Ran Recruiting
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
NG Natives Taken: Bounty Descendant Rejected
Recruiting for the Papua-New Guinea Division of the Royal Australian Navy has been in progress for some time. There is no lack of recruits, so a careful selec tion is being made.
Twelve native recruits from the Huon Gulf area and 12 natives from the Admiralty Islands are already in training.
As a rather remarkable sidelight on the recruiting of New Guinea natives, however, it has been dis closed that the RAN recently re jected the voluntary enlistment of an 18-years old youth named Chris tian, who lives on one of the islands in Torres Strait, because he was “not of substantial European de scent.”
His father, in a bitter protest, wrote to an MP; “Our ancestor was a good enough seaman to seize the Bounty from Bligh. Now, my son is not good enough to fire a gun in the Navy.”
Fletcher Christian was first officer on HMS Bounty, and he led the mutineers w r ho seized the ship, and turned adrift the tyrannical Bligh.
He married a Tahitian woman, had several children on Pitcairn Island, and died there. The descendants of the Pitcairners are mostly on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, but many are scattered all over the Pacific.
The incident—w T hich has come in for much caustic comment in the Press-highlights an article about the treatment of part-Polynesians, published elsewhere in this issue.