<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/19/pitcairn-register-bounty-mutineers-descendants-returns-south-pacific>
"It is a book that records the 19th-century descendants of some of the most
notorious troublemakers in naval history: the sailors responsible for the
mutiny on the
Bounty.
Now, the
Pitcairn Register – a handwritten volume that registered the births,
marriages and deaths of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of
the mutineers and the Tahitian women they enslaved – is finally returning home
to the South Pacific.
After seizing control of
HMS Bounty in 1789 and kidnapping some Polynesian
women from Tahiti, nine of the mutineers arrived on the uninhabited Pitcairn
Island in 1790 and decided to hide there from the Royal Navy. They brought
along 12 Polynesian women, a 10-month-old Polynesian girl and six Polynesian
men, who they forced into slavery.
When the sailor George Hunn Nobbs visited the island nearly 40 years later, he
found the offspring of the mutineers had formed a devout Christian community.
an English shipwright, John Buffett, had joined them and was recording all
their births, marriages and deaths in the register. Nobbs later took on the
task himself.
The register got wet in 1854, so Nobbs gave it away to an acquaintance in
England, noting that the “dilapidated” handwritten manuscript might “amuse” his
friend “over his after-dinner toast and water”. It was later donated to the
National Maritime Museum, in London.
Now, the museum is lending the register to the Norfolk Island Museum Trust
(NIMT) so it can go on display on Norfolk Island, a remote island governed by
Australia in the South Pacific Ocean, for the first time."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
