Showing posts with label Mutiny on the Bounty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mutiny on the Bounty. Show all posts

March 6 - Foundation Day on Norfolk Island

 Posted on March 6, 2021

This is an update of my post published March 6, 2010:


Foundation Day re-enactment

On this day in 1788, the British flag was raised over this 3-by-5-mile island, which lies about 1,000 miles east of Australia.



Norfolk Island is a teeny dot located in the middle of 
the red circle, off the coast of Australia, which is also
colored red on this map...

The British wanted to use the pine trees native to the island for ships' masts and to make sure that their competition in colonization—France—didn't snap up the island.

But Norfolk Island almost immediately became a sort of labor camp for the most hardened of the convicts who were settling Australia. Not the happiest place, I gather. By 1814 everyone had left the island, and even the buildings were razed and pulled down.

Just 11 years later, the island was back in use—this time as a jail rather than a labor camp. Conditions were absolutely terrible. Eventually, enough people had complained about the awful treatment of prisoners that the prison was closed and the island was abandoned yet again, in 1855.

The next year the island was offered to the “Pitcairners” for settlement. These people were a very interesting group whose history started in 1789, when there was a mutiny on the Bounty (a British sailing ship made famous by books and movies about the mutiny). A mutiny is when a ship's crew (or other military group) rebels against its commander.



Some of the mutineers were eventually returned to Britain and either pardoned or hanged, but some settled down on the uninhabited island of Pitcairn with some Tahitians (who had probably been kidnapped). This tiny settlement had some violence and mutinies of its own, but eventually the two remaining mutineers, some Tahitian women, and their many children created a peaceful community. Over the years several sailors rediscovered this island, and in 1838 Pitcairn was made a British colony.

By the time the population reached 193 people, the Pitcairners were suffering from lack of resources; they asked Queen Victoria for some new land for their settlement and were offered the recently emptied Norfolk Island. All 193 Pitcairners, plus everything they owned, traveled several thousand miles to Norfolk Island (although 44 of them soon returned to Pitcairn).

Today, some people in Norfolk Island insist that they were given independence along with the land, but the island has since become a part of Australia. Some inhabitants continue to agitate for independence, saying that “Australia has overstepped its authority” and warning that, if wrongs aren't corrected, “Australia will have wiped out a people and stolen their homeland.”



Aside from all that colorful history (and partly because of it), Norfolk Island is a great destination for travelers seeking a semi-tropical vacation. Especially those who live nearby, in New Zealand and Australia.


Take a virtual tour of Norfolk Island.





Norfolk Island's Capital is Kingston...



...Which I thought was a little surprising, because the nation of Jamaica has a capital city that is ALSO Kingston. But maybe it's not so surprising; I googled “Kingston” and found out that there are at least five in the United States, plus one in Canada:

Kingston, MA, U.S.
Kingston, NY, U.S.
Kingston, WA, U.S.
Kingston, NH, U.S.
Kingston, PA, U.S.
Kingston, Ontario, Canada

I guess a lot of town's wanted to be known as the king's town!

Common Names...and Uncommon Nicknames!



About half of the people who live on Norfolk's Island are descended from the Pitcairners. (And remember, that original group of less than 200 people were all descended from a VERY limited group.) Because of this small stock of ancestors, there are some surnames that are very common on the island, so much so that the island's telephone book lists some people by nickname: “Cane Toad, Dar Bizziebee, Kik Kik, Lettuce Leaf, Mutty, Oot, Paw Paw, Snoop, Tarzan, and Wiggy.”

A Creole Language...
People on Norfolk Island speak English, but many also speak a creole language called Norfuk. A creole is a stable language that is made by mixing two or more languages. In this case, the two languages are...

...can you guess?

...English and Tahitian.

A creole language is created when adults learn a simplified version of a language in order to get by and work and trade with speakers of that language. A simplified version of a language is called a pidgin language. When those adults have children, the kids learn the pidgin language as one of their mother languages, and somehow transform the pidgin language into a full-fledged language with vocabulary and sounds like the languages that made up the mixture, but perhaps with its very own grammar.

I think "wut-a-wey" means hello.
What do you suppose the rest means?


Apparently Norfuk is starting to die out. Tourism is one of the biggest industries in Norfolk Island, and of course the visitors don't speak and understand Norfuk. Also, young people looking for opportunities often go away to school or travel on jobs. Because of these pressures, English is becoming more and more dominant. Some people on Norfolk Island want to help save their endangered language....Do you think they are right to care?











(First Saturday of March)


(First Saturday of March)





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January 23 – Bounty Day on Pitcairn Islands

Posted on January 23, 2019

About half a year ago, I wrote about Bounty Day on Norfolk Island. I told the dramatic tale of the HMS Bounty and the mutiny that led to novels, movies, and at least one play - AND that led to settlements on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, and that led to a sort of unique English-Polynesian mash-up culture.

On that post, I included a few details of how the day is celebrated on Norfolk Island and posted a couple of photos of that beautiful island. Today I'll be doing the same on behalf of Pitcairn Island.

But first, here is the tale of the mutiny, copy-pasted from that earlier post:

Once upon a time, in 1787, there was a British ship especially outfitted to carry breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. The Brits who paid for this expedition apparently hoped that breadfruit would grow well on the Caribbean islands and become a good, cheap source of food for the enslaved people who labored in the Caribbean sugar cane fields.


This ship sailed from England across the Atlantic to Cape Horn - the southern tip of South America - but couldn't get through the difficult passage because of bad weather. After a month of failure, the ship's captain headed east, rounded the southern tip of Africa, sailed across the Indian Ocean, and finally arrived in Tahiti after ten months at sea.



For the next six months, the crew lived in Tahiti - a place that some people consider a paradise. They collected and prepared more than a thousand breadfruit plants to be transported to the Caribbean. Eventually it was time to sail on to the Caribbean.



Apparently, some of the men had fallen in love with Tahiti's wonderful weather. Some of the men had fallen in love with Tahiti's easy pace of life. Some of the men had fallen in love with Tahitians!

So...soon after leaving Tahiti, there was a mutiny. I'm happy to report that it was a bloodless mutiny - in other words, nobody died. The captain, William Bligh, was put into a small, open boat along with the men still loyal to him, and those men made a difficult journey to a Dutch settlement - it took 47 days! - losing only one man who was attacked on an island when they tried to get some supplies. Except for that one casualty, they all lived to tell the tale of the mutiny.


The mutineers sailed back to Tahiti and dropped off those who wished to remain there even though they knew the Royal Navy would surely capture them and take them back to England to face trial. (They did.) The 9 mutineers who wished to flee that fate sailed off with 6 Tahitian men and 11 Tahitian women (probably at least some whom were kidnapped) and landed the uninhabited Pitcairn Island. 



They offloaded all the people, livestock, other supplies, and I presume the breadfruit plants - and then the mutineers burned the ship! They didn't want the ship to be discovered by the Royal Navy, and they didn't want anyone to flee the island. In order to survive as a community, they needed enough people - and they especially needed women!

The burning of the ship, the HMS Bounty, happened on January 23, 1790. The bay where that occurred is called Bounty Bay, and the anniversary of the burning is celebrated as a holiday on Pitcairn Island as Bounty Day.


On Pitcairn Island, Bounty Day is celebrated by as a public holiday. People may picnic and participate in boat races - but the biggest traditional activity is burning a model of Bounty in or near the bay. 



I was surprised to read that there are only about 50 people living on Pitcairn! They are apparently all descended from four families from the original handful of British mutineers and handful of Tahitians. 


Pitcairn is one island - but there are four volcanic islands that are called "the Pitcairn Islands," and although Pitcairn is the only one that is inhabited, another island, Henderson, is way larger! 

The four islands are considered a British Overseas Territory. Tourism is a big part of the economy, with people coming by cruise ships for a day, or by charter ships for "home stays." I gather that there are no hotels - remember, there are only 50 inhabitants in the entire island! - but tourists who stay overnight stay with local families, and a few Pitcairners have built rental units next to their home for tourists to use. 

There is only one church building on the island (Seventh-day Adventist, a denomination of Christianity). Apparently only a handful of people attend regularly. There is only one school, and it only goes up to age 12. Teens either go to New Zealand for their schooling, take long-distance courses / correspondence school, or homeschool. 

What a surprising and strange corner of the world...although quite lovely:





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