Historic Bible to Be Returned
p. 89 · Read in the full issue
To Pitcairn
PITCAIRN Island’s new school-teacher is not allowing the grass to grow under his feet. It will be remembered that a few months ago Mr. A. W. Moverley, with his wife and small daughter, and complete with a prefabricated school house and home for himself, weril to Pitcairn from New Zealand.
It has now been reported from the United States that due to Mr. Moverley’s efforts an historic Bible, once owned by Bounty mutineer, John Adams, and taken to the United States in 1839 by a whaler, Levi Hayden, is to be returned to the island.
When Hayden visited Pitcairn, John Adams, of course, was dead, but the Bible was obtained from his grandson.
Hayden’s relatives in United States eventually presented it to the Connecti cut Historical Society in whose possession it has remained ever since.
The Society has now handed the Bible over to the British Ambassador in Washington who will undertake to have it returned to the island. Records show that this particular Bible was used by John Adams as his sole text-book in undertaking the education of the mutineers’ children.
Many historical relics have been taken away from Pitcairn in the last century by souvenir hunters. Mr. Moverley has undertaken the task of trying to recover some of them.
The New Caledonian General Council is discussing a plan to build a mile long causeway linking Noumea with Nouville, on the Isle of Nou. Cost is estimated at forty million francs. The causeway, which has been agreed to in principle, will have a drawbridge and should not obstruct the tidal currents of the inner harbour. It is also proposed to establish a 1,000 ton dock near the Nouville end of the causeway at Point Lambert.
Mr. H. A. Markham arrived in Sydney by the Muliama at the end of January, and went into Prince Alfred Hospital for a general check-up. He has spent the last year or two as British Administrative Officer on Christmas Island. Mr. Markham’s plantation at Marovo Lagoon was one of the show places of the Solomons, but it was destroyed by the Japs in 1942.
He spent much of the war years in hospital, but recovered, and returned to BSI in the “Southern Cross” in 1946. Finding rehabilitation difficult, he entered the WPHC Service, and was posted to Christmas Is - Technical-Sergeant Robert T. Smith returned from New Guinea to Manilla in January, en route to the United States, for Army discharge, after directing the last searches in New Guinea for American personnel lost in the war.
It is probable that Sergeant Smith is the Gtf who, of all the hundreds of thousands who passed through, spent the longest time in New Guinea. He
certainly is the American serviceman who walked over the most of the Terri tory—he calculates that he covered 1,200 miles in New Guinea alone, apart f rom New Britain, New Ireland, and Bougainville, A thirty yfear old American photo grapher, Mr. E. Roberts, who left Hono lulu last August on a lone voyage in a 25 foot yacht, with auxiliary engine, was recently washed ashore by strong currents on Grand Hot, a reef islet some miles from Honolulu on the east coast of New Caledonia. He had sailed by dead reckoning. Some time before he had made the Loyalty Island of Lifou, where he encountered the French gunboat “Annamite.” When stranded on the Grand Hot it was eight days before he was discovered by some natives out fish ing and brought to Honolulu where his ship is being overhauled. He intends to sell his yacht at Noumea and return to Honolulu by air.