Another Pitcairner

Passes.

THE death has just occurred in Nor folk Island, according to a radiogram in “Sydney Morning Herald,” of Mrs.

Rachel Hope Taylor, nee Quintal, at the age of 84.

She was one of the original Pitcairn Island settlers in Norfolk Island, and now only three remain—Mrs. Selina Buffett (77), Parkin Christian (80) and Cornelius Quintal (92).

These old people supply a steadily dwindling link with one of the most

fascinating romances of the Pacific — the mutiny of the Bounty. When Fletcher Christian, driven to madness by the brutal, nagging Bligh, seized the Bounty in 1790, and put his com mander adrift in an open boat, he took the ship back to Tahiti. There his party divided. About 16 remained in Tahiti (where they presently were gathered in by a searching British war ship) and Christian, with eight Bounty men, six native men, and twelve Tahitian women, disappeared with the ship. Eighteen years later, in 1808, an American whaler discovered on lonely Pitcairn Island a happy, model com munity of half-castes (English and Tahitian). Of the nine Bounty men. only one, John Adams, was alive. Of the others Christian, McCoy, Williams, Quintal, Martin, Mills and Brown had been murdered, and Young had died.

Children were left by Christian, Young, McCoy, Quintal and Adams; and by a teacher, Nobbs, and a seaman, Buffett, who early joined the Pitcairn folk.

By 1850, Pitcairn had become over crowded; and Britain eventually sent a ship, the “Morayshire,” which embarked the whole population (194) and con veyed them to Norfolk Island, where they arrived on Sunday, June 8, 1856.

They almost all bore the surnames stated above. They were not alto gether happy on Norfolk, and in subse quent years several families returned to Pitcairn, where there are now over 200 people.

Of the 194 who landed on Norfolk Island from the “Morayshire” in 1856, only the three old people named (Mrs.

Buffett, Parkin Christian and Cornelius Quintal are now alive.

The late Mrs. Taylor,