Descendant of Bounty Midshipman

Death Of "Aunt”

Ninnie Young

From Our Own Correspondent Norfolk Island July 25.

I HAVE just returned home from one of the most moving and picturesque ceremonies I have ever witnessed — the burial, after sudden death, of one of the remaining Pitcairners.

Old Miss Young—or Aunt Ninnie, as she was generally and most affectionately known—was actually born upon Pitcairn, and brought to Norfolk when she was only two or three years old, when the descendants of the Bounty mutineers were transferred from their overcrowded island to Norfolk.

Her father, who was appointed first magistrate and leader of his people upon their arrival here, was grandson of the Midshipman Young, who together with the First Lieutenant Christian, led the mutiny upon the “Bounty,” cast adrift the captain and other officers, sailed the “Bounty” back to Tahiti, where they took native wives—magnificent women of a magnificent race—and sailed further on to Pitcairn, where they sank the ship and settled ashore.

Young came, no doubt, from a middle-class, conventional family, where the children were taught to speak almost reverently of their parents; and that tradition was evidently maintained in the succeeding generations, for dear old Miss Young would talk to me of “Dear Papa” and “Dear Mamma” in the best Victorian manner, and I loved to listen to her.

Her name, all her life long, was synonymous with charity, goodness and the deepest religious feeling and, islanders and mainlanders alike, we all had tears in our eyes as we stood around her grave this morning in the quaint old cemetery, set beside the wide blue sea, beneath the wide blue sky, and joined in the singing of that wonderful anthem, “I was an-hungered and ye gave me meat. . . I was sick and in prison and ye visited me. . . .”

Those words might have been written for the dear old lady and, sung in the rich, warm, colourful voices, harmonising and blending in the passion of grief of her lifelong friends and neighbours, were almost intolerably moving.

It is a memory I shall carry with me wherever I may go. ... ———