BOUNTY MUTINY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 4, 5 January 1934, Page 12

BOUNTY MUTINY.

SHIP'S RUDDER DISCOVERED.

ISLANDERS' HISTORIC CATCH.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, Thursday.

News of tlio discovery by Pitcairn Islanders of the rudder of the ship Bounty was given when the liner Mataroa arrived in Wellington this evening from London. Two men on board had with them pieces of old searoughened copper from the rudder, which had been given to them by islanders when the Mataroa called there on Boxing Day. When the Mataroa anchored off Pitcairn Island to exchange mails, passengers stated, islanders who came out to the ship in their rowing boats told them that four days earlier the rudder had been found by them while fishing. They had seen it lying uncovered on the sea bed, and with some difficulty had salvaged it. The rudder itself was left on the island, but with them the islanders brought two pieces of it. One, a copper bolt, they gave to Mr. J. Findley, the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company's New Zealand representative, and the other, a small sawn-off section of copper bar, to the chief steward, Mr. S. J. Gibling. One of the Mataroa's round-trip passengers, Commodore C. A. Bartlett, stated that he spoke about the discovery to a man named Christian, who was the magistrate and chief person on the island. Christian had assured him there was little doubt of the rudder belonging to the Bounty, which was scuttled by the mutineers in 1789. The location of the remains of the ship had been a mystery. He also said . the islanders were searching the seabed in the hope of regaining more wreckage. Commodore Bartlett advised him to take the first opportunity of sending the rudder to the United Services Museum in London.

The mutiny on H.M.s. Bounty, which was sent to the Pacific to get breadfruit trees, occurred in April, 1789. The captain, William Bligli, and 18 loyal members of the crew were set adrift and reached Batavia after a voyage of 4000 miles in an open boat. The mutineers returned to Tahiti, where some were subsequently captured, but a party escaped and made their way to Pitcairn Island and founded a small colony, which wa3 not discovered for some 30 years. Many of the present inhabitants of the island are direct descendants of the original vsw.