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National Geographic : 1960 Oct
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National Geographic, October, 1960 Convict mutinies weren't the only troubles that beset the authorities in penal-camp days. There were failures of supply ships to reach the island, periods of famine, difficulties of administration. Norfolk Island proved too costly to run as a prison camp; better to abandon it as such. Besides, there was need for a new haven for the mushrooming popula tion of Pitcairn Island. Topaz Finds the Last Mutineer It was in 1789 that the Bounty mutineers cast Capt. William Bligh and 18 of his crew adrift in a provisioned boat and sailed to the Tubuai Islands, then to Tahiti. When Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny, took the Bounty on to Pitcairn in 1790, he was accom panied by eight of the mutineers, including a brawny seaman in his twenties named Alex ander Smith. Each brought along a wife from Tahiti; there were also six Tahitian men, three more Tahitian women, and an infant girl. Eighteen years later the American ship Topaz found on Pitcairn a handful of women and children and one man: seaman Smith, who was also known as John Adams. The other men were dead. Their graves have never been found. Adams ran his peaceful little colony with such devotion to the Bible that all England was aroused to admiration, and Pitcairn be came a byword for piety. The Pitcairn population was augmented in 1823 when John Buffett and John Evans landed from a British whaler, and when George Hunn Nobbs arrived from South Amer ica in 1828. Upon the death of John Adams a year later, Nobbs succeeded him as spiritual leader, a post he retained until his death on Norfolk in 1884. By the time it was decided to abandon Nor folk Island as a penal colony, Pitcairn's popu lation had grown to 193. That, colonial au thorities decreed, was too large for the island's resources. So the convicts were cleared out, and on May 3, 1856, every soul on Pitcairn The Author: With this story about Norfolk Island, T. C. Roughley returns to the pages of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC for the first time in two decades. In 1940 he wrote for the magazine an account of the fantastic creatures inhabiting Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a subject on which he is a recognized authority. Zoologist, author, and lecturer, Mr. Roughley served for many years as Superintendent of Fish eries for his native New South Wales. was put aboard ship for Norfolk, 3,800 miles to the west. It was, speaking charitably, a most unpleas ant voyage. "The moment the people got on board," wrote a ship's officer, "the sea-sickness began, and such terrible sea-sickness I have never witnessed . . . the women were more or less sick the whole passage." On Sunday, June 8, they landed at Norfolk. The settlers held a thanksgiving service in a barrack room left by the convicts. Within two years, 16 of the settlers became dissatisfied with their new home and returned to Pitcairn. Thirty more left in 1863. The rest stayed, and today the broad features and golden-olive skin tones of many Norfolk peo ple reflect their partly Tahitian background. But, unlike the present Pitcairners, who have remained isolated, the Norfolk Islanders keep in touch with the mainland. They have intermingled with settlers from New Zealand and Australia, and their ways differ little from those of other English-speaking countries. They speak English with no perceptible ac cent, but in their homes I heard them use a dialect brought by their ancestors from Pit cairn, a curious mixture of west-country Eng lish and Tahitian. I found them a hospitable, happy, generous, and guileless people. Drive down the street, and everyone you pass-man, woman, or child -raises the right hand in salutation. They did this to me, a stranger among them, and it made me feel that I was among friends. Mr. Christian Pays a Fine I was in a taxicab one day when an islander on horseback waved. "Do you know who that was?" my driver asked. "No," I said, "but I'll bet I can guess his name in five tries." The driver grinned. The horseman was a Quintal. He might have been a Christian, an Adams, a Young, or, like my cabbie, a McCoy. All are surnames borne by Bounty mutineers-and on the island today there are 27 families of Quintals, 24 Christians, 12 Adamses, 6 McCoys, and 1 Young, besides 18 Buffetts, 11 Evanses, and 7 Nobbses. The old Pitcairn names figure prominently in the island's annals. Thumbing through the journal of a chief magistrate, Frederick Young, I came across this entry: "Feb. 12th, 1859. At sundown I went and 568
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