COMMUNITY BORN OF THE BOUNTY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 4

COMMUNITY BORN OF THE BOUNTY

The Pitcairners. By R. B. Nicolson. Angus and Robertson. 179 pp. Appendices and Index.

The Bounty and Pitcairn Island possess an extensive bibliography—to which five pages of references in an appendix to this book testifies. But one more book was worth while, if it was to be Mr Nicolson’s book which covers the whole Bounty-Pit-cairn-Norfolk field from the beginning to the present competently and succinctly. Mr Nicolson has been painstaking in his researches and thorough in examining sources documentary and human. The product provides the entertaining reading that invariably flows from a writer’s absorbed interest in his subject. The story of the mutiny is briefly but sufficiently told; 50 pages encompass the story of the mutineers’ search for a home, the early days of settlement, and of the terrible events that left only one Bounty man alive to tell the mutineers’ story when, after the visit of Captain Folger in the Topaz, the fate of the Bounty was revealed to the world. It is soon apparent that .Mr Nicolson’s interest —as his book’s title proclaims—is in the Pit-

cairners. He describes the evolution of a strange community with sympathy and perception; he perceives clearly the influences of environment and intruders. Where Mr Nicolson is brief in describing events he is happy to devote space to the islanders’ affairs, quoting extensively from reports of visiting ship’s captains, from diaries and the Pitcairn Island Register.

Against a background of unsophisticated islanders, the worldly George Nobbs stands out; even more so Joshua Hill, who became the little dictator of Pitcairn introducing such blessings of worldly civilisation as a prison, the lash, censorship of books and the division of families. Attention is drawn to many facets of the community’s life, including the franchise to women in 1838, probably giving to the Pitcairners a not widely known “first.” The original laws, ten in number, promulgated when the new British Crown Colony of Pitcairn’s Island came into being and set out in full and reflect peculiarities of the isolated community’s life. A law calling for compulsory education from six to sixteen was a social event far ahead of its time. Cats were highly re-

garded. for Law No. 3 (Law for Cats) reads: —

If any person under the age of 10 years shall kill a cat, he or she shall receive corporal punishment. If any one, between the ages of 10 and 15 kill a cat, he or she shall pay a fine of 25 dollars; half of the fine to be given to the informer, the other half to the public. All masters of families convicted of killing a cat shall be fined 50 dollars; half of the fine to be given to the informer, the other half to the public. N. 8.: Every person, from the age of 15 upwards, shall pay a fine similar to masters of families.

Mr Nicolson brings his story up to the present, and discusses the Pitcairners of the present with those on both Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands. One appendix lists the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island from 1790 to 1856; another lists Pitcairners in the short-lived migration to Tahiti in 1831; a third the list of chief magistrates on Pitcairn from 1838 to 1966, a list that is replete with Quintals, McCoys, Youngs, Adamses, and, of course, Christians. Appropriately, the last Magistrate on the list —serving from 1961 to 1966 —is John Lorenzo Christian.