PITCAIRN ISLANDERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2314, 11 August 1921, Page 3

PITCAIRN ISLANDERS.

Liners en voyage to New Zealand are now calling more frequently off the Pitcairn Islands. The inhabitants are the descendants of the mutineers of the British frigate Bounty. On April 28th, 1789, a mutiny broke out on board the Bounty, then employed by the British Government in conveying young bread fruit trees from Tahiti to the West Indies. The commander, Lieut. William Bligh, was set adrift in (he launch with part of the crew, hut managed to make his way to Timor, in the Malay Archipelago. The 25 mutineers at first all returned to Tahiti. Some remained, and six of these were ultimately courf-marHnlled in England, three being executed in 1792. Meanwhile in- 1790 a party consisting of Fletcher Christian, and nine Englishmen, six Polynesian men, and twelve Polynesian women, had taken possession of Pitcairn Island and burned the Bounty. Five of the mutineers were subsequently murdered by the Tahitians, there was one suicide, and other violent death, John Adams, last of the mutineers, died in 1829. In the later years of his life he became a close student of the Bible, and gave religious instruction to all the children then living on the island.