Magazine Section

Pacific Islands Monthly

The Lost Tahitian Vocabulary

Of Midshipman Heywood

ROBERT LANGDON, head of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau at the Australian National University, here dis cusses two Islands mysteries: What has become of the manuscript of Midshipman Heywood's Tahitian vocabulary?

And where did the old sword and anchor at Ngatangiia, Rarotonga, come from?

If any reader should ever come across a handwritten vocabulary of 100 folio pages, in which most of the words contain more vowels than consonants, then please phone, wire or cable me at the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Canberra— and reverse the charges!

A manuscript answering the forc ing description could well prove to e the lost Tahitian vocabulary of lidshipman Peter Heywood, of lutiny on the Bounty fame. The Dcabulary was last recorded to have Jen seen more than 120 years ago.

In the realm of Pacific historians id linguists, its re-discovery would 5 somewhat akin to the finding of re of the Dead Sea Scrolls or a unet in the hand of William Shake ;are.

The vocabulary is (or was) a itable document in Pacific history id linguistics for three reasons: ) It was compiled by a convicted mutineer of the Bounty. ) It was the first vocabulary of the Tahitian language to be pre pared by someone other than a short-term visitor to Tahiti. ) The first missionaries sent to Tahiti by the London Missionary Society found it of great value in learning the language of that island, and it almost certainly had some influence on their thinking when they reduced Tahitian to the written form still in use today.

Fhe vocabulary was compiled in tober, 1792, while Heywood was prisoner in H.M.S. Hector in rtsmouth harbour. He had just :n condemned to death for his part the Bounty mutiny, although he 1 not, in fact, been an active ticipant.

Vhen Captain Bligh and the others re cast adrift in the open boat in rfi, 1789, Fletcher Christian and fellow-mutineers had kept Hey

wood on board the Bounty against his will because they needed his help to sail their pirated ship.

However, as, in those days, British naval law provided that those who did not assist their commander in a mutiny were against him, it was inevitable that Heywood, when captured, should be courtmartialled and found guilty of mutiny.

With death the only punishment prescribable for such a crime, Hey wood was accordingly condemned to hang from the yard-arm. But as there were obviously extenuating circumstances in his case, an appeal for mercy was made to the king on his behalf.

It was while Heywood was awaiting the outcome of this appeal that he set to work and compiled his vocabulary. He was then barely 19 years old, and had spent nearly two of those impressionable years in Tahiti, before and after the mutiny.

"Unspeakable joy"

Heywood’s brother James, who visited him in the Hector on October 17, 1792, said in a letter written that day: “While I write this, Peter is sitting by me writing an Otaheitan vocabulary, and so happy and intent upon it, that I have scarcely an op portunity of saying a word to him...”

Ten days after that letter was written, Heywood had the “unspeak able joy” of being pardoned by the king; and before long his much relieved relatives had whisked him home to the Isle of Man for a vacation. Heywood subsequently

resumed his career in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of post-captain.

Meanwhile, his vocabulary, or a copy of it, had been left with a Portsmouth clergyman, the Rev.

William Howell, who had given comfort to Heywood and his fellow prisoners during their anxious days in the Hector.

Howell still had the vocabulary when the mission ship Duff put into Portsmouth in September, 1796, with the first L.M.S. missionaries bound for Tahiti. Howell lent the vocabulary to the missionaries so that they could gain some advance knowledge of Tahitian before arriving at their pro posed field of labour.

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Haweis, one of the founders of the London Mis sionary Society, who sailed in the Duff as far as Portsmouth, recorded details of all this in a diary he kept at the time.

Heywood’s material did, in fact prove of value. In a letter which Captain James Wilson of the Duff wrote to Dr. Haweis from Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1796 he said: “Mr. Jefferson (one of the missionaries) has made particular advances in the Otaheitan language which they all write and study diligently from the Vocabulary vou left us . . .”

The MS was also mentioned in a biography of Peter Heywood which appeared in John Marshall’s Royal Naval Biography in 1825; and Sir John Barrow, the Admiralty Sec retary, referred to it in a full-length account of the mutiny which he pub lished anonymously in October, 1831 eight months after Heywood’s death.' For his book, Barrow made use of a great number of previously un published documents which had either been lent to him by Heywood before his death, or by his widow after

wards. Among these documents was a copy of the Tahitian vocabulary.

Barrow described the vocabulary as “a very extraordinary perform ance”. “It consists”, he went on, “of one hundred full-written folio pages, the words alphabetically arranged, and all the syllables accented”.

Following Barrow’s perusal of the vocabulary, no one with an interest in either the Bounty mutiny or the Tahitian language seems to have sighted it again; and many a scholar who has sought for it or wondered about its fate these past 130-odd years has done so in vain.

Recently, however, the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau chanced to dis cover a scrap of information about the vocabulary in the National Library, Canberra, which aroused strong hopes that the vocabulary might yet be safe in London.

The information was that the vocabulary had been presented by Heywood’s widow to the “US Inst.” and that an item to that effect had been published on p. 93 of the catalogue of the “US Inst.” in 1842.

Having translated the mystic ab breviation “US Inst.” as United Service Institution (now Royal United Service Institution), the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau sent an inquiry to that organisation in London.

Not listed

This revealed that the Heywood vocabulary had, indeed, been listed in that organisation’s catalogue for 1842 as a gift from Mrs. Heywood.

But the librarian, the Hon. David Erskine, said that as the vocabulary was not listed in the subsequent catalogue for 1890, it could be taken for granted that the vocabulary was not in the institution’s library now.

“The only explanation I can offer,” the Hon. David Erskine said, “is that in its early days this institution was a general philosophical institution, with a strong military bias.

“As the years went on, the more general subjects were dropped, and the emphasis became increasingly military. As this happened, parts of the collection were hived off, and there is certainly a record that the ethnographical collection was dis persed, as were coins and marine biology.

“I suspect that late in the 1880’s there was a great clear out, in pre paration for a move to our present building . . .”

This, then, is the story of Peter Heywood’s missing Tahitian vocabu lary as far as it has so far been revealed; but I hope that 9ne of these days I will be able to relieve readers of the cliff-hanging suspense I am currently obliged to leave them in.