LONELY ISLANDERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 883, 29 January 1930, Page 6

LONELY ISLANDERS

Three old people who came from -Pitcairn Island to Norfolk Island 73 years ago have lately passed away, and now only eight of the little band of 182 of which they formed part are left. Pitcairn Island is a speck on the route between New Zealand and' the Panama Canal. Many steamers qall there today for a few hours to relieve the monotony of the three weeks’ voyage across the Pacific. The people of the island have a strange history/ In 17S8 the British Government sent Captain Bligh in the ship Bounty to the Pacific to obtain plants of the breadfruit tree. The captain was a stern man. and so angered some of his crew that they mutinied, seized the ship, and set the captain and his friends adrift in an open boat which, after a perilous voyage, reached Java. The mutineers landed on Tahiti, married native women, and in 1790 sailed to Pitcairn Island. Long afterward their descendants were discovered, and as the island was overcrowded and far from the trade routes the Government took the inhabitants to Norfolk Island, though some of them returned to Pitcairn. THE KING’S ENGLISH When many dialects were spoken in different parts of England the language used in the ICing's Court was considered particularly the national speech, and came to be called the King’s English.