Strange Bit Of
pp. 29-30 · Read in the full issue
Pitcairners
Norfolk Island
Pacific History
STRALIA’S Governor-General Sir William Slim), Territories linister (Mr. Hasluck) and us high officials went to Nor land this month to take part debrations which insist that )lk Island was established as itish Colony exactly 100 years and not, as some imagine, as iglish penal settlement in 1788. is a curious story. Cook dis ed Norfolk in 1774, and re i two unique features. It was 3d with a straight and iful pine, found nowhere else i world; and there was no sign he island ever before had been i by human beings. 1788, Governor Phillip sent mant King, with a party of ;ts, from Sydney to establish ivict settlement on Norfolk; i few months later, away over ; east, the mutineers who had away with the British ship l .y, with a dozen Tahitian established a settlement on Pitcairn Island, and destroyed jssel. hin the next half century, were two developments, folk Island became a large t colony; gained a reputation “prison hell on earth”; and
anally abandoned—completely
853. 1808, the American whaler , calling casually at Pitcairn, nazed to discover a bright and community of mixed English fahitian blood, presided over triach John Adams, sole sur of the Bounty mutineers.
Pitcairn community grew st, and it appeared that there ;re too many for the little 15long island.
British ship Lucy Anne went Sydney and shifted them all liti in March, 1831. They were appy; and six months later 11 returned to Pitcairn in the ;an brig Charles Doggett. r numbers still increased, so 3W Governor decided to solve oblem by transporting the lot m to Norfolk Island, fertile, epical, already partly-tamed lilt upon, and now completely ipied. ship Morayshire took 194 off Pitcairn in 1856 and them on Norfolk—and it is ntenary of this event which Australian officials, and the kers —especially the Pitcairn —are now celebrating. The ners are putting on a well sed show, in which they re
peat, as faithfully as circumstances permit, the landing of their forefathers on the Norfolk coast in the Morayshire boats on June 6, 1856.
Not all the Pitcairners stayed on Norfolk. That old nostalgia worked again: and in 1858 two of the Young families got back to Pitcairn in a passing ship. Others soon followed —altogether about 40 people returned.
There now are about 300 people on Pitcairn and 700 on Norfolk — mostly descendants of nine Bounty mutineers and the 12 Tahitian women who cast themselves away on Pitcairn in 1789. There are only seven or eight family names still
among the old families on Norfolk and Pitcairn—names of the Bounty men, with one or two others who joined the Bounty settlement soon after it was discovered—Christian, Adams, Quintal, Young, Buffett, McKay, Nobbs, are probably the best known, TTTOWEVER, whether Norfolk’s XI history dates from convict settlement—like Australia’s—in 1788, or from Pitcairn settlement, in 1856, does not matter very much; 1856 is a very important date in lovely Norfolk’s life, There is one fundamental differ ence between Norfolk and New
South Wales. Liberated convicts provided a large section of NSW’s early settlers and pioneers. In the case of Norfolk, however, all that was left of the convicts when the Pitcairners arrived were the fine stone buildings they had constructed —still there, to-day—and the bones of hundreds of the wretched men who had died there from malnutri tion and brutality.
Norfolk To See Pitcairn
Pastor L. C. Naden (Secretary of the Australasian Division of Seventh-day Adventists) and Pastor N. A. Ferris, MBE, are at Norfolk Island for the centenary celebra tions. Pastor Ferris, recently re turned from a period of missionary service on Pitcairn, has koda chrome pictures of Pitcairn, which he plans to screen on Norfolk.