"Bounty" Relics?

What Became Of These

From F. B. HOLLOWAY in Brisbane A BOUT 1937, I was the guest of Captain and Mrs. rx Electa Johnson on the famous American brigantine r ankee, in Rabaul.

Captain Johnson called me aft. “Please pick up that lacksmith’s vice,” he said. I did so. Then, at his request, put it down.

Then he said, “Take this pin in your hands,” and I id so. “Now”, he went on, “you have handled the black nith’s vice and the rudder king-pin of the ship Bounty ”.

The vice was similar to those used by blacksmiths hen I was a boy in Queensland, and the pin was etween four and five feet long, and apparently made f bronze.

Captain Johnson said that, two or three years before lat he had taken the Yankee to Pitcairn Island. A umber of Pitcairners had gone away in their boat some 30 miles to Henderson Island for timber, and constant ad weather had marooned them there. So Johnson took le Yankee to Henderson and brought them and their □at back home; and, to show their gratitude, the Pit urners gave him those valuable relics from the Bounty.

It will be remembered that the mutineers, after adding to settle on Pitcairn, set fire to the Bounty, id she sank there. Later, the Pitcairners recovered some its and pieces which survived the fire.

Captain Johnson would not accept the relics from lem as a gift. He said they were too valuable. He wrote jrsonally to the British Museum, and urged that the dies be taken to London. But this letter produced no ssults. So when, on his second round-the-world trip, found the relics still at Pitcairn, he took them aboard Is ship to prevent them being lost. He told me he would lace them in an American Museum; and I presume ; did so.

Some time later, I came upon an item in Sydney ulletin, reporting a wail by the British Museum ithorities to the effect that Captain Johnson, of the ankee, had taken the relics away from Pitcairn.

The accompanying drawing, which I made from emory, shows the approximate shape of the two objects.