed, four were acquitted, and three were pardoned. Among those who were pardoned was a lad, Peter Heywood, who had been detained on the Bounty against his will and whose case excited much sympathy and interest. He subsequently rose high in the Royal Navy. A memoir of him, with extracts from his diaries and correspondence, was written by the Unitarian divine, Edward Tagart; there is also an account of him in the Dictionary of National Biography; and an earlier account, which will be found under the category of the post captains of 1803 in Marshall's Naval Biography, Vol. II, Part II, 1825, is a very valuable source of information on the mutiny of the Bounty.

      There were still nine mutineers to be accounted for; the Pandora sought for them in vain, and nothing was heard of them for years. The leader of the nine, Fletcher Christian, had been the leader of the mutiny. In the original crew of the Bounty he had been a master's mate, but had been much trusted by Bligh and promoted by him to be an acting lieutenant. Bligh described him as "of a respectable family in the north of England," and he was clearly of better standing and education and of stronger will than the rank and file of his shipmates. An account of him, as also of a brother of his who attained some celebrity at Cambridge and as a jurist, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. The other eight were Edward Young, one of the midshipmen, also better connected than the average Bounty seaman, William

Brown, William McCoy, Isaac Martin, John Mills, Matthew Quintal, John Williams, Alexander Smith. Of them Brown was the assistant gardener and Mills was a gunner's mate, while the other five were ordinary seamen. Alexander Smith, when found on Pitcairn Island – the last survivor of the nine – came to be known as John Adams, no longer a mutineer but the patriarch and central figure of a deeply religious and highly moral little community. He had registered for service in the Bounty as Alexander Smith, but whether that name or John Adams, or neither, was his real name is uncertain. He was Alexander Smith when the Topaz called at Pitcairn in 1808, but John Adams when the Briton and the Tagus called in 1814, and it is suggested by the American writer Amasa Delano, in his Narrative of Voyages and Travels, that the call of the Boston ship Topaz, and conversation with her New England captain, Folger, may have induced Smith to change his name for one with American associations and to choose the name of John Adams, the well-known New England President of the United States. Delano and Captain Mayhew Folger were personal friends. At any rate, as John Adams the central figure of Pitcairn takes his place in the story and in the Dictionary of National Biography. The writer of the article in the Dictionary, Sir John Laughton, reasoned that he must have had an exceptional education, but this supposition is inconsistent not only with other accounts but also with Adams' handwriting, which, as the facsimile shows, was that of an uneducated man. With these nine Englishmen went nine Tahitian wives, three Tahitian men and their wives, three Tahitian men without women and one infant girl. Christian, according to the story, having read on the Bounty of Philip Carteret's discovery of Pitcairn Island in 1767, sailed in search of it, and found it at the beginning of 1790. The first item in the Island Register is "1790 January 23 H.M. Ship Bounty burned at Pitcairn Island." Thus the mutineers literally burned their boats – not, however, for the purpose of making retreat impossible, but in order to conceal their identity.

      Pitcairn Island in the Eastern Pacific, called after a boy on Carteret's ship who first sighted it, is just south of the Southern tropic. It is nearer to South America than to Australia, and in the same latitude as the north of Chile.

The Pitcairners' communications with the mainland in the Pacific were not with Australia so much as with South America, especially with Valparaiso. The island lies southeast of Tahiti, and about 100 miles south of the nearest island of the Tuamotu or Low Islands group. Its area is two square miles, and it is a very high island girded with steep cliffs, in the words of Sir Thomas Staines' despatch "completely iron bound with rocky shores."

      What happened after the arrival of the mutineers in the island until intercourse with the world was resumed must have been gathered subsequently. When, in December 1825, Captain Beechey in H.M.S. Blossom called at Pitcairn, John Adams gave him his story, which will be found in the "Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering Strait to co-operate with the Polar Expeditions: performed in His Majesty's Ship Blossom under the command of Captain F. W. Beechey, R.N.; F.R.S.; F.R.A.S.; F.R.G.S.; in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28. Published by authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 1831." Beechey writes: "The following account is compiled almost entirely from Adams' narrative, signed with his own hand, of which the following is a facsimile. But to render the narrative the more complete I have added such additional facts as were derived from the inhabitants who were perfectly acquainted with every incident connected with the transaction, they having derived their information from their parents." In 1823 John Buffett and John Evans came to live on the island, the first two white men to join the original settlers, and Buffett made a beginning of the Island Register. John Adams died in 1829.

      Among the publications in the middle of the last century which treat of the mutiny and of Pitcairn Island was one fathered by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It was entitled Pitcairn, the Island, the People and the Pastor. The first two editions appeared in 1853, and the Preface to the twelfth edition, which was published in 1860, stated that by that date about 30,000 copies had been printed. In September 1860 the writer of the book died. He was the Rev. T. B. Murray, who had been appointed assistant secretary of the Society in 1835, and promoted to be one of the four joint secretaries in 1842.

After his death the book was re-issued and brought up to date from time to time, the latest edition being dated 1909. While Murray lived, he was the main representative of the Society in all its dealings with the Pitcairn Islanders, and as such formed a great friendship with the Rev. G. H. Nobbs, who, after the death of John Adams, gradually became the central figure in the Pitcairn community.

      A notice of Mr. Nobbs, written by Sir John Laughton, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. His parents' names are not stated, and it was at his mother's wish that he took the name of Nobbs. He was born in 1799 and died in 1884. As a boy he was sent into the Royal Navy and went on a voyage to Australia. He left the King's service to take part with the South American patriots in their fight for independence, and subsequently, among other voyages, he twice went to Sierra Leone. Possibly the record of evangelical philanthropy connected with the founding of the colony of Sierra Leone which, it is worth noting, was contemporaneous with the voyage of the Bounty, may have inspired him to look around for similar work. At any rate, he had been told of and attracted by the account of the settlement on Pitcairn Island, and he seems to have left England in 1826 with the object of going to Pitcairn, tried in vain to find his way there for the better part of two years, and eventually reached the island from Callao in Peru in a launch with a single companion, who died soon after arrival. Nobbs landed on the 5th of November 1828, and John Adams died four months later; Nobbs in due course carried on his work. In 1839 Nobbs took over the Island Register, which Buffett had kept up to that date, and greatly expanded it. In August 1852, through Admiral Moresby's good offices, he went to England to be ordained a clergyman of the Church of England, and it is interesting to read that he was ordained deacon at Islington by a Bishop of Sierra Leone in October 1852, prior to receiving in the following month priest's orders at the hands of the Bishop of London. Before he left England he was accredited a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, with a small salary, and he reached Pitcairn again on the 15th of May 1853. His place during his nine months' absence had been taken by the Rev. W. H. Holman, the Chaplain of Admiral

Moresby's flagship, who was the first to administer the Holy Communion on Pitcairn Island. Under Mr. Holman (as appears from the Minutes of the Pitcairn Island Fund Committee) John Arthur, son of the master-at-arms on board the Admiral's ship, took charge of the school, also remaining on the island while Mr. Nobbs was away. He had fifty scholars under his care.

      The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had been to some extent in touch with Pitcairn ever since 1819, when the Records of the Society state that a first gift of books was sent there by their Diocesan Committee at Calcutta. After Nobbs settled in the island and Murray had joined the secretarial staff of the Society, the two men corresponded with each other, and when Nobbs came to England to be ordained in 1852, Murray took charge of him and presented him for ordination. Thus he became the recipient from Nobbs of the Island Register Book, when the original book was discarded in 1854 on account of its dilapidated condition. It was evidently intended in the beginning to be a register in the ordinary sense, a register, as the heading of the first page states, of "Births, Deaths, Marriages and Remarkable Family Events," and Buffett dealt sparingly with other matters. Thus of the murderous year 1793 the record is studiously vague, the terms being "Massacre of part of the mutineers by the Tahitians. The Tahiti men all killed, part by jealousies among themselves, the others by the remaining Englishmen. Mary Christian born." In the entry for the first year, 1790, is recorded "Same year died Fasto wife of John Williams," and the standard story is that John Williams, having lost his wife, replaced her with the wife of one of the Tahitian men, that this outrage and the general treatment of the coloured men by the whites led to a rising of the Tahitian men and the murders and reprisals of 1793. After this date only four white men are mentioned, the other five having been killed by the Tahitians, and Fletcher Christian being one of the five. The various books give a story that Christian returned to England and lived and died in concealment, that about 1809 he or his double was seen by Peter Heywood in the streets of Plymouth or Devonport, and that the man in question, when Heywood spoke to him by name, immediately ran away. Sir John Laughton in his article in the

Dictionary gives his opinion to the effect that Heywood could hardly have been mistaken and that it was in high degree probable that Christian found his way home; but his reasoning does not carry conviction; the accounts seem perfectly clear as to Christian having been one of the five Englishmen who were murdered by the Tahitians in 1793, and evidently Nobbs had no doubt that he was killed on the island, as shown by the lines which are prefixed to the Register. John Adams is stated to have been badly wounded, but to have been called back by the Tahitians when he was running away, with the promise that his life would he spared. Then the surviving white men with the widows of the murdered whites killed the six Tahitians, or those of them who had not been killed by their fellows, and the ghastly year ended with only four male adults left on the island. It is not surprising to read in the entry for the following year, 1794, that some of the Tahitian women wished to leave a scene of so much crime; hut the Register makes no mention of plots to kill the four white men which these women are said to have made, but which were discovered before they could be carried out. All four of the remaining white men survived till 1798, when McCoy in a fit of drunken delirium threw himself into the sea and was drowned. His drunkenness with its fatal consequence can only, it would seem, have been achieved by converting an old boiler of the Bounty into a still and thus procuring an intoxicant from the Ti root. Ti is the Polynesian name for one or more species of the plants which are known in this country as dracaenas and which are used for various purposes by the natives of the Pacific Islands, including in some islands, according to the authorities on the subject, extraction of intoxicating liquor from their tuberous roots. In the following year, 1799, Quintal, having threatened and attempted the lives of Young and Adams, was killed by them in self-defence. In 1800 Young died a natural death, leaving Adams the solitary survivor of the original nine.

      It is difficult to understand the list of births from 1794 to 1799 inclusive, as entered in the Register under 1799, and especially difficult to account for the fact of seven out of the total number of children bearing the name of Young.

      An entry in the Register will be noted under date 27th of December 1795 to the effect that the mutineers were

greatly alarmed at seeing a ship close in to the island, and another account states that in May of that year at the sight of a ship nearing the island they hid themselves and subsequently found that there had actually been a landing on the beach. But that the island was inhabited was not discovered till 1808. The entry for that year includes "Arrived Ship Topaz of Boston Captⁿ Folger." The curtain is now drawn back and the light of day let in upon this singular little colony which had grown up unknown to the world for between eighteen and nineteen years. Its existence was reported by the commander of the Topaz, but very little notice was taken at the time, because there was so much else to divert attention. Curiously enough, this year 1808 was the year in which Bligh, who had become Governor of New South Wales in 1806, experienced his second mutiny and deposition. Happily there was no such tragic sequel on the later as on the earlier occasion.

      In order fully to appreciate the Pitcairn story, it is necessary to keep before the mind's eye the contrasts which it presented. What could be more remote from the murders and crimes of the early years upon the island than the settlement as it developed under John Adams, in peace, godliness and comparative innocence? Or, again, contrast the day-to-day life of this tiny isolated group of human beings, as it flowed on in even monotony, with the wars and rumours of wars and great events which in the same years stirred the whole outside world. Pitcairn might have been in another planet. In 1805, three years before the Topaz called at the island, Trafalgar had been fought and won, but the British fleet were still in demand off every land and in every sea. In 1808 the Peninsular War had begun, and there had been a beginning too of friction between Great Britain and the United States which in 1812 brought about the second war between the two nations. In that war powerful American frigates, admirably handled, achieved many successes against individual British ships, and in the Pacific one of those frigates, the Essex, commanded by David Porter, for many months harassed British shipping, captured British whalers and gained great fame. Under these conditions it is not surprising that there were, as far as can be gathered, no more calls at Pitcairn until, after an interval of six years, the Register records the

arrival at the Island on the 17th of September 1814 of H.M. Ships Briton and Tagus. The Briton frigate, commanded by Sir Thomas Staines, had started from England in December 1813 with a fleet for the East Indies. One of the ships, an East Indiaman, became disabled, and the Briton was told off to take charge of her, thereby becoming separated from the fleet. She brought the East Indiaman to Rio Janeiro on the 20th of March 1814 and left again on the 28th of March, parting company with the East Indiaman and in receipt of instructions to go round Cape Horn instead of the Cape of Good Hope in order to join in the pursuit of the Essex, then reported to be refitting at Valparaiso. She reached that port on the 21st of May and found that the Essex had already been taken by the British ships Phoebe and Cherub, and was being sent as a prize to England. At Valparaiso the Briton was joined by the Tagus, and the two ships went up the coast to Callao, the Port of Lima, visited the Galapagos islands, then turned south to the Marquesas group, where Captain Porter had lorded it over the natives, and were returning to Valparaiso, when they came to Pitcairn Island by accident, not by design, owing to that island having been wrongly charted. "I fell in with an island where none is laid down either in the Admiralty or other charts," wrote Sir Thomas Staines in his despatch. It was a great surprise to find that the island was peopled by English-speaking inhabitants to the number of 40, only eight of whom were original settlers – one man and seven women. Captain Folger had placed the population in 1808 at 34 women and children in addition to Alexander Smith (not yet John Adams). If his figures were correct, 40 was probably an underestimate of the numbers in 1814. By 1814 the mutiny on the Bounty was ancient history, and though John Adams, to the great distress of the islanders, expressed his readiness to go back to England and stand his trial, no attempt was made by the Government to call him to account for what was long past or to interfere with his good work. Three years passed, and then the Register records that in 1817 another ship called, the Sultan, like the Topaz a Boston vessel, a Tahitian woman leaving in her. No further call is recorded till the 10th of December 1823, and then "Arrived ship Cyrus of

London Cap^n. Hall and John Buffett came on shore to reside as schoolmaster John Evans also came on shore." Thus two white men were added to the Pitcairn circle, and the names of Buffett and, in a lesser degree, of Evans multiplied in the lists. Buffett had been, like Nobbs, a sea-faring man, serving in British or, more often, American vessels. He had had his fill of dangers and adventure and had been twice wrecked. He must have gone to sea very young, for he was only 27 when, in 1823, the British whaler Cyrus, on which he was serving, brought him to Pitcairn. Then, according to his own account, the Pitcairners being in want of someone to teach them to read and write, and his captain giving him the option of remaining on the island for that purpose, he was discharged, Evans accompanying him, and he became a leader on the island.

      In the Register, between the visit of the Briton and the Tagus on the 17th of September 1814 and the visit of the Cyrus which brought Buffett and Evans on the l0th of December 1823, only the Sultan is mentioned as having called at the island, but there is abundant evidence from other sources that various ships called. One may be specially mentioned, the American whaleship Russell of New Bedford, commanded by Captain Arthur. This vessel reached Pitcairn on the 8th of March 1822 and stayed there till the 12th, another ship also being at the island at the same time. The following extract from Captain Arthur's Diary is of particular interest.

      "From all I had otherwise read and learned respecting the inhabitants of Pitcairn's Island, induced me to have the following notice put up in the forepart of the ship, before we had any communication with the islanders.

      "'It is the impression of the Russell's owners, that the most part of the company were from respectable families, and it is desirable that their conduct towards the islanders should verify the opinion. As the island has been hitherto but little frequented, they will be less susceptable of fraud than a more general intercourse with the world would justify. It is desired that every officer and man will abstain from all licentiousness in word and deed, but will treat them kindly, courteously, and with the strictest good faith. As profane swearing has become an un-fashionable thing even on board a man-of-war, it is quite time

that it was laid aside by whalemen, particularly at this time. As these islanders have been taught to adore their Maker, and are not accustomed to hear His name blasphemed, they were shocked with horror, when they heard some of the crew of an American ship swear, and said it was against the laws of God, their country, and their conscience.'"

      Captain Arthur followed up this notice by visiting the Pitcairners in their homes and verifying the high opinion of their religion and morality which he had been led to form. That the captain of an American whaleship should provide such a noble example of regard for godly simplicity is the more noteworthy as at a later date the conduct of the crews of such ships when they landed on the island was in some cases open to grave exception.

      Reference has been made above to the opening of communications in 1819 between the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Pitcairn through the Calcutta Committee of the Society, and the Annual Report of the Society for 1819 mentions that in July of that year an opportunity had occurred of "communicating with the little colony of Pitcairn's Island in the South Pacific ocean by the departure from Calcutta of the ship Hercules for that place . . . "This is followed by a copy of a letter which the joint Secretary of the Calcutta Committee wrote on the 15th of July to "John Adams and others on Pitcairn's Island," and which begins, "It is with particular pleasure that I take an opportunity of sending to you by Captain Henderson of the ship Hercules a small stock of religious books."

      The Register contains no mention whatever of the arrival of the Hercules, nor can it be verified from the Society's records, but it appears from the Calcutta Gazette of the 6th of May 1819 that the ship first touched at Pitcairn on her passage from South America to Bengal on the 18th of January 1819, and therefore it was her second visit to the island of which the Calcutta Committee of the Society took advantage, to write to John Adams and send books for the use of the inhabitants.

      Within comparatively easy distance of Pitcairn is the island, now a dependency of Pitcairn, which bears Captain Henderson's name. It also obtained the alternative name of Elizabeth Island from another ship called the Elizabeth.

A notice of this island is given in Captain Beechey's book, in which it is stated that both vessels visited it and each captain claimed to have discovered it on his "arrival the next day at Pitcairn Island, these two places lying close together," that the visit of the Hercules preceded that of the Elizabeth by three months, but that as a matter of fact the first discoverers were a boat's crew of survivors from the wreck of the American whaleship Essex (not to be confounded with Captain Porter's more famous ship of war of that name), who landed on the island on the 20th of December 1820, Elizabeth Island is referred to in the Register under the dates 4th of March 1843 and 16th of August and 11th of November 1851. Among the relics of the Bounty in the Royal United Service Institution is what is known as John Adams' Prayer Book, a book of prayers and devotions, though not a Church of England Book of Common Prayer, on the last page of which, apparently written by John Adams himself, are the words "John Adams his book given him by Samuel Henry Rapsey of the ship Elizabeth 5 March A.D. 1819." The Elizabeth therefore called at Pitcairn very shortly after the first call of the Hercules. Captain Beechey was wrong in giving priority in discovery of Henderson Island or Elizabeth Island to the shipwrecked crew of an American whaleship and in dating the first discovery the 20th of December 1820. In the very rare pamphlet entitled "Narrative of the most extraordinary and distressing shipwreck of the whale ship Essex of Nantucket which was attacked and finally distroyed by a large spermaceti whale in the Pacific Ocean; with an account of the unparalelled sufferings of the Captain and crew. . . . in the years 1819-1820, by Owen Chase of Nantucket, first mate of the vessel, New York, 1821," it is stated that the refugees after landing on the island found cut on a tree near their landing place the name Elizabeth, showing that a ship of that name had preceded them, though no date accompanied the name. The conclusion to be drawn is that the Elizabeth reached the island in question before the castaway crew of the Essex, and the Hercules under Captain Henderson before the Elizabeth.

      After the calls of the Topaz and of the Briton and Tagus, mentions or omissions of ships in the Register, under Buffett's handling, seem to have largely depended on

whether or not the call affected the family circle. Hence the visit of the Sultan in 1817 is coupled with the entry "Left this Island in the Sultan Jenny a Tahitian woman," and if no one came or left in the Hercules and Elizabeth, that may conceivably be the explanation of their visits being ignored. Under the year 1825 we have the entry "Arrived H.M.S. Blossom, Cap^n. F. W. Beechey Esq during the stay of the Blossom John Adams married." Thus the arrival of a ship is coupled with a marriage – old Adams, so Beechey tells us, having long wished for the marriage ceremony to be read over himself and his blind, bedridden wife – but probably the call of one of the King's ships would in any case have been chronicled. The entry for 1826 contains "Dec. 19th Jane Quintal left the island in the Brig Lovely Ann of London Cap Blythe." The important point for the purpose of the Register is evidently not that the Lovely Ann called, but that Jane Quintal left in her. In 1830, however, we have a mention of the arrival of one of the King's ships, not linked on to any family event: "March 15th Arrived H.M.S. Seringapatam Cap^n. Hon. Wm. Waldegrave with a present of cloathing and agricultural tools from the British government."

      Under 1828 is the entry "George Nobbs came on shore to reside." No ship is named, as we have seen that he is said to have come to the island in a small craft from Callao, and it is also not mentioned that he had a companion, presumably because the latter died soon after arrival.

      Under 1829 we have "March 5th John Adams died aged 65," and with his death comes the end of the first chapter in the story of Pitcairn Island. Many notable cases of religious conversion have been recorded in the history of Christianity, but it would be difficult to find an exact parallel to that of John Adams. The facts are quite clear. There is no question as to what he was and did after all his shipmates on the island had perished. He had no human guide or counsellor to turn him into the way of righteousness and to make him feel and shoulder responsibility for bringing up a group of boys and girls in the fear of God. He had a Bible and a Prayer Book to be the instruments of his endeavour, so far as education, or rather lack of education, served him. He may well have recalled to mind memories of his own childhood. But there can be only one simple and

straightforward explanation of what took place, that it was the handiwork of the Almighty, whereby a sailor seasoned to crime came to himself in a far country and learnt and taught others to follow Christ. The Bible and Prayer Book in question were among the contents of the Bounty, which had been brought on shore before she was burnt. The Bible, it is stated, had been used by Christian and by Young before it came with the Prayer Book into John Adams' keeping. There is no indication that before ships began to call there were more than one copy of either book in the island, indeed, there are definite statements to that effect, and if this was so they may well have been on that account more potent in their influence on John Adams himself and more calculated to instil reverence into the minds of sons and daughters of native mothers as he taught them from this source alone.

      The clumsily-worded entry under date 28th February 1831 is one of much importance. "Arrived H.M.S. Comet Alex. A. Sandilands and Barque Lucy Anne. Colony of New South Wales. Government vessel. T Currey Master for the purpose of removing the inhabitants to Tahiti." It has been pointed out above that the Pitcairners' communications with the Pacific mainlands were rather with the nearer coast of South America than with Australia; but, as far as official relations were concerned, there was no British authority, other than Consuls, on the South American side, and the islanders' allegiance, so to speak, lay in the direction of Australia, the ships for this first migration coming from Sydney by order of the British Government. Pitcairn at the present day is within the "sphere of influence" of the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, whose headquarters are at Fiji, of which he is also Governor. Succeeding entries in the Register record that on the 6th of March 1831 all the inhabitants embarked and sailed for Tahiti, and that they arrived at Tahiti on the 21st of March. It is stated, though not in the Register, that shortage of water on the island was the reason for the removal, and that the number removed, being the whole population, was 87, as against 40 when the Briton called in 1814. On the passage to Tahiti the Register chronicles a birth, but after arrival there was exceptional sickness among the incomers. The moral conditions of the place are said to have disagreed with the Pitcairners as much as its climate, and the result, as recorded in the Register, was

that on the 24th of April, after barely a month's sojourn at Tahiti, a number of them, headed by John Buffett, sailed off in a small schooner, but owing to adverse winds were landed on what is styled "Lord Hood's Island." This is one of the Marquesas group; its native name is or was Fatuhuku, but it was named Hood Island by Captain Cook, who discovered it in the Resolution in 1774 and called it Hood Island after a midshipman of that name on board his ship, who was the first to see it. This midshipman was afterwards Captain Alexander Hood, a distinguished officer of the sea-going Hood family, who was killed in action. In regard to this island he was confused with his more famous kinsman Lord Hood, though Lord Hood was rather older than Captain Cook himself. Hence the name given in the Register. (The mistake has been perpetuated in the Pacific Islands Pilot, Vol. III, 1920 ed.) Here they remained till the 21st of June, when they embarked on a French ship, and on the 27th of June reached Pitcairn again, finding that in their absence the pigs had run wild and destroyed the crops. The rest of the community rejoined them at Pitcairn on the 2nd of September, having been brought back in the American brig Charles Dogget. Nobbs' name does not appear in connexion with this migration, and John Buffett seems to have been most to the fore. Buffett was described in Captain Beechey's narrative as "the oracle of the community." This would be at the time when the Blossom called at Pitcairn, in December 1825, before Nobbs came to Pitcairn. The Register shows that the loss of life which accompanied the move was terribly high, and this makes it difficult to criticise the shortness of the stay at Tahiti. At the same time the story illustrates what a source of trouble and expense on a small scale to the British Government have been these tiny groups of men and women, who have planted themselves in out of the way islands. On this occasion ships had been expressly sent from Sydney across the Pacific to carry the Pitcairners to a new and more accessible home in Tahiti. There everything seems to have been done with the active goodwill of Queen Pomaré for their comfort and welfare, but a month sufficed to set them on the move back again to their island, and the kindly action of the Government taken on their behalf was entirely thrown away.

      It will be noticed that for six years, 1832-7 inclusive, there

are no entries whatever in the Register other than births, deaths and marriages, and that there is a total gap between the 5th of November 1833 and the 5th of April 1835. On the 28th of October 1832 there arrived from Tahiti an impostor named Joshua Hill. He claimed to have been appointed by the British Government as their representative at Pitcairn and he had had correspondence with Government offices and persons of standing which he was able to produce, when, as is shown in the list of shipping entries, Captain Fremantle, commanding H.M.S. Challenger, visited Pitcairn on the 10th of January 1833. Captain Fremantle, under instructions from the British Government, had previously brought the Challenger to Swan River and, landing on the end of May 1829, had taken possession for the British Crown of the whole Western side of Australia, leaving his name to be borne by the port of Fremantle. He was afterwards Admiral Sir Charles Fremantle, and must not be confused with another Captain Fremantle, who in command of the Juno visited Pitcairn in 1855 in connexion with the coming migration to Norfolk Island. The commander of the Challenger found that the Pitcairners had deteriorated through their sojourn at Tahiti, and had brought back drunken habits with them. Hill seems to have persuaded Fremantle that, whereas Nobbs and the other Englishmen were encouraging and abetting the evil, he himself had taken a stand against it. Fremantle therefore gave him his support, while by no means countenancing the arbitrary measures which Hill had taken or proposed to take. It is very difficult to follow exactly what subsequently happened and when, but Hill appears for a while to have wholly dominated and terrorised the islanders, and after the most outrageous proceedings to have practically enforced the banishment of the three Englishmen. All three left in the Tuscan for Tahiti on the 8th of March 1834. Apparently in about three months they returned, and picking up their families were carried on, in the case of Nobbs and Evans, and eventually of Buffett also, to the Gambier or Manga Reva Islands, a short distance to the north-west of Pitcairn in the direction of Tahiti, where Nobbs busied himself in teaching. The three were absent from Pitcairn for the inside of a year. The Hill régime would, unquestionably, have been very short-lived had it been possible for regular visits to have

been paid to the island by H.M. ships. The correspondence which is printed in Brodie's Pitcairn Island and the Islanders in 1850 shows that the various authorities were by no means satisfied with what came to their ears and were anxious that a ship should go to Pitcairn and inquire, but that after the 10th of January 1833, when the Challenger called, it was not found possible to send a vessel until the visit of the Actaeon on the 12th of January 1837. Disillusionment with regard to Hill was then complete, for the Captain of the Actaeon, Lord Edward Russell, a son of the then Duke of Bedford, was able to give the lie to Hill's claim to be related to the Duke, and in the following December another Queen's ship, the Imogene, came with orders to deport him, and Pitcairn knew him no more.

      Brief but very important was the visit of H.M.S. Fly, commanded by Captain Elliot, on the 29th of November 1838. The Pitcairners, who now numbered ninety-nine in all, very earnestly represented to the captain the necessity of having some recognised chief authority in their community. They had experienced the want of it in the case of the Joshua Hill episode, and they had especially in view the dangers and difficulties caused when crews of whaleships who came on shore happened to be of the lawless and rowdy type, insulting the inhabitants and threatening violence to the women. The great majority of these whaleships were American, and an instance has been given above in which the commander of an American whaleship showed rare delicacy of feeling towards the unsophisticated islanders. Further, as all, or almost all, these vessels hailed from New England ports, they would, in most cases, in all probability have been manned by a good class of seaman. But there must also have been not a few exceptions, and of them Captain Elliot wrote in his despatch that they taunted the Pitcairners with having no laws; no country; no authority that Americans were to respect, for they denied that the islanders were under the protection of Great Britain, "as they had neither colours nor written authority." They had, however, as a matter of fact, a merchant Union Jack flying, which had been supplied by an English ship. In the absence of instructions the captain was in a very difficult position, but he considered it to be his duty to take some decided step, which would give protection to the Pitcairners while

involving as little as possible the British Government, of whose intentions towards them he was ignorant. He therefore gave formal authority for "their election of a magistrate or elder to be periodically chosen from among themselves and answerable for their proceedings to Her Majesty's Government." The regulations for the purpose, which he drew up and signed on board his ship on the 30th of November, provided for the election of a magistrate or elder, being a native-born inhabitant of the island, on the 1st of January in each year by the free votes of all the native-born inhabitants, or five years residents, male or female, being over eighteen years of age. The magistrate was to be assisted by a council of two, one chosen by the votes of the assembly, the other by the magistrate himself. He was to report to the captains of Her Majesty's ships on their visits, his authority was to be obeyed by the residents on the island "under pain of serious consequences until he is superseded by the authority of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain," and he was to take an oath that "I will keep a register of my proceedings and hold myself accountable for the due exercise of my office to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain or her representative." In addition to drawing up this and other regulations, Captain Elliot himself held a first election, having effect till the end of the year, he formally attested in writing that the elected magistrate had been sworn before him, and he provided a Union Jack to be flown as an ensign of British protection. Thus Pitcairn was in effect constituted a British colony, and when the Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in 1850, the Register spoke of the "anniversary of the settlement of the colony sixty years since."

      In the archives of the S.P.C.K., though not in the Register Book, is an address to Queen Victoria dated the 27th of July 1853, from the Pitcairn Islanders, signed on their behalf by their Chief Magistrate. It accompanied a specimen of their own workmanship for the Queen's acceptance,as explained in the following words of the address which are given as they stand: "At the suggestion of our worthy benefactor Rear Admiral Moresby we have ventured to present your gracious Majesty with a small chest of drawes of our own manifacture from the Island wood; the native name of the dark wood is miro; the bottoms of the drawers is made of the breadfruit tree; our means are very limited; and

our mechanical skill also; and we will esteem it a great favour if your Majesty would condersend to except of it; as a token of our loyalty and respect to our gracious Queen." A previous part of the address was thus worded: "We humbly trust we may be allowed to consider ourselves your Majesty's subjects; and Pitcairns Island a British colony as long as it is inhabited by us in the fullest sense of the word. Several years since the Capt. of your Majesty's ship Fly took formal possession of our little Island; and placed us under your Majesty's protection; and if your Majesty's government would grant us a document declaring us an integral part of your Majesty's dominion; we should be freed from all fears (perhaps groundless) on that head; and such a gracious mark of Royal favour would be cherished by us to an exertion in the discharge of the various duties incumberent on British subjects." But it was not thought well to give any formal document of the kind, for the very good reason that it would have implied a doubt, where there was no doubt, with regard to the island being already a British possession and the islanders subjects of the British Crown. Her Majesty, in accepting the gift and the loyal address which accompanied it, referred to the donors as "her subjects on Pitcairn's Island."

      The visit of the Fly brought a more organized life among these primitive citizens, and it was initiated by one of the Captains of H.M. ships. All the world over, from generation to generation, those in command of the ships of the Royal Navy have added to protection of outlying bits of the British Empire, the functions of advisers, arbitrators, and friends in need of their inhabitants, applying kindly good sense and the proverbial handiness of the sailor to patient solution of endless petty problems, such as cause discord and discontent in small communities cut off from the outside world.

      With the entry of the 24th of March 1839 Buffett's journal ends. As a record of births, deaths, and marriages, it seems to have been fairly accurate and complete; and in as much as it did not purport to do more than chronicle family events, it must be forgiven for the patchiness of its general information. Nobbs, who at this point took over the journal, was obviously a better educated man than Buffett, and in his hands the journal became a narrative of a wholly different

class. It is very much fuller, as much space being given now to one year as to a number of years before; and, in spite of occasional formal phrases and turns of expression, the contents are made interesting by clear consecutive writing and good arrangement, each year being summarised. Little comment will therefore be needed by way of elucidation. But it is obvious to those who study the original that various writers in addition to Buffett and Nobbs had a hand in the Register, there being great variety of handwriting as well as of expression. When Nobbs was in England, Mr. Holman became chief chronicler.

      Before this year 1839 ended, one of the Queen's ships, the Sparrowhawk, commanded by Captain Shepherd, arrived on the morning of the 9th of November, and stayed until the evening of the 12th. She had on board an ex-president of Chili, whom it seems Nobbs had known in his crusading days; the stay was longer than usual, but on all occasions when ships of the Royal Navy called, the proceedings were the same. This time on the 9th there were school examinations and prizes and presents; on Sunday, the 10th of May, the Captain and his officers attended divine service twice; on Monday several cases were submitted to the Captain for his decision; and on Tuesday he addressed the whole population gathered in the school house "on various subjects connected with their welfare."

      Thirteen ships are said to have touched at the island during the year, a greater number than ever before, but calls now multiplied. A little later, in 1845, the summary of the year gives twenty-five visiting ships, of which twenty were American, two French, and only one British, while in 1846, out of forty-nine ships that called, forty-six were American. In 1840 there are two entries which in a small way are rather surprising. "January 19th a Sunday School commenced." It would have been thought that a Sunday School had always been in existence from the beginning of John Adams' labours, but presumably it was only now that any teaching even of the Bible and Prayer Book began to be given on a Sunday. The second entry is that of the 2nd of May; it is the mention of a quarrel, carried to blows, between two of the elders of the island, one of them being the Englishman Evans. It seems singularly out of keeping with the traditional life of the community, and rather an unnecessary

exposure by Mr, Nobbs of an unfortunate incident. In November a ship connected with the London Missionary Society called, the Chaplain or Missioner and the Captain of the ship spent two days on the island, and the entry in the Register reflects the theological colouring of the Society. The next year, 1841, was marked by a severe epidemic of influenza, which made the visit in August of H.M.S. Curacoa specially welcome, the surgeon of the ship devoting three days to the care of the sick. In September, a Tahitian woman, who had come to Pitcairn on the Bounty as the wife of Fletcher Christian, died at an advanced though uncertain age. According to her own account, she well remembered Captain Cook's first arrival at Tahiti. A reference to the Register for 1850 will show that when on the 23rd of January in that year the sixtieth "anniversary of the settlement of the colony" was celebrated, there was still one survivor of the Bounty, Susanna, also a Tahitian woman, who died on the following 15th of July.

      The year 1842 seems to have been uneventful. In 1843 took place one of the expeditions to explore Elizabeth Island to which reference has already been made, Eleven Pitcairners started for the purpose on the 4th of March, and came back on the 11th, bringing a very unfavourable report. Two more expeditions to that island are recorded in the Register as having taken place in August and November 1851, in either case in an American ship, and on the second occasion it seems to have been most thoroughly explored. It is noteworthy that the alternative name, Henderson Island, is not mentioned. This was, no doubt, for the reason that the Elizabeth was an American ship and the New Englanders must have put her name on the chart. In 1844, on the 28th to 31st of July, Captain Hunt of H.M.S. Baselisk made rather a prolonged visit to Pitcairn, during which the Register says that he "assembled the inhabitants, made some alterations and suggested others for the improvement of the moral and religious observances of the community," and "appointed a commercial agent."

      Meanwhile the surgeon of the ship vaccinated upwards of sixty of the islanders, but the vaccination turned out to be a complete failure. In January 1845 two of the Bounty's guns were retrieved from the bottom of the sea. One of them was found to have been spiked, but the other, in

Mr. Nobbs' picturesque language, "resumed its original vocation, at least the innoxious portion of it." Unfortunately it was not an innoxious portion, for in 1853 the Register gives an account of an explosion of the gun when a salute was being fired, which had fatal consequences. In the first quarter of this year, 1845, there was another epidemic, and, reviewing the condition of the island, Mr. Nobbs reasoned that it was not, as was commonly supposed, a healthy spot, that the inhabitants suffered from diverse diseases, "and last but not least influenza under various modifications is prevalent." Five times within the last four years has "the fever been rife among us." That Mr. Nobbs had a considerable gift of graphic description is shown by his long account of a great storm in the night of the 16th of April, which swept the island, causing at one point a momentous landslide like an avalanche, and everywhere destroying fruit trees and foodstuffs on land and boats on the sea. A disastrous year ended with rumours of war. The chief event of the next year, 1846, was the completion and opening of a new church and school house, and in 1847 a shooting accident to a son of Mr. Nobbs. Fortunately one of H.M. ships called in time with a surgeon on board. No such aid, however, was available in the case of another accident in 1848, and, though Mr. Nobbs seems to have done all that could be done in the absence of expert surgical skill, the sufferer died. In the first half of 1849 one or more pages are missing from the Register, but the notice of the visit of Captain Wood in H.M.S. Pandora can be supplemented from the shipping list. The Mr. Buffett who was brought back by him from the Sandwich Islands, having gone there in the previous January, was evidently the father of the Buffett clan. The invitation from the British Consul-General in those islands to Pitcairners to migrate there seems to have borne no fruit. A second Queen's ship from Valparaiso and Callao, the Daphne, brought what the Register styled "the desiderata of the community viz a bull, cows and some rabbits," together with a large case of books from the S.P.C.K.; but something must have happened to the cattle, for in the Register in 1852 we are told that, when Admiral Moresby's flagship, the Portland, called in that year, it supplied Pitcairn, among many useful articles, with a bull and cow calves "for which we have long

wished." It is recorded with emphasis that this year, 1849, was the first year in which two British ships of war had visited the island, and that in this year British ships outnumbered American among the callers, eleven against seven. Australian ships were now in evidence. During the months August to October the majority of the inhabitants, now numbering 155, were attacked by influenza of a severe type. The year 1850 was the Diamond Jubilee of the settlement of the colony, which was kept with loyal enthusiasm. Among the ships which called, American vessels once more outnumbered British, twenty-nine against seventeen. Among the British ships was a New Zealand ship, the Noble, bound from Auckland for California, five passengers from which, having been landed for the day on the 24th of March, and being allowed by the captain to spend the night on shore, were left behind, two of them being taken off by a ship which called on the 11th-12th of April, and two more by one which called on the 21st of April; what happened to the fifth is not clear. Of the two who secured passages on the 12th of April, one was Mr. Walter Brodie, who recorded his experiences in Pitcairn Island and the Islanders in 1850, published in 1851. There is no reference to these castaways in the Register, possibly through Mr. Nobbs' modesty, as they gave warm expression, with good reason, of their gratitude for the kindness shewed to them on the island; this will be found in the Shipping List. In 1851, beyond the visit to Elizabeth Island already mentioned, nothing worthy of note seems to have taken place. In 1852 no fewer than three of H.M. ships visited Pitcairn, and one of them was – for the first time – an Admiral's flagship. This was the Portland, bringing Admiral Moresby, a most warm and generous friend to the Pitcairners as a whole, and in particular to Mr. Nobbs. It was on this occasion that the Admiral took Mr. Nobbs and his daughter to Valparaiso on Mr. Nobbs' way to England to be ordained; and it has been already told that his place on the island during his absence was taken by the Rev. W. H. Holman. Mr. Holman subsequently presented to the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution several of the "Relics of the Bounty" which will be found there, including John Adams' prayer book.

      In 1853 Pitcairn was again visited by three of Her

Majesty's ships. The first in point of time was a steamer, the Virago, the first steamer that had been seen by the islanders. She called in January and gave them a trip round their island. Her departure was the occasion of the fatal accident caused by the explosion of one of the Bounty's guns. In May Admiral Moresby brought back Mr. Nobbs and his daughter, and carried off Mr. Holman; and at the beginning of November H.M.S. Dido called, commanded by Captain Morshead. The Dido brought a stock of provisions in case the islanders should still be, as they had been, suffering from shortage of crops, and a full report of the visit is given in the correspondence connected with the Pitcairn Island Fund. It was a year of much sickness. With February 1854 the Register breaks off, owing to the dilapidation and consequent disuse of the book, which had been taken on board the Virago in Mr. Nobbs' absence and had been soaked in the process. Mr. Nobbs, it will be remembered, was now an ordained clergyman of the Church of England in receipt of a stipend of £50 per annum from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and he began the year with a sermon in aid of the funds of that Society. The Shipping List is not carried beyond October 1853.

      By this time a Pitcairn Island Fund, which forms the subject of Appendix I, had been instituted in England, under a committee of influential men presided over by the Bishop of London. Mr. Nobbs' friend, Mr. Murray, of the S.P.C.K., was the Hon. Secretary of the Committee, the Society made a grant to it of £100, and a similar sum was subscribed by Admiral Moresby, ever to be relied upon in all that concerned the interests of his Pitcairn friends. They had multiplied greatly. In 1852, the last year for which a summary of the population is given in the Register, the total was returned as 168, males and females being exactly equal, as against 40 when the Briton came to the island in 1814. They had become, or were becoming, too many for the limited space, and arrangements were made to transfer them to Norfolk Island, which were carried out in 1856. They all migrated to the number of 194, though some of them only left Pitcairn with great reluctance and after much persuasion, and in two years' time one or two families began drifting back again. Conditions had greatly changed since, in 1823, the Cyrus imported Buffett and Evans to reinforce John Adams.

The development of the Pacific whale fishery had, as has been abundantly shown, resulted in numerous visits of American whale ships, seeking fresh water, wood, vegetables and fruit, and this would account for the list of prices on page 97 being given in dollars. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought (until in 1851 gold was discovered in Australia also) a number of vessels en route to California from Australia and New Zealand. The captains of H.M. ships, not to mention lesser visitors, seem latterly, when they called, to have stayed on shore almost as a matter of course. The island, in short, lost, so to speak, its isolation and came into the world.

      But, after the effects of the unfortunate removal to Tahiti had worn off, the traditions of morality and religion, which John Adams had implanted, asserted themselves again under Mr. Nobbs' fostering care; and, with the opportunity of receiving the holy Communion, practically all the adults became communicants. It will be appreciated that the settlement on Pitcairn Island took place in a very interesting time in our religious history. The last years of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century were a fruitful time of evangelical effort, when Protestants generally seem to have realized in a far more wholesale manner than ever before that they had a call to go forth and preach the Gospel, and they found a wide and open field in the Pacific. Bible Christianity in simple and somewhat Puritan form was carried over the sea, and John Adams, with those whom he reared on the Bible and the Prayer Book, was all in harmony with it. So was one captain and another of the ships of the Royal Navy, as they came in contact with the Pitcairners in the middle years of the nineteenth century. This will be found illustrated by the wording of the note which Captain Wood of the Pandora entered in the List of Shipping on the 11th of July 1849, or a similar note entered by Captain Wellesley of the Daedalus on the 29th of January 1852. Very instructive, too, as to the type of Christianity presented to and absorbed by the islanders is Mr. Nobbs' entry in the Register on the occasion of the visit of the London Missionary Society's vessel on the 9th–10th of November 1840. But the Pitcairners, beginning with John Adams himself, were emphatically Prayer Book as well as Bible Christians, unswerving in loyalty to the Church of

England. One of the books states that Joshua Hill, while upsetting their minds in other respects, was not able to undermine their Churchmanship.

      Such they were, interesting on the spiritual side, as from other points of view. But the story stands alone. Because it is so picturesque, it must not mislead us into falling in love with small and distant island communities, simply because they are small and distant. There is abundance of isolation or comparative isolation for necessary and useful purposes, but usually for limited periods only, at lighthouses, submarine cable stations and the like. The permanent continuance of small communities in out-of-the-way corners of the earth seems, on the other hand, to require justification rather than to command as a matter of course sympathy and approval. They are of scanty utility; they may at long intervals provide asylums for occasional castaways; the record of Tristan da Cunha testifies that they are fields for missionary self-sacrifice, as Pitcairn was for the devotion of Nobbs. But restricted communities inevitably tend to deteriorate, their claims or the claims made for them by their friends are disproportionate to their quantity and their quality; in effect, they are pensioners of the Government and the nation whose flag covers their home. Perhaps wireless and aviation may provide for them a future which will be a revised version of the past.

PITCAIRN'S ISLAND
REGISTER BOOK

THE PITCAIRN ISLAND REGISTER

FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE
Bounty UP TO THE PRESENT TIME

Kept By John Buffett Sen.

Number of births, this year, eight; Marriages one; Deaths three.

Thirteen ships have touched here this year: a greater number than ever arrived before in the same space of time. Fifty two scholars attended the public school.

Number of inhabitants 106 – 53 of each sex.

      This book has become so dilapidated from getting wet with salt water when taken on board the Virago at the commencement of last year, during my absence, that it is necessary to prepare a new hook by copying the contents of this into it and then continue from this date. It is my intention to send this Imperfection; to my well beloved friend the Rev. T. B. Murray, thinking it may serve to amuse him over his after dinner toast and water: though I think either my honoured friend or his sedate and most amiable spouse will find it difficult to translate many of the original autographs in the shipping list; and I think much of my own unrivalled penmanship, will be attended with similar difficulties.

Pitcairns July 1854

God help them all, the parents, the children, their maternal Aunt, the deaf gentleman and his wife, who I think is another Aunt; and if my recollection serves me aright there is also an Uncle whom I met once or more, and whom I suspect to be the author of a very pleasing eulogium on my appearance an peculiarities, in " Blackwood," and which was copied into an American paper and found the stay hither. Well, may their shadows never grow less and their happiness temporal and spiritual be ever on the increase. And may I have the pleasure of knowing it.

                        17/2/34.

      The Committee first came into existence in December 1852, and its original object was "to provide means for the outfit and passage home of the Rev. G. H. Nobbs, Chaplain of Pitcairn's Island, in December 1852, and for the supply of clothing, furniture and other needful articles for the inhabitants of Pitcairn. Towards this end a subscription . . . was raised by the friends of the cause; and the Authorities of the Admiralty afforded much valuable co-operation . . ."

      The first meeting of the Committee was on December the 3rd, 1852, at the Admiralty, under the Chairmanship of Bishop Blomfield (Bishop of London), the Rev. G. Nobbs being present. The Hon. Secretary of the Committee was the Rev. T. Murray (Secretary of the S.P.C.K.); the trustees were the Bishop of London, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart., and William Cotton, Esq. Those present at the first meeting were Sir Thomas Acland, the Hon. G. Waldegrave, Captain Fanshawe, R.N., Captain Inglefield, R.N., Arthur Mills, Esq., M.P., William Cotton, Esq., and T. T. Grant, Esq., F.R.S. (afterwards Sir Thomas Grant, K.C.B.). There is a list of names of distinguished persons who gave their patronage to the effort (among them being the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr. Gladstone), and the list of subscribers is also given.

      The first Report Sheet (dated August 1853) of the work of the Committee says: – "The very scanty resources of Pitcairn's Island, containing a population of 170 persons, within a circuit of four miles and a half, with limited extent and imperfect means of cultivation, and the great need which existed of many articles of daily use, induced some friends of Mr. Nobbs, and of this interesting community, on the recommendation of Rear-Admiral Moresby, to raise a fund of moderate amount towards the passage and outfit of Mr. Nobbs and for the supply of such things as were most pressingly required by the inhabitants. Labourers' and carpenters' tools, a proper bell for the small wooden Church, Communion plate, medicines, two or three clocks, besides clothing of various sorts, some simple articles of household furniture and cooking utensils, together with stores and pro-

visions were required; and it appeared likely that further supplies of some of these things would he required for some years to come. . . . In addition to the above, Mrs. Moresby collected and laid out in clothes for the islanders £20; Mrs. Nutcombe contributed and expended in a Gown and Surplice for the Rev. G. H. Nobhs £5; and a friend at Fulham presented silver Vessels for the Holy Communion, for use in the Church at Pitcairn."

      A Second Report Sheet was issued by the Committee (dated May the 29th, 1857), after the removal of the Pitcairners to Norfolk Island, which, after repeating the aims and objects of the Committee, continues: – "Although the attention of the Committee was, in the first instance, mainly directed to the above mentioned design, the members could not he indifferent to the progress of events in connexion with the state and prospects of the exemplary and amiable community, on whose account the Committee had been formed.

      "The islanders, having suffered from a fear of scarcity, caused by the failure of crops, and having, in May 1853, solicited the aid of Her Majesty's Government in 'transferring them to Norfolk Island or some other appropriate place,' the Government benevolently acceded to their proposition. This was notified to the Committee by letters from Herman Merivale, Esq., Under Secretary of the Colonial Department, December 1853 and April 1854. From that period to the present prompt and courteous communications have from time to time been received by the Committee from the Colonial Office, announcing the measures determined upon for the welfare of the Pitcairn community."

      Reference to the appended "Contents of the Committee's Books" will show that all the correspondence which passed between the Committee on the one side, and on the other the Colonial Office, the Admiralty, and the Lt. Governor of Van Diemens Land, as Tasmania was then called, with reference to these arrangements is still preserved. The Report continues: "Rear-Admiral Moresby, now Vice-Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby, K.C.B., having arrived in England in 1854, after a recent visit to Pitcairn, the Committee were enabled with the greater accuracy to ascertain the condition of the island and the wants of the people. The Admiral had three times visited them and acquired the entire confidence and attachment of all the inhabitants. It will be remembered that to his generosity and good judgement was owing the voyage of their pastor and teacher Mr. Nobbs to England for Ordination in 1852."

      The Government was well advised in the matter of the transfer of the Pitcairn Islanders to Norfolk Island and in the steps taken

for their welfare in that island by Sir William Denison, who had arrived in Van Diemen Land as Lt. Governor in 1847 and towards the end of 1854 was appointed Governor of New South Wales. "The measures of the Government having been finally matured for the conveyance of the people to Norfolk Island in the Spring of 1856, the Committee had opportunities of knowing the exceeding attention which was shown by all concerned, and which extended itself to the minutest details, for the successful issue of this remarkable movement. And the Committee must add that all the credit for the plan and execution of the transfer is due to the British Government. The preparatory step taken by the despatch of H.M.S. Juno, Captain J. S. Fremantle, R.N., to Pitcairn's Island, for the purpose of making enquiries, and giving information, was conducted by that officer with great kindness and discretion."

      Reference to the Minute Book and also to the Correspondence will show that an attempt was made to obtain permission for this visit of enquiry to be carried out "from the Pacific rather than the Australian station," so as to secure an officer known to and in possession of the confidence of the Islanders; and the Cockatrice, commanded by Captain Dillon, from Valparaiso, was first entrusted with the mission. Later it was found that the Cockatrice was laid up and would require to be specially equipped if employed, and under the circumstances the original "instructions for conducting the operation from Sydney have taken their course." The Report continues, "The vessel engaged for carrying the transfer into effect was the Morayshire, Captain J. Mathers; and during the whole of the passage the real interests and personal comforts of the people, young and old, of both sexes, were consulted in the most tender and scrupulous manner in all respects. Acting Lieutenant G. W. Gregory, of the Juno, performed his part of Superintendent in a manner which amply justified Captain Fremantle's choice of so intelligent and humane an officer for the task. Thus in the removal of 194 persons in an Emigrant Ship on a voyage of upwards of three thousand miles, occupying thirty five days, it does not appear too much to say, that no one could have desired a better kind of treatment for members of his own family.

      "The conduct of the respected Chaplain of Norfolk Island, the Rev. G. H. Nobbs, throughout the whole of this transaction, has confirmed the feelings of confidence and esteem which the Committee had previously entertained for him, and which he had earned by more than a quarter of a century's faithful and efficient service amongst the flock at Pitcairn. He not only attended to the religious wants of the voyagers, but all the medical duties likewise devolved upon him. These were of no

light nor ordinary kind; so severely did many suffer from continued sea-sickness. . . ."

      Mr. Nobbs' own account of the voyage will be found filed in the Minute Book, being a printed copy of a letter addressed to Mr. Murray, written from Norfolk Island (September 1856). It is in effect a diary of the voyage, arrival and landing, and occurrences up to that date, with a preliminary account of the departure from Pitcairn and the happenings previous to departure, including the calls of the Dido and the Juno. The Report then continues: "All were landed securely at their new abode, on the 18th of June, 1856; a grand result which was much facilitated by Captain H. M. Denham, R.N., and the officers and men of H.M. Surveying Ship Herald; that vessel having been detained some days by Captain Denham on the spot for the purpose of giving assistance. The first act of the Community, on assembling after the landing, was to offer a devout Thanksgiving to God for their prosperous voyage.

      "The Committee have learned that the expense wisely and liberally incurred by the Government in effecting the conveyance of the people from Pitcairn to Norfolk Island was 5,580 pounds. . . .

      "Sir W. Denison wrote to the Hon. Sec. of the Committee a letter dated Sydney, 14th of July 1856, saying that thenceforward the islanders would not require any charitable assistance. 'They are now,' he said, 'occupants of a most fertile island, with stock of all kinds, with tools and appliances for all their immediate wants.' His Excellency stated his intention of exercising a careful supervision over the people who may be permitted to land and reside among the new inhabitants."

      In the Correspondence (Book III) will be found Sir William Denison's despatches, regarding his visit to Norfolk Island, description of the buildings, allotment of land, and residences (including the Governor's House), and a full account of the settlement; also the Census for 1857. The Report goes on: "The Rev. Mr. Nobbs has written at great length from Norfolk Island. In a letter dated October the 15th, 1856" (this letter is preserved among the documents) "he gave a circumstantial account of two visits paid to the island by the Bishop of New Zealand. It appeared that on the last of these occasions his Lordship had, on Sunday the 7th of September 1856, confirmed 86 persons being the whole of the adult population, with the exception of three, who were unable to attend. The Bishop had also brought the people a large and acceptable supply of provisions. Mrs. Selwyn had remained two months on the island during the Bishop's absence, and had in various ways afforded most kind and valuable service to the female portion of the Community."

      An account of this unique Confirmation is given by Mr. Nobbs in the above letter, in which he says, "Well, I repeat again it was a most interesting sight, and one which I have often desired, but never expected to see fulfilled. The women arranged in rows in their white habiliments looked like a bevy of nuns; but I was well sure that went no further than the outward appearance; they were also as barefooted as Carmelites, but not from any superstitious penchant, but merely because they had no shoes to wear. Everything being planned in methodical order by the good Bishop, the Evening Service was read by the Rev. Mr. Pattison; after another excellent sermon by his lordship, illustrating the duties of the Christian profession, the Confirmation began by ten persons standing up in parallel lines of five each, without stepping from the place where they had been seated. . . . I am sure it would have gratified our many friends could they have been present and seen parents kneeling by the side of their children, many of whom were also parents; and in one instance a great-grandmother was accompanied by four granddaughters, three of whom had families of their own. . . . The number of persons confirmed amount to 86, including all ages from Elizabeth Young (daughter of Mills of the Bounty and the oldest person in the community, she being about sixty-six) to Andrew Christian aged fifteen, the great grandson of Fletcher Christian." The "Mr. Pattison" here mentioned was afterwards the well-known Bishop Patteson. Perhaps Bishop Selwyn's own account of the Confirmation may not be out of place. It was written in a letter to his son dated from Auckland, September 1856. he writes: "I have just returned from Norfolk Island, where I held on Sunday the 7th of September one of the most remarkable Confirmations, I should think, in the history of the Church. The whole adult population of the Pitcairn Islanders, except three who were too feeble to attend, presented themselves to me in nine classes to be examined and Confirmed. Your dear Mother had carefully prepared all the women during two months that she resided on the Island. The eldest of the candidates – a woman more than seventy years of age – was a daughter of John Adams, the last survivor of the mutineers of the Bounty. Almost all the candidates were connected in some degree of relationship with men who, if they had been captured, would have been hanged at the yard-arm of a man-of-war, and who died violent deaths, the result of intoxication, jealousy, and every other evil passion. And yet the grace of God enabled John Adams to sow a seed in the hearts of the children among whom he was left alone in the year 1800, which bore this rich harvest in 1856, when eighty five of his children, grandchildren, sons in law, or daughters in law,

or foster children, whom he had adopted, were Confirmed by me . . . And to make the scene more striking, the service was performed in the Convict Chapel. . . The Chapel opened into the Prison Yard, set round with every kind of cell for every class of criminal; in every corner heaps of rusty fetters and cast off garments marked with the broad arrow . . . and all the signs of misery and sin made more striking by the horrid silence of the solitary cells . . Close by this visible type of everything that is most hateful in sin and its consequences, might he heard the song of praise in which every voice joined; and on the 7th of September eighty-five persons knelt before the Lord's Table to receive strength to fulfil their baptismal promise. . . ." (Life of Bishop Selwyn, Vol. II. Also in Armstrong's History of the Melanesian Mission).

      The last meeting of the Committee was apparently on May the 18th, 1838, when a letter from the Earl of Harrowby (who was unable to he present) was read, in which he wrote " . . . I cannot but think that our simple course is to place what funds remain to us in the hands of the Government of New South Wales, to whose care the Pitcairn Islanders are now entrusted by the Government, and to dissolve ourselves as a Committee. We were called into existence for a definite purpose; that purpose is now attained, and it is well that we should not mix ourselves up with other questions in which the welfare of the Pitcairners is not the only object, though connected with them ... ". (The original Ietter is among the documents.) A letter of 14 pages (the original of which is among the documents) was also read from the Bishop of New Zealand (Bishop Selwyn) giving an account of a visit to Norfolk Island (November 1837) and stating his views and opinions with regard to the inhabitants and his relations with them. The committee agreed, however, that these matters did not come within their province and that the points could not be taken up by them. But in the lapse of time between the reception of the Bishop's letter and the meeting of the Committee Mr. Murray had replied to the Bishop, which reply was also read. A passage in the reply runs: "The Committee have not met since November, but your last letter is too important not to be communicated on the first occasion in my power to the members, for whose information, as well as my own, you say it is intended. It is not for me to enter upon the matters to which you call attention in the earlier pages, especially as to what is (or in your Lordship's view should be) the Ecclesiastical status of Norfolk Island; and I venture to remark that these seem to me to be subjects scarcely for the consideration of the Pitcairn Fund Committee. . . .". While the subject was considered to he irrelevant to the work of the

Committee, there is a great deal of correspondence preserved (largely autograph letters) regarding the founding of the Church in Norfolk Island and the Melanesian Mission, including letters from Bishop Selwyn, Sir William Denison (Governor of New South Wales), Sir T. Dyke Acland, Bart., and the Rev. C. J. Abraham, all showing great divergence of opinion and disagreement as to what tended to the welfare of the Pitcairners. Sir W. Denison attributed to the Bishop's efforts to establish his authority in Norfolk Island much of the dissatisfaction which ultimately resulted in a drifting back to Pitcairn of some of the islanders. In a letter addressed to Mr. Murray in November 1858 he says: "I am sorry to say that I hear of some discord and division among the people, which I am afraid that I can trace to the efforts made by the Bishop of New Zealand to estahlish his authority there by the creation of a party; of all the curses which plague society party spirit is the worst, it is at the root of all our divisions and has its root in selfishness. . . ." .

      The discord to which reference is here made so greatly affected the history of the Pitcairners in Norfolk Island that some explanation is desirable. The facts, as may be gathered from E. S. Armstrong's History of the Melanesian Mission, were as follows.

      Selwyn in 1841 had been consecrated first Bishop of New Zealand, with a somewhat indefinite charge also covering a large part of the Western Pacific Islands. From 1848 he had begun to visit as far away as the Solomon Islands, and thence to bring young Melanesians for instruction during the warmer New Zealand season (from October to May) at Auckland, such instructed natives being returned as missionaries to their far distant island home.

      In 1856 – the year in which the Pitcairners were taken to Norfolk Island – it occurred to the Bishop that that island, lying practically midway between the Solomon Islands and New Zealand, with a climate and general conditions which made it suitable for residence all the year round of both native pupils and their European teachers, would be an ideal position for the training quarters of the intended Melanesian Mission. Selwyn, therefore, in that same year (1856) visited Sydney "in his hope of obtaining permission to establish the headquarters of the Mission at Norfolk Island." But the Governor of New South Wales "refused even to allow him (Selwyn) to place a chaplain there. He dreaded the influence of the savage Melanesians on Mr. Nobbs' carefully guarded and childlike flock." As a matter of fact, the Governor, who, in communicating to the Pitcairn folk the benevolent intention of the Government to establish them in Norfolk Island, had inadvertently left them under the impression that they were to he the sole occupants of their new

island home, found a difficulty in sanctioning the settlement of any other body.

      For the time being, therefore, the Bishop's hopes of establishing headquarters at Norfolk Island were frustrated. He, however, continued to call at the island on his journeys between New Zealand and the Solomon Islands; and even, as has been seen, on one occasion left Mrs. Selwyn there for two months in place of the forbidden chaplain, to assist in preparing Mr. Nobbs' flock for Confirmation. It might also be noted that Patteson was consecrated Bishop of the separated Diocese of Melanesia in 1861, and in 1864 the New South Wales Government requested the new Bishop "to take the Pitcairners at Norfolk Island under his supervision, thus withdrawing that opposition on the part of the Government which had prevented the original settlement there." It makes this circumstance the more interesting that, in one of his letters to Mr. Murray, Bishop Selwyn definitely named Patteson as the chaplain he had proposed to place on Norfolk Island.

      Even from their first coming together, the relations between the general body of the Pitcairn folk under Mr. Nobbs and the Bishop's folk had proved amicable; though a certain number of the Pitcairners never lost the feeling of discomfort at finding themselves under strange ecclesiastical conditions, and still more their feeling of disappointment at not finding themselves sole masters of the "land of promise" into which they had been brought. To this cause in part was due the secession and return to Pitcairn of a malcontent minority.

      In 1857 the Committee had been enlarged, the members being (those marked with a ^* being also members of the S.P.C.K.) the Treasurers; the Earl of Harrowby; the Bishop of Oxford; the Lord Auckland, Bishop of Bath and Wells^*; the Bishop of New Zealand^*; the I Eon. George Waldegrave; Sir G. Grey; A. Stafford. Esq., M.P.; Vice-Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby; Captain E. Fanshawe, R.N.^*; Archdeacon Grant^*; T. T. Grant, Esq.; the Rev. Ernest Hawkins, B.D.^*; Captain Inglefield, R.N.; Captain Prevost, R.N.; Herman Merivale, Esq.; Arthur Mills, Esq., M.P.^*; T. F. Elliot, Esq.; Fortescue Moresby, R.N.

      In 1858-59 certain persons were sent out from England to supplement the Norfolk Island community, and this was the cause of a great deal of discussion in Committee, and correspondence with the Government Emigration Board, which is now filed in these volumes. The S.P.C.K. Report for 1859 contains the following entry: – "Since the arrival of these despatches certain qualified persons of good character who were required for the community on Norfolk Island have been sent

thither, under instructions received from Sir Will: Denison, the Governor, namely, Mr. Rossiter, a schoolmaster, who is also to act as storekeeper, a wheelwright, smith, and millwright, and a mason and plasterer. These persons sailed from Plymouth on the Palmyra in February 1859. The Society took the opportunity of forwarding by this vessel some books . . . for the use of the members of the community in whom so much interest has been taken for so many years. Intelligence has been received, in a letter from the Governor dated July 7th, 1859, of the arrival of the emigrants at Norfolk Island. The amount of their passage money to Sydney had been defrayed from the Pitcairn Committee Fund."

      No final statement of accounts appears to have been made by the Committee; nor is there any record of their formally being dissolved. But there seem to have been no further meetings after that of May 18th, 1858, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, when the suggestion of the Earl of Harrowby (letter above) was approved and it was agreed that the Committee should not be called together again "except for some special cause." It is to be presumed that they handed over any surplus funds remaining in their hands, as suggested, to the New South Wales Government. It is somewhat difficult to arrive at how much money the Fund dealt with from first to last. But the original subscription list (given in the Committee's first Report) amounted to £925, of which a sum of £5oo was invested.

      Reference has been made to the "drifting back to Pitcairn" of some of the people very shortly after their arrival at Norfolk Island. With regard to this, the Report of the S.P.C.K. for 1860 has the following entry: -- "Letters have been received from the Rev. G. H. Nobbs, Chaplain at Norfolk Island, and Sir W. Denison, Governor of New South Wales and Norfolk Island. His Excellency's letter dated July 7th, 1859, written on board H.M.S. Cordelia, described the visit which he had just made to the community on the Island. Two families, viz., Mayhew Young and his wife and seven children, and Moses Young, his wife and five children, had left on December 2nd, 1858, for Pitcairn's Island, and some other families had expressed their intention of following them. Both Sir William Denison and Mr. Nobbs had done their best to discourage this hazardous measure. . . . In a letter dated October 20th, 1859, the Rev. G. H. Nobbs alluded, with expressions of deep regret, to the departure of the two families to Pitcairn. Of these persons, sixteen in number, the parents were the only persons above the age of fifteen."

      An interesting account of the return is given in a newspaper article, "The Mutineers of the Bounty," written in 1881 by

Rosalind Young, one of the descendants of the mutineer of that name, and a native of Pitcairn. The following is an extract from the article: "After the removal of the former inhabitants of this island to Norfolk Island, which was successfully accomplished June 8th, 1856, some of the people were strongly possessed with a desire to return to Pitcairn Island, which had for them greater attractions, although isolated, than the superior advantages that Norfolk Island had; they therefore left the latter place on December 2nd, 1858, – the love of the home of their childhood overcoming every other feeling. The first party that returned was composed of sixteen persons in two families. One consisted of William Mayhew Young and his wife Margaret, and their seven children, six of whom were by the woman's former husband, Matthew McCoy, who was accidentally shot while in the act of discharging the Bounty's gun, when firing a farewell salute to H.M.S. Virago, in January 1853. He left nine children; the two eldest being married remained with their husbands in Norfolk Island, and the next daughter stayed behind with them also. The other family that returned consisted of Moses Young and his wife Albina, and their children, five in number. Of the younger persons who then returned, the eldest was only fifteen years of age. A schooner called Mary Ann was chartered to bring them here, and leaving Norfolk Island they reached their destination safely on January 17th, 1859, after a passage of forty-five days. . . . It was about this time – 1863 – that preparations were being made in Norfolk Island for the second party to return, which number originally far exceeded that of the first; but when almost everything was ready some withdrew. The vessel chartered to convey them was a small schooner, – the St. Kilda. The emigrants were twenty-seven persons, two of whom – Mrs. Elizabeth Young and Mrs. Hannah Young – were daughters respectively, of John Mills and John Adams, mutineers of the Bounty. They were grand looking old women, and queenly in their bearing . . . Mrs. Elizabeth Young was the oldest inhabitant of Pitcairn Island, and is now, at the time I write, still living and carries well her ninety years. Of the others who returned, were Thursday O. Christian and his wife Mary (daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Young) and with them their nine children. . . . The others who returned were Simon Young and Mary his wife and their eight children (a son of theirs, the first born, was with Bishop Patteson, of the Melanesian Mission); Robert and Lydia Buffett, and an American, Samuel Warren, who married the eldest daughter of Thursday and Mary Christian on the eve of their departure from Norfolk Island and agreed to cast in his lot with them; Mrs. Hannah Young, Simon's mother,

who left all the rest of her children and grandchildren in Norfolk Island to accompany her younger son to her early home."

      Of the remaining documents in these volumes Captain Bligh's Pamphlet (No. 21 in Vol. III) requires special mention. It is a manuscript copy (39 pages quarto) of a pamphlet which has on its forefront the title "An Answer to Certain Assertions contained in the Appendix to a Pamphlet entitled 'Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court Martial held at Portsmouth August 12th 1792, on Ten Persons charged with Mutiny on board His Majesty's Ship the Bounty,'" by Captain William Bligh. London. Printed for G. Nicol, Bookseller to His Majesty, Pall Mall 1794.

      It contains Bligh's own description of all the persons concerned; copies of letters and other testimonies of the various persons concerned, as to what happened before and during the Mutiny, all in favour of and exonerating Bligh, and mostly letters addressed to Bligh. It is handwritten, in one hand throughout. There is nothing accompanying it to give any clue as to how or why it came into the possession of the S.P.C.K., or what is its connexion with the other papers, with which it has no apparent concern. It is possible that the Rev. T. Murray in his book (12th Ed., p. 32) is referring to it when he says he is inserting some particulars "which he is able to furnish from a rare but authentic document." The only printed copy of the pamphlet which has so far been traced is in the British Museum. See Appendix III.

      Volume I. Minutes of Proceedings of the Committee (comprising the first and the last meetings).

      At the end of this volume, bound into it, are the following papers:

      (1) The first and second Report Sheets of the Committee, dated respectively August 1853 and May 1857.

      (2) Twenty printed pages, being the account by the Rev. G. H. Nobhs of the voyage of the Pitcairners to Norfolk Island.

      (3) Twenty-four printed pages of correspondence between Sir W. Denison and the Bishop of New Zealand relating to Norfolk Island and its inhabitants, during 1857.

      (4) An autograph letter from the Bishop of New Zealand to the Rev. T. Murray (dated from Cuddesden, March 1854) putting forth some matters he desired the Committee to discuss.

      (5) Autograph letter from the Earl of Harrowby.

      (6) Two autograph letters from Sir W. Denison to the Rev.

T. Murray with regard to his proposals for the welfare of the Norfolk Island Community, dated Nov. 1858 and May 1859.

      (7) On a loose sheet (now filed in this book) the original MS. of an Address from the Pitcairn Islanders to Queen Victoria, 1853.

      Volumes II and III. contain correspondence covering the same dates as the Minutes. Volume II is composed almost entirely of original Ietters bound together. For convenience, these have been grouped here under their subject headings. A list of names of some of the more important persons concerned in the correspondence is given separately at the end. The numbers refer to the order in which the papers are filed.

      (1) Arrangements at Norfolk Island -- 1, 3, 17, 18, Vol. II

      (2) Arrangements for the transfer of the Pitcairners thither and the providing of a vessel (including the Reports of the Dido's visit to Pitcairn (1853) and the Juno's (Captain Fremantle) visits to Pitcairn and Norfolk Island (1856) and Consul Toup Nicolas' Report to the F.O. of his visit to Pitcairn (1853) ) -- 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, Vol. II

      (3) Arrangements for sending out extra "Settlers" from England to Norfolk Island, in accordance with Sir W. Denison's recommendations, to supplement the settlement, in particular a schoolmaster -- 21-40, VoI. II, and 1-5, Vol. III.

      (4) Regarding the Rev. G. H. Nobbs' expenses for coming to England -- 5, 10, Vol. III.

      (5) Reports from Norfolk Island: Extracts from Sir W. Denison's Journal of his visit (80 pages MSS.); on the inhabitants' health: description of the buildings: land cultivation: allotment of ground and assigning of official residences: duplicate (signed) despatches from Sir W. Denison and a Government Gazette; all during 1857. Also the census taken 1857 -- 26, Vol. II, and 6-11, 14, 15, 16, Vol. III.

      (6) Correspondence regarding the Ecclesiastical controversy, including MS. copy of the Bishop of New Zealand's Memorandum, with Sir W. Denison's marginal remarks; and covering this, an autograph letter from Captain Fortescue Moresby -- 17-20, 25, 27, 28-33, Vol. II, and 3, 4, 6, Vol. III.

      Miscellaneous Papers which cannot be classified with above:

      Six pages of MS. without heading or reference, being a description of the landing on Norfolk Island and the division of land -- 41, Vol. II.

      Extracts (MS.) from (apparently) a later Pitcairn Island Register, 1853 -- 8, Vol. II

      Fourteen pages (double) autograph letter from the Rev. G. H. Nobbs from Norfolk Island to the Rev. T. Murray, dates Jan. 1st; July 25th; Sept. 23rd; Oct. 13th, 1857. Being a running journal of Norfolk Island -- 23, Vol. II.

      Autograph Letter from John Adams, jun. (Norfolk Island), to the Rev. T. Murray, Oct. 1857 -- 24, Vol. III.

      Eleven printed pages of a speech (apparently by Sir W. Denison, but name, place and date are not given), with regard to Norfolk Island and the inhabitants -- 20, Vol. II.

      Admiral Bligh's Pamphlet – 21, Vol. II.

      List of names of some of the Correspondents:

      The Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonial and War Departments, 1852-4.

      Sir William Denison, Royal Engineers, Lt. Governor of Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), where he was appointed in 1846; at the end of 1854 he was appointed Governor of New South Wales (and of Norfolk Island) till 1861; then Governor of Madras.

      Herman Merivale, Esq., Permanent Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office.

      Fred. Peel, Esq., M.P., and John Ball, Esq., M.P., Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State, Colonial Office.

      The Bishop of New Zealand, Bishop Selwyn.

      Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart.

      The Rev. C. J. Abraham, Archdeacon of Auckland, afterwards Bishop of Wellington.

      Earl of Carnarvon, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, at later dates twice Secretary of State.

      Sir F. Rogers, Land and Emigration Commissioner; afterwards succeeded Mr. Herman Merivale as Perm. Under Sec., Col. Off. On retirement created Lord Blachford.

      Toup Nicolas, Esq., H.B.M. Consul at Raiatea.

      Captain Fortescue Moresby, R.N.

      On March 8th, 1822, two American whaleships – the Russell of New Bedford, Captain Arthur, and another the name of which is unknown, but the Master of which was one Arcy, were lying off Pitcairn Island, taking in wood, water and fresh provisions, and in very friendly relations with the islanders. Whether before that date other whaleships had called at the island since Captain Mayhew Folger of the American merchantman Topaz first found the settlement, is uncertain. The Sultan, of Boston, Massachusetts, Captain Reynolds, which is recorded as having called there in 1817, seems not to have been a whaleship.

      In the year after the visit of the Russell the Island Register and Shipping List were begun; and from these documents, largely helped out by Alexander Starbuck's History of the American Whale Fishery, it may be ascertained that of well above four hundred recorded calls made by vessels of all kinds at Pitcairn Island, between 1823 and 1853, the years during which the Shipping List was kept, more than three-fourths of these calls were by ships from the busy little shipping ports of New England. Most of these American vessels were whaleships; the others – that is, those not accounted for by Starbuck – were probably either merchantmen engaged in the China trade or such as were in search of seal skins, bêche-de-mer, or other South Sea produce.

      Many of these New England whaleships called at Pitcairn more than once during a single voyage – which might last for two or even three years; and in some cases the same ship repeated its visit during subsequent voyages. For instance, the Navigator of Nantucket was at Pitcairn six times. The first time was during the voyage on which she left her home port on July 3rd, 1845, and returned on July 5th, 1849, having been at Pitcairn in 1846 and 1847. She left home again on August 27th, 1849, and got back on June i9th, 1854, having called at the Island four times, twice in 1850, and once in each of the years 1851, and 1852. Again, the Pacific left her home port, New Bedford, on November end, 1836, and returned May 25th, 1840, having called at Pitcairn in 1839. She Ieft home again August i5th, 1840, and returned

May 1st, 1844, having been at Pitcairn in 1842. She started again on October 21st, 1844, and returned home on July 5th, 1848, having been at Pitcairn in 1846 and 1847. And on yet another voyage she started on November 11th, 1848, and got home on July 22nd, 1852, having been at Pitcairn in 1851.

      The Rose of Nantucket, like the Navigator, called six times, and the George Washington of Wareham and the Phenix of New Bedford made five calls at Pitcairn. Eleven other ships called more than once.

      Commander Charles Wilkes, of the United States Exploring Expedition which was engaged in very important survey work in the Pacific Ocean during the years 1838-1842, in his Report (published at Philadelphia in 1845), has put on record (Vol. V, Ch. XII, pp. 457-502) a detailed account of the busy whale-fishery carried on from New England at the very time when these ships were resorting to Pitcairn Island. He says that the New England whaling fleet then numbered 675 vessels, mostly of 400 tons burden, the majority of which cruised in the Pacific.

      Wilkes enumerates, and shows on a special Map, .chat were then regarded as the principal whaling-grounds within the Pacific Ocean. The more important of these have been transferred to the sketch map at the end of this book.

      The "On-shore ground" lay along and not far from the coast of Chili and Peru, approximately from the island of Juan Fernandez to the Galapagos Islands; and the "Off-shore ground" was somewhat to the north-westward, thus slightly more " off " the South American coast. Special whaling grounds were recognised about the Hawaiian, Society, Samoan, and Fijian groups; and Wilkes says there was yet another "in the neighbourhood of the Kingsmill group," that is, between the Gilbert (or Kingsmill) and the Ellice groups. But the most important of the fields stretched across the South Pacific from slightly north-westward of Valparaiso to the Kermadec islands – thus actually or nearly covering Pitcairn. North of the Equator there was a much used whaling ground off the Californian coast, and another along the extreme " North West Coast " of America. Still on the Asiatic side of the North Pacific, there was a fishing ground off the coast of Japan, between it and the Bonin islands; and in the south-west there was the so-called "Middle-ground" between Australia and New Zealand, and yet another off the eastern coast of New Zealand.

      Wilkes adds: "These, it will be seen, embrace a large field, and it might be supposed that a ship could hardly miss finding the animals. Such, however, is not the case. A vessel may visit all these places and yet return home 'a clean ship,' if she happened to be out of season. It appears from experience that

whales in their migrations congregate in the above-named places at certain times of the year, and those who are acquainted with the business endeavour to be early on the cruising grounds."

      Alexander Starbuck, in the book already named, provides from the Shipping Lists of the many New England ports if not a complete yet a very full list of each voyage of the " whalers" from these home ports, distinguishing in each case to which ocean each ship went, the date of its leaving, and of its re-entry – if it did return – the owners' name and that of the Master, the tonnage, the harvest it brought back from the sea, and in some cases its after fate. Particulars of almost every whaleship recorded in the Shipping List as having visited Pitcairn may be found in Starbuck's book.

      It is evident that these whaleships from New England had adopted the habit of calling for rest and refreshment at this lonely island so conveniently situated close to, if not actually within the most important of the Pacific whaling grounds, and at a point which these ships must frequently have passed in following the tracks along which the shoals of whales moved, according to season, from one feeding ground to another.

      That there are comparatively few recorded instances of " whalers " other than those of American nationality resorting to Pitcairn is probably due to the fact that the whaling business of others than the New Englanders was at the period under consideration carried on chiefly in the waters between New Zealand and the Antarctic Islands and elsewhere than on the outskirts of the Central and Eastern Pacific.

      Doubtless the Pitcairn folk's homely character and ideas must have been especially congenial to the New Englanders of those days. The passage – already quoted – from the log of the Russell of New Bedford as to the warning posted on the ship as it approached Pitcairn in 1822, enjoining the crew to respect and treat the Islanders well, is important evidence on this point; and the rest of the entry in the same log, especially as it is not readily available elsewhere, affords an interesting picture of the sympathetic relations at once established between the Islanders and their New England visitors. It reads as follows: – "Ship Russell, March 9th – Pleasant weather; at 2. p.m. went on shore accompanied by Captain Arcy, in his boat: as the islanders' boat wanted repairing, we took her on deck, and before the next morning had her done, to the grateful satisfaction of our new friends. The islanders went on shore in one of our boats, Captain Arcy taking five, and we the other five; our landing was effected much easier under the skilful direction of our new pilots than could otherwise have been done. Previous to leaving the ship, bread and butter was put on the table, and they were

invited to eat; but they refused, alleging that it was their fast day; however, after some importunity and enquiry whether I thought it w-ould be any harm to them, and being assured in the negative, they partook, though slightly, and not till after they had implored a blessing. And after their repast was finished, a hymn and prayers were offered with great devotional propriety. On our landing, the Hill of Difficulty was to be ascended – a job I could not myself have performed in less than two or three hours: it was done in much less time with the assistance of a steady young man named Robert Young, Al ho helped me almost every step. When we arrived at the top, we appeared to be at least 30o feet above the face of the water; having gone up a zigzag path the boat appeared almost under us. We were there met by the venerable Governor, John Adams, who was attended by most of the women and children of the island, and were welcomed to their shores in the most artless yet dignified manner. After resting awhile we were then invited to the village, about half a mile distant, through groves of cocoa nuts and other trees of a large growth, which made an excellent shade. Although we came to the village, which was situated on a gentle declivity, with a sufficient distance between the houses for the drying and bleaching of their cloth, the beautiful prospect, regularity, and neatness of the houses, with the joyous and double welcome of its truly hospitable inhabitants, made the spot enchanting. Soon after our arrival a dinner was served up, consisting of two roast pigs, fowls, yams, and plantains; but as they declined partaking with us, on account of its being their fast day, we concluded to wait till near sunset, at which time they would be at liberty to join us; and when they thought it seasonable, we all sat down together, but not till the chief of our kind entertainers had asked a blessing in a very impressive manner. The return of thanks appeared not less impressive in the minds of the community, who were like olive branches around the table. After spending the evening – if not the feast of reason, at least we had the flow of soul, beds were prepared for Captain Arcy and myself, and J. Adams, having taken a bed in the same chamber, though it was not in his own house, we conversed till midnight. Early in the morning, our kind female friends were actively employed getting breakfast for us, which was ready by seven o'clock, consisting of fowls boiled with yams, which make an excellent soup; it was good, and we eat heartily. For our dinner we were treated with baked pigs and roasted goats, with a large quantity of yams, plantains, &. Our people were equally well provided for. At three o'clock I returned to the shore to go on board, receiving the same kind attention in descending the mountain which was paid when going up it. We got into

our boats with feelings of gratitude, which I was unable to express, towards these good people, but not till they made me promise to come on shore again before we left the island."

      "10th, 11th and 12th – Still lying off and on, a part of the crew on shore, relieving each other by turns. On the 12th I again went on shore and was received and treated with every attention. Before noon I returned on board after a more affectionate leave than I ever did anywhere except my home. I was accompanied on board by John Adams, Dolly Young, and Mary Ann Christian. Having received from them a supply of young cocoa nuts and fowls, and made such presents as they wished for and we could spare from the ship's stores, we gave them a part of bolt of light duck, one axe, two hatchets, four boat-knives, a bag of bread, a few bottles of wine, a roll of old canvass, a little grindstone, and a watch. I Iaving now accomplished the business for which we came, our friends, after wishing us a good voyage and safe return home, went on shore. Captain Arcy not having finished watering, concluded to stay another day or .two, and was anxious for us to stay till he was ready, but I was unwilling to lose more time.

      "Before we leave Pitcairn Island it will not be improper to make a few observations. The time and manner of its colonization are to most general readers well known. John Adams and six Otaheitan women are all that is left of the Bounty. Forty nine have been born on the island, two of whom are dead, which leaves 53 persons on the island, now all in good health without a single exception. There are about eleven active young men, who are ready and willing at all times to assist a ship's crew in, or anything else the island affords. John Adams assures us, and from what we ourselves saw we have no reason to disbelieve him, that the island was inhabited before themselves, but at what period it is difficult to conjecture. They found after their arrival, many places where houses have stood, burying places, and images representing a human figure, with other indubitable marks that they were not the first possessors of Pitcairn Island. It is, however, certain that the aborigines left it at no recent period as the trees growing on the house spots could not have arrived to their present size in less than 100 years, perhaps 500."

      Having left Pitcairn Island on March lath, 1822, the Russell got back to New Bedford, her home port, which she had left in August 182o, on October 7th, 1822.

      Though the present publication purports to treat of events in Pitcairn Island only up to the time that the whole of the inhabitants were removed to Norfolk Island, in 1856, it may here be noted that visits to the Island by whaleships from New

England are mentioned, though not in great detail, in the very interesting but not well-known hook by Rosalind Amelia Young, a native of Pitcairn, in which is told what happened in the Island after some of the descendants of the original Bounty folk had found their way back from Norfolk Island to their beloved island home.

This Catalogue of the Publications and Documents regarding Pitcairn Island (covering the period dealt with in the present book) has, for the sake of greater usefulness, been grouped into periods, and each period has been arranged in chronological order. Thus of necessity, some of the publications (which deal with the whole story) appear in more than one of the groups.

1. 1. "A Narrative of the Mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty and subsequent voyage of 2,400 miles in the ship's boat from the Friendly Islands to Timor." By Lieutenant William Bligh. Published by George Nicol, 1790.

   This is Bligh's own account of the Mutiny in book forai. It is mainly concerned with the subsequent voyage in the open boat. But it contains the exact description and naines of the mutineers, a plan of the ship, and three charts. There is a copy in the British Museum included in Geographical and Nautical Tracts (which also contains the one traced printed copy of Bligh's Answer to Certain Assertions . . .). A French translation of this was published by Didot, Paris, 1790.

2. 2. "Voyage to the South Sea, undertaken by command of His Majesty, for the purpose of conveying the Bread-Fruit tree to the West Indies, in His Majesty's ship the Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, including an account of the Mutiny on board the said ship, and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew in the ship's boat, from Tofoa one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in East Indies; the whole illustrated with charts &." Published by permission of the Lords of the Admiralty. Printed for George Nicol, 1792.

   This book incorporates the first one. But the "Answcr. . ." is not included.

3. 3. "A Narrative of the Mutiny" (to which is added an account of the fate of the mutineers). By Captain William Bligh (Voyages and TraveIs). (Universal Library.)

1. 4. "Narrative of the Mutiny," By Fryer, Master.

   This is an undated manuscript, without any inscription, but it is all in one hand. The name is not given, but is signed at the end "Fryer, Master." Evidently it is an actual autograph account by John Fryer who was Master of the Bounty at the time of the mutiny, and one of those who made the subsequent voyage in the ship's boat. This MS. is in the United Service Institution and was presented in 1887 by the late Hugh Rump of Wells.

2. 5. "The Mutiny of the Bounty AND Bligh's Voyage in the Ship's Boat to Timor" (from a sailor's point of view). By Edward Beechervaise. From the Victorian Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society of Australasia). Vol. xxviii.

3. 6. "The Dangerous Voyage Performed by Captain Bligh." Printed Dublin, 1824. Anon.

   Mainly a reprint from Bligh's own account, with an added account of the discovery of Pitcairn Island.

4. 7. "The Muster of the Bounty." The actual document, dated 20th August, 1787, is in the Record Office.

   This gives the whole complement of the ship and the names as registered, with ages and place of birth.

5. 8. "The Bounty."

   Admiralty description of the ship. H.M.S. Bounty was the Bethia built at Hull 1784. Purchased by the Navy Board 1787 (£1,950) for the purpose of conveying bread-fruit trees from the Society Islands to the West Indies. . . . By Admiralty order dated January 8, 1787. it was directed to register her as an armed vessel by the name of Bounty and to establish her with four short four-pounders, ten half-pound swivel guns, and a complement of forty-five men. Arrived at Deptford May 26, 1787. Docked June 4. Launched August 14. Sailed October 9, 1787. The cost of fitting her was £1,456.

6. 9. References to the Mutiny of the "Bounty" will be found in the Literary Search Room, the Record Office, in the Naval Records.

7. 10. "The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. 'Bounty'" (its causes and consequences). Published by John Murray, 1831. (Family Library.)

   The author's name is not given, but, as stated by Lady Belcher, it was undoubtedly Sir John Barrow. The preface speaks of the author as the " Editor," and says he has been induced to bring into one connected view what has hitherto appeared only in detached fragments . . . It is illustrated by etchings from original drawings of Lt.-Col. Robert Batty, " Amateur draughtsman."

1. 11. "The Mutiny of the Bounty." A 14 page review of the above. Published in Missionary Chronicle, January, 1832.

2. 12. "Pitcairn: The Island, the People, and the Pastor." By the Rev. T. B. Murray. Published 1853. S.P.C.K, Chapters I and II (see No. 53).

3. 13. "Adventures of British Seamen in the Southern Ocean and the Mutiny of the 'Bounty.'" By H. Murray. (Constable's Miscellany, vol. 4). Published 1827.

1. 14. "The Voyage of H.M.S. 'Pandora.' Despatched to arrest the Mutineers of the Bounty in the South Seas, 1790-91. Being the Narratives of Captain Edward Edwards, R.N., the Commander, and George Hamilton the Surgeon." With Introduction and Notes. By Basil Thomson. Published 1915. Francis Edwards.

   This book includes both Captain Edwards' story (already given by Delano), and Hamilton's account.

2. 15. "Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Frigate 'Pandora' Performed under the Direction of Captain Edwards in the Years 1790-92. With the Discoveries made in the South Seas and the many Distresses experienced by the Crew from Shipwreck and Famine, in a Voyage of Eleven Hundred Miles in open Boats, between Endeavour Straits and the Island of Timor." By George Hamilton (late Surgeon of the " Pandora "). Published 1793. Berwick.

   Given here in connection with the Pandora's part in the Pitcairn story.

3. 16. "Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court Martial held at Portsmouth on August 12th 1792, on Ten Persons charged with Mutiny on board His Majesty's Ship the Bounty." Printed London, 1794. (Admiralty Library.)

   This is the official report of the proceedings. This copy and the one in the United Service Institution are the only copies so far traced. Bound up with this is Edward Christian's Appendix.

1. 17. "An Appendix containing a full account of the real causes and circumstances of the unhappy transaction the most material of which have been hitherto withheld from the public." Edward Christian. Published 1794. (Admiralty Library.)

   This document purported to give a full account of the cause of the mutiny and evoked a reply from Bligh. The author was the brother of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny.

2. 18. "An Answer To Certain Assertions In The Appendix to a Pamphlet entitled ` Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court Martial held at Portsmouth August lath 1792, on Ten Persons charged with Mutiny on board His Majesty's Ship the Bounty." By Captain William Bligh. London. Printed for G. Nicol, Bookseller to Ilis Majesty. Pall Mall 1794. (British Museum. Bound up in Geographical and Nautical Tracts.)

   This contains Bligh's own description of all the persons concerned; copies of letters and other testimonies of the various persons; as to what happened before and during the time of the mutiny. The only printed copy of the work so far traced is that in the British Museum (though other important libraries have been searched, including the Bodleian). The British Museum copy, as shown by the press-mark, was not acquired when published. It was sufficiently well known in 1824 to be included in Walker's Bibliography (British Publications). See above, No. 1.

3. 19. "Manuscript Duplicate" of the above. (S.P.C.K. Records.)

4. 20. "Memoir Of The Late Captain Peter Heywood, R.N., with Extracts from his Diaries and Correspondence." By Edward Tagart. Published London, 1832.

   Heywood, a young midshipman, believed to have been detained in the Bounty against his will, and afterwards taken prisoner in Tahiti (by the Pandora), supplies in his diary the best account of his treatment and that of his fellow sufferers at the time of the wreck of the Pandora.

5. 21. Royal Naval Biography (Peter Heywood). By John Marshall, R.N. Published 1823-5.

   This contains an account of the mutiny and will be found in Vol. II., Part II.

6. 22. "The Mutineers Of The 'Bounty' And Their Descendants In Pitcairn And Norfolk Islands." By Lady Belcher. Published John Murray, 1870.

   This is mainly concerned with the mutiny and those mutineers who did not go to Pitcairn. The principal materials for the part dealing with Pitcairn were furnished

by Admiral Moresby. Lady Belcher was the stepdaughter of Captain Peter Heywood, and had access to family manuscripts and personal sources of information. amongst them, the diary of James Morrison (one of the petty officers of the Bounty) and correspondence between Heywood and various relations.

1. 23. "The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. 'Bounty.'" By Sir John Barrow. (See No. 10.)

2. 24. "A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres." By Amasa Delano. (Chapter V. See No. 33.) Printed for the Author, Boston, 1817.

3. 25. "Pitcairn: the Island, the People, and the Pastor." By the Rev. T. B. Murray. Published 1853. S.P.C.K. Chapter III (see No. 53).

1. 26. "Hawkesworth's Voyages Round the World." Philip Carteret's discovery and naming of Pitcairn Island, 1773. Vol. I, p. 341.

2. 27. "Letter to the Admiralty." (Actual manuscript, Record Office.) From Mayhew Folger. 1813.

   This is the actual letter written by Folger, Master of the Topaz of Boston, from Nantucket, March 1813, informing the Admiralty that in February 1808 he had discovered that Pitcairn Island was inhabited. It also contains the information that Smith (John Adams) gavec him the Bounty's chronometer – the same one as was twice used by Captain Cook, now with the Cook relics in the United Service Institution.

3. 28. "Letter to Admiral Manley Dixon." (Actual manuscript, Record Office.) From Captain Sir Thomas Staines. 1814.

   This is the actual letter written by Sir Thomas Staines, Commander of H.M.S. Briton from Valparaiso, October 1814, to Admiral Dixon (Commander in Chief, Southern Pacific Ocean), making his report of bis return to port after a cruise during which he "fell in with" an island, uncharted but undoubtedly Pitcairn. This gives all details and particulars as to the island, the inhabitants, and his experiences there.

1. 29. "Letter to the Admiralty." (Actual manuscript, Record Office.) From Admiral Manley Dixon. 1814.

   Dated from H.M.S. Cherub (Rio de Janeiro) reporting Sir Thomas Staines' discovery of Pitcairn Islanders. There is also another letter with this, of November, addressed to K. Croker, Esq., quoting another letter from Sir Thomas Staines (not preserved) with his account of John Adams.

2. 30, "A Narrative of the Briton's Voyage to Pitcairn Island." By Lieutenant J. Shillibeer, R.N. Published 1818.

   This is written in the form of a narrative. It is illustrated with etchings from drawings by the author done on the spot. These include the often reproduced portrait of Thursday October Christian.

3. 31. "The Quarterly Review." Three articles dealing with Pitcairn Island, 1810, 1815, 1816.

   The name of the writer of these (probably Sir J. Barrow) is not given, but they deal with the discovery by Folger, the island and the people, Porter's cruise, etc.

4. 32. "A Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate 'Essex,' in the years 1812, 1813, and 1814." By David Porter. Published 1815, Philadelphia.

   This was the famous Essex which harassed the British shipping in the Pacific during the war with the United States and for which Staines was seeking when he came upon Pitcairn. This book does not actually mention Pitcairn, but mentions several of the vessels which at some time called there.

5. 33. "A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and a Voyage of Survey and Discovery in the Pacific and Oriental Islands." By Amasa Delano. (Chapters V and VI.) Published 1817, Boston.

   Amasa Delano was born in 1763 at Duxbury (the old town of New Plymouth). His father was a soldier and fought for George II against the French and Indians. Amasa was also a soldier; later he went to sea (on various privateers -- 1779) and subsequently the ship Massachusetts was launched at Quincy and then began the voyages of this book. He was a personal friend of Mayhew Folger, and wrote: "I have also lived a considerable time with Captain Folger the first person who visited the family on Pitcairn's Island and from whom most of the information concerning the state of it has been derived. He very often conversed with me upon the subject and gave me a number of details which have not before been printed." In another place he

says that when at Timor he found in the possession of the Governor a manuscript history (the same as that edited in 1915 by Sir Basil Thomson (which see), No. 14 above) of the cruise of the Pandora written by Captain Edwards, of H.M.S. Pandora.

1. 34. "Calcutta Government Gazette" (1819). (Re Henderson (or Elizabeth) Island.) India Office Records.

   Issues of May 6 and July 22, 1819, give the accounts of the two visits of the ship Hercules (Port of Calcutta), Captain Henderson, to Pitcairn in January and July 1819. These accounts are important as establishing the dates of the calls of the Hercules at Pitcairn, and incidentally the naming of Henderson Island (also called Elizabeth Island). Beechey claimed for the wrecked crew of the whaleship Essex the first finding of the island, but that was in December 1820, whereas both the Hercules and the Elizabeth (to which ship the discovery has also been attributed) had been there in 1819. The date of the call of the Elizabeth at Pitcairn (March 5, 1819) is established by the entry in John Adams' Prayer Book. Owen Chase (1st mate of the Essex), in his account of his experiences on Henderson Island (which he thought to be Ducie Island), mentions that the crew found the name of Elizabeth (without a date) cut on a tree near where they landed.

2. 35. "Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex of Nantucket; which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Spermaceti-Whale in the Pacific Ocean; with an account of the Unparalelled Sufferings of the Captain and Crew in the years 1819-20." By Owen Chase (1st Mate of the Essex). Published 1821, New York.

   This pamphlet is given here in connection with the prominent part taken by Henderson Island, and it is largely quoted by Captain Beechey; it supplies several decisive dates as to the visits of the Hercules, Captain Henderson, and the Elizabeth to Pitcairn Island and the neighbouring islets.

3. 36. "'John Adams' Prayer Book." Devotions on the Lord's Supper together with a service of Holy Communion. Published by the Religious Tract Society.

   This book, now with other relics of the Bounty in the Museum of the United Service Institution, is there labelled as having been "the 'Bounty' Prayer Book"; but as all accounts agree that that was a Book of Common Prayer, this must be a mistake. The book at the Museum was presented by the Rev. W. H. Holman (Chaplain of H.M.S. Portland who acted as Chaplain at Pitcairn in 1853). A label inside the book, in Mr. Holman's hand, asserts it to have been the book always

used by Adams for public morning and evening prayer. An inscription written on the last page of the book -- "John Adams his book given him by Samuel Henry Rapsey of the ship Elizabeth 5 March, A.D. 1819 -- "is of particular interest, as it establishes the date of the visit of the Elizabeth and is apparently the only record of it. Sir Everard im Thurn suggests that this ship was from Boston, Mass. – Bossum, Master – mentioned by Prof. Latourette, and that Rapsey was a mate.

1. 37, "A Description of Pitcairn Island and its Inhabitants." By Sir John Barrow. Chapter VIII. Published 1845. Harper, New York.

   Sir John Barrow was Secretary of the Admiralty. This is an entirely separate publication from his other book above, though much of that is incorporated in this one. This is largely made up of extracts and quotations – the letters of Sir Sydney Smith, Lieutenant Fitzmaurice, Sir Thomas Staines, and the log of the Topaz (1808).

2. 38. "Pitcairn: the Island, the People, and the Pastor." By the Rev. T. B. Murray. Chapter IV (see No. S3). Published 1853. S.P.C.K.

3. 39. "The Mutineers of the 'Bounty' and Their Descendants in Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands." By Lady Belcher (see No. 22). Published 1870.

4. 40. "Voyages and Travels of Fletcher Christian before and after the Mutiny of the 'Bounty' in 'Letters to a Friend.'" (Fictitious.) Published London 1797.

   There is a copy of this book in the York Gate Library, which collection is now in the Adelaide Library, South Australia.

5. 41. "The Island: or Christian and His Comrades!" By the Right Hon. Lord Byron. Published 1823.

6. 42. "The Death of Christian and the Mutineers." Extracted from the above. Published in The Mirror, June 1823.

   The story is founded partly on the mutiny of h is Bounty and partly on the tradition connected with a cavern within the harbour of Vavau in the Friendly or Tongan Islands.

7. 43. "Pitcairn Island: a romantick operatick Ballet Spectackle, founded on the recent Discovery of a numerous Colony, formed by, and descended from the Mutineers of The Bounty Frigate. First performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on Wednesday, April 17th, 1816. With new and select Musick, new

Scenery, Dresses and Embellishments." Printed by C. Lowndes, Marquis Court, Drury Lane. Sold at the Theatre only.

Sir E. im Thunt possesses a copy of this and an original playbill. Names of the leading mutineers appear among the dramatis personae, but otherwise the plot is purely fictitious. The item is interesting as showing how soon after the discovery of the Settlement its fame was a topic of the day.

1. 44. "Jack Adams, The Mutineer." 3 vol. Novel. By Captain Frederick Charmier, R.N. Published 1838. Colburn, London.

   The leading circumstances of the story and the dates are remarkably faithfully told, but the dialogue and the details are, of course, fictitious.

1. 45. "Pitcairn Island Register Book. Births, Deaths, Marriages and Remarkable Family Events." The Actual Manuscript. S.P.C.K. Records.

   The document which is now reproduced.

2. 46. "Arrivals." The Pitcairn Island Shipping List. The Actual Manuscript. S.P.C.K. Records.

3. 47. "Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering Strait to co-operate with the Polar Expeditions: performed in His Majesty's Ship Blossom under the command of Captain F. W. Beechey, R.N.; F.R.S.; F.R.A.S.; F.R.G.S.; in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28." Published by authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 1831.

   There are two chapters {fifty pages) devoted to Pitcairn Island; and here is given in full Adams own story of the mutiny, taken from and signed by himself. Beechey was the artist of the often reproduced portrait of John Adams.

4. 48. "Historical Records of Australia." Governor's Despatches to and from England. (The Removal of the Pitcairners to Otaheiti (Tahiti), 1831, by H.M.S. "Comet," Capt. Sandilands.) Series I, vol. xvi (1831-2).

5. 49. "Accounts of the Pitcairn Islanders." (journal of the Royal Geographical Society for 1833.)

   From Captain Hon. W. Waldegrave's Private Journal in the Pacific, and Captain A. L. Sandilands' Despatch

to the Government of N.S.W. respecting the removal of the Pitcairn Islanders.

1. 50. "Tahiti and the Pitcairn Islanders." Article in the Missionary Chronicle (London Missionary Society). Published 1832.

   This article relates to the first removal of the Pitcairners – to Tahiti – the reasons and the causes of its failure. The L.M.S.

2. 51. "A Description of Pitcairn Island and its Inhabitants." By Sir John Barrow (see No. 37). Published 1845. Harper Brothers, New York.

3. 52. "The United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838-42." By Charles Wilkes, Commander U.S.A. Navy. Published 1845, Philadelphia.

   This book gives much information as to the whale fishery, in which many of the ships which made a practice of calling at Pitcairn were engaged.

4. 53. "Pitcairn: The Island, the People, and the Pastor." By the Rev. T. B. Murray, M.A., F.S.A. Published 1853, S.P.C.K.

   The author was Rector of St. Dunstan-in-the-East and Prebendary of St. Paul's. He was Assistant Secretary of S.P.C.K. 1835-42, and one of the four joint Secretaries 1842-S9, in which year he died. He was the personal friend of Rev. G. Nobbs (Chaplain of Pitcairn), and was the recipient of the Register Book and other relics. The second half of the book is devoted to Pitcairn Island and the inhabitants (the first part dealing with the mutiny and the finding of the settlement). Some of the later editions deal with Norfolk Island. First and second editions appeared in 1853; twelfth edition in 1860, and the revised (and somewhat different) edition (by Rev. C. C. Elcum) 1885. Last edition 1909. The book is now out of print.

5. 54. "The Mutineers." A poem. By John McGilchrist, M.D. Published 1859.

   The story of the mutineers, founded on Sir J. Barrow's book and suggested by Lord Byrons' poem.

6. 55. "The Mutineer." A Romance of Pitcairn Island. By Louis Becke. Published 1898.

   A novel based upon the story of the Bounty, with Christian as the hero.

7. 56. "John Adams' Prayer." Original Autograph. (S.P.C.K. Records.)

   The prayer written by Adams and used by him for Sundays. This was presented by his grandson, John Adams of Norfolk Island, to the Rev. T. B. Murray. A

facsimile was reproduced in Mr. Murray's book, and one has been made again for the present publication.

1. 57. "Pitcairn Island and the Islanders in 1850." By Walter Brodie. Published 1851.

   Walter Brodie (author of Past and Present State of New Zealand) was stranded on Pitcairn, having been left behind there by the ship on which he was a passenger (the Noble) March 1850. This book is made up of extracts from his Journal kept at the time, and of copies from various other documents. He says "My time was principally occupied in getting material for an account of this virtuous and interesting community, which I feel myself bound to make public." He has also given some extracts from the Register, from which obviously other writers have drawn, and this is interesting as he was the first writer who had access to the original. This book also contains a full account of the "Joshua Hill " episode, together with copies of all the official correspondence regarding this matter. Brodie has an autograph entry in the Pitcairn Register Shipping List.

2. 58. "Sermon." By the Rev. G. Nobbs. Published 1852.

   This sermon was preached by Mr. Nobbs at the time of his visit to England at St. Dunstan-in-the-East, and repeated at St. Mary's Chapel, Park Street, and afterwards printed by request. This sermon is interesting as containing a good deal of historical reference to the story of Pitcairn and the people. It is incorporated in Mr. Murray's book.

3. 59. "A Week at Pitcairn." By B. Toup Nicolas.

   Mr. Toup Nicolas was British Consul at Raiatea in the Society Islands, and he visited Pitcairn in an official capacity on H.M.S. Virago in 1853. His account of his visit is taken from his private diary, the extract being sent by him to Mr. Murray, who incorporated it in his book.

4. 60. "The Pitcairn Islanders and the Mutiny of the Bounty." Article by Dr. Robert Brown, F.R.S., F.R.G.S. 1880. (Published in Cassell's Family Magazine.)

5. 61. "The History of the American Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876." By Alexander Starbuck. Published 1876 by the Author, Waltham, Mass.

   With the assistance of this book the whole of the Pitcairn Register Shipping List has been checked and verified by Sir Everard im Thum. See also Appendix II.

6. 62. "Mutiny of the Bounty." A Story of the Pitcairn Islanders. By Alfred McFarland (District Court Judge, New South Wales). Published 1884. Sydney. Popular History.

1. 63. "The Romance of Pitcairn Island." By W. F. Fullerton. Published by Carey Press. No date. (Religious Tract.)

1. 64. "Minutes of the Proceedings, Pitcairn Island Fund Committee " (1852-58). Actual Manuscript. S.P.C.K. Records.

   This is the bound volume containing all the records of the Committee's work. See Appendix I.

2. 65. "Correspondence of the Pitcairn Island Fund Committee." Actual Manuscript. S.P.C.K. Records.

   Two bound volumes of all the letters and other papers used by the Committee in their work. See Appendix I.

3. 66. Parliamentary Reports: Pitcairn Island. 1857.

   The official correspondence regarding the removal of the inhabitants of Pitcairn to Norfolk Island.

4. 67. S.P.C.K. Annual Reports, 1849-57.

   In the Reports for these years, under Pitcairn Island, will be found all particulars of the happenings and the condition of the islanders and the Society's connections with them.

5. 68. "Pitcairn: the Island, the People, and the Pastor." By the Rev. T. B. Murray. (Chapters XIII and XIV) later editions. Published 1853. (See No. 53.)

6. 69. "Pitcairn Islanders' Address to Her Majesty." Original Document. S.P.C.K. Records. 1853. (See Appendix I.)

7. 70. "Memoir of the Life & Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn, D.D.," Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield. By the Rev. H. W. Tucker, M.A. Published 1879.

   In vol. ii. there is a good deal of reference to the Pitcairn Islanders and Bishop Selwyn's relations with them on Norfolk Island. Also the Bishop's own account of the first Confirmation at Norfolk Island, and also the first for any of the Pitcairners. See Appendix I.

8. 71. "History of the Melanesian Mission." By E. S. Armstrong. Published 1900. London.

   This book throws light on the controversy, during the first years of the Pitcairners in Norfolk Island, as to the wisdom of placing the headquarters of the Melanesian Mission in that island also; and the original objection

of the Pitcairners themselves to Bishop Selwyn's proposal to establish his Mission among them, and on the eventual acceptance of the Mission as fellow-settlers by the Pitcairners.

1. 72. "Minutes and Records of the West India Committee," 1779-89. W.I.C. House Records.

   In these will be found all the records of the first inception and the carrying out of the undertaking to convey the bread-fruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies.

2. 73. "W.I.C. Circular." (May 1921 and January 1922.) These both contain articles upon the story of the Bounty.

3. 74. "The Romance of the Bread-Fruit." Article by Sir Algernon Aspinall, C.M.G., C.B.E.

   This is an account of the whole story of the transplanting of the bread-fruit with, incidentally, the story of the mutiny of the Bounty, put together from the W.I.C. Records. (Not yet published.)

4. 75. "The Mutineers Turning Lieut. Bligh and partof the Officers and Crew Adrift from His Majesty's Ship The 'Bounty'" An Engraving by Robert Dodd. 179o. In British Museum.

   An engraving by Robert Dodd from his own oil painting. The Bounty is shown in the picture and is believed to be a "portrait" of the actual ship. Dodd was a marine painter of note and exhibited in the Royal Academy (1748-1816). The print was made from the engraving in 1790 by B. B. Evans, and dedicated by him to the West India Planters and Merchants.

76. "Captain Bligh's Second Voyage to the South Seas." By Ida Lee (Mrs. Charles Marriott). Published 1920.

This is an account of the second search for the breadfruit after all the first trees had been lost with the Bounty. Bligh sailed in the Providence 1791. It is given here as it contains a good deal of reference to the former voyage and the mutiny, and also introduces Pitcairn Island. The sources of information as regards Pitcairn Island are the earlier books.

5. 77. "History of Early Relations between the United States and China 1784-1844." By Kenneth Scott Latourette. Published 1917. Yale University Press.

   Given here in connection with the whale fishery. See Appendix II.

1. 78. "Stewart's Handbook of the Pacific Islands." By Percy Allen. Published 1822[sic], Sydney, New South Wales.

   Pages 486-492 deal with Pitcairn.

2. 79. "Pacific Islands Pilot." Pitcairn Island. Admiralty Publication. Vol. iii.

   This contains a description of the Island and a summary history.

3. 80. "The Mutineers of the 'Bounty'" The Pitcairn Islanders from 1859-80. Published 1881, by a Native.

   This is an article from an annual periodical with an introduction by the editor (signed S. M.). Preserved in Sir E. im Thurn's cutting book. The writer was Rosalind Young, who was descended from the mutineer Young (and on her mother's side from John Mills (another mutineer)). This article is mainly the account of the return to Pitcairn of those Islanders who were unable to settle down in Norfolk Island (1856 and 1858), and deals afterwards with the later history of Pitcairn Island and its second colonisation. This was subsequently enlarged and published in a book form.

4. 81. "Mutiny of the 'Bounty' and Story of Pitcairn Island 1790-1894." By Rosalind Amelia Young, a Native Daughter. Published by Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1894 (3rd edition).

   This book, much enlarged from the above-mentioned article, has an introduction by E. A. Gates, who had himself spent over eighteen months on the Island (1892-4), in which he states of the authoress that she had spent practically her whole life "on the Island, a few years of her childhood only having been spent on Norfolk Island. While her lifetime does not cover quite one-half of the time covered by the history of the Island, she had access for many years to one at least who remembered events that occurred before the beginning of the present century. The author's father was the second oldest man of the community at the time of his death in September 1893, and was a grandson of John Adams, one of the mutineers of the Bounty, whose death took place in 1829. She thus had the best advantage for obtaining a correct knowledge of the Island history."

5. 82. "A Midshipman's Journal on Board H.M.S. 'Seringapatam' during the year 1830; containing Brief Observations on Pitcairn Island, and other Islands in the South Seas."

   By Lieut. J. Ordebar, R.N. Published 1833. London.

Note. -- It would be impossible and unintelligible to attempt to index all the recurrent family names in the Register Book. Only the first bearers of the names are included under e.g. Young, Buffett, Nobbs, etc. From the Shipping List only the names of H.M. Ships and of their Captains are taken with some notable exceptions. Principal places and events are given.

Abraham, Rev, C. J. (afterwards Bishop), 152, 158
Adams, John, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 22, 25-27, 33, 86, 150, 155, 162-3
Adams, John, Prayer Book, 14
Adams, John, jn., 65
    President U.S.A., 5
Arthur (Master of Russell), 12, 13, 159
Australia, 5-6, 16-17, 18, 127, 160 et pass.

Banks, Sir Joseph, 3
Basilisk, H.M.S., 50, 115
Beechey, Captain F. W., 6, 14, 15, 17, 33, 100
Bible, The, 15, 16, 22, 27
Bligh, Lt. William (afterwards Admiral), 2, 3, 10, 156
Blossom, H.M.S., 6, 15, 17, 33, 100
Bounty, H.M.S., 2, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 25, 31, 52, 59, 72, 73, 84, 86, 150, 154-6, 163-4
Bread-fruit, 2, 3
Briton, H.M.S., 5, 11, 12, 14, 26, 32
Brodie, Walter, 19, 25, 132
Buffett, John, 6, 8, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 33, 36, 39, 41, 67, 127

Calcutta, 8, 13
    S.P.C.K. Committee, 13
California, 27, 71, 160
Calypso, H.M.S., 125
Carlton, Hugh, 132
Challenger, H.M.S., 18, 19, 101
Cherub, H.M.S., 11
Christian, Fletcher, 4, 5, 8, 9, 16, 23, 29, 46, 150
Christian, Thursday October, 25, 31
Church at Pitcairn (and School-house), 24, 58, 59
Cockatrice, H.M.S., 81, 141, 143, 148
Comet, H.M.S., 16, 35, 101
Communion, The Holy (first celebration at Pitcairn), 8, 81, 82
Communion, The Holy, Plate for, 146, 147
Cook, Captain James, 17, 21, 46
Curaçoa, H.M.S., 44, 105
Cyrus, The, 11, 12, 33,

Daedalus, H.M.S., 78, 142
Daphne, H.M.S., 68, 71, 126
Delano, Amasa, 5. See Bibliography
Denison, Sir William, 148, 149, 152, 154, 157, 158
Diamond Jubilee of the Settlement, 25
Dido, H.M.S., 26, 89, 90, 148, 157
Dillon, Captain W., 81, 82, 142, 148
Ducie Island, 4

Edwards, Captain Edward, 3
Elizabeth (Henderson) Island, 13, 14, 25, 48, 74, 75
Elliot, Captain Russell, 19, 20, 38
Essex, The (U.S.A. Frigate), 10, 14
    (U.S.A Whaleship), 14
Evans, John, 6, 12, 18, 22, 26, 41