Edward Young, "Bounty" mutineer.

Midshipman Edward (Ned) Young is in many ways the enigma of the Bounty mutineers.  Although educated and well-connected enough to receive a letter-of-recommendation from Admiral Sir George Young, literally nothing is known of his family or upbringing.  Indeed, the only documented reference to Ned’s genealogy is from the Bounty muster, which lists his birthplace as St. Kitts, West Indies, in 1764.  Yet correspondence in 2009 with St. Kitts National Archivist, Victoria O’Flaherty, and St. Kitts-based genealogists, Hazel Brookes and Lindon Williams, reveals there is no record of an Edward Young in St. Kitts in that time period.  Their various explanations for this lack of data include the loss of historical records over time to natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes and fires), as well as the possibility Ned may have been born out-of-wedlock.  In any event, this complete absence of information reduces any discussion of Ned’s pedigree  – that he was the nephew of Admiral Sir George Young; was mulatto – to hearsay.  The hearsay, however, can be quite helpful.

Mutiny on the HMAV Bounty

The literature records several of the Bounty’s crew recalling Ned’s statements and actions. This comes mostly from both Bligh’s and the accused mutineers’ court-martial hearings.  But only two people offer insights into Ned’s actual personage: Bligh and fellow mutineer, John Adams.  John Adams holds a singular significance in Pitcairn history.  Not only is he after Ned’s death in 1800 and for the next 24 years the sole English person and patriarch of the emerging society, but virtually all published Pitcairn history until the arrival of Buffett and Evans is told through him.  (The exception is Teehuteatuaonoa, or “Jenny”, one of the original Tahitian women who was interviewed after leaving  Pitcairn Island in 1817.)  Adams and Young are early compatriots on Pitcairn and by 1798 the two surviving Englishmen.  From Adams we get a sense of Ned, but nothing of his personal history prior to the Bounty.  Capt. Beechey of the HMS Blossom, calling at Pitcairn in 1825, transcribed excerpts from the journal (now lost) Ned began shortly after landing on the island.  From that, we know, for example, that Ned was instrumental in educating the first generation of Pitcairners.  But nothing was written of his background.  It is Bligh who offers the most clues.

Bligh provides the only physical descriptions of Ned.  Notably, they all occur after the mutiny, so he’s not too keen to flatter.  This is where we read Ned was stout, dark-complexioned, with few remaining, rotting teeth.  Interestingly, Bligh never attributes African features to him.  Nor does he mention Ned’s West Indies connection, even though Bligh would have known and that was their destination.

Similarly, the literature will still occasionally cite Bligh as referring to Ned being Admiral Sir George Young’s nephew.  Bligh’s only mention, however, in his log, is of Ned being “recommended” by the Admiral.  Given the common surnames, it is easy to imagine how that could drift to the latter assumption, and it’s rife with potential, but not yet established.

What we know is this:  Admiral Sir George’s genealogy was developed in 1927 by his great-grandson, Sir George Young, 3^rd Baronet, under the title, “Young of Formosa”, Formosa being the name of the Admiral’s home in Devon, England.  His great-grandson disputes the notion that Ned was the Admiral’s nephew.  But in an appendix, he includes the research of a Young relation, Rev. Charles Russell Cooke, who postulates in 1882 that Ned could have descended from the Admiral’s first-cousin, James Young.  Based on Ned’s age, Cooke tentatively allocates him a place on that branch of the family tree.  We get into a wild set of coincidences, but in this extended family of Youngs, it is tradition that the firstborn of a family be named, “George”.   This happens to be the name Ned gives his firstborn, and is the name given the firstborn for the first three generations.  More remarkably, the five names listed on this family tree as possibly being Ned’s father, aunts and uncles are to a person the very names Ned gives his children on Pitcairn.  The one omission is Ned’s first daughter, Polly, which presumably was his mother’s name and thus excluded from the Young genealogy. 

It’s been suggested that if Ned were related to the Admiral or anyone in this nautical family, a possible explanation of why there is no account of him is his being expunged from family records after committing a treasonous act.  Correspondence with the present Baronet, Sir George Young, 6^th Bt^., supports this proposition.  This then begs the question, on what information did Cooke base his speculation of Ned’s place in the Young family.  Unfortunately, Cooke dies in 1892 without offspring and his estate is subsequently sold.  Locating his personal papers has so far proven difficult and his work may need to be recreated. 

So that’s all, in fact, we know of Edward Young.  The Bounty muster lists his birthplace as St. Kitts in 1764, and Bligh notes he was recommended to him by the Admiral.  We know he spoke the King’s English from extracts from his journal.  Beyond that, we simply don’t know.  When someone says Ned was related to Admiral Sir George Young or that he was bi-racial, the son of a plantation owner father and slave mother, we don’t know.  We don’t know how old he was when he left for England, only that he was 21 when he signed-on to the Bounty.  In fact, we can’t even be certain Ned spoke anything but English.  Hopefully, if linguists presently combing the Pitcairn and Norfolk languages for St. Kittian-derived words can determine a significant number, more than might have been contributed by Fletcher, who had made two voyages to the West Indies himself and from court testimony “mixed well” with the locals, we can more confidently infer Ned at least lived long enough in St. Kitts to learn the local creole and that those words likely came from him.  If this bears out, biographers can start to look to his arriving in England at an older age, rather than younger.  I think we have a ways to go.

Rick Kleiner
Norfolk Island
July 8, 2012

Norfolk’s Oldest-Known Song (Podcast)

Click link to play the song, "Ucklun": www.rickstours.nlk.nf/ucklun.mp3
English translation below.

The coincidence of the occurrence still brings a smile to my face.  Within a week of the late Maude Buffett recalling to me a song she sang in the Norfolk language as a young school girl, Philip Hayward commented that he couldn’t find such a song written before the 1960s.  Phil is a musicologist, now at Southern Cross University, who was on island researching the music of Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands for what became his book, Bounty Chords (2006).  His research was long and thorough.  I know, because I lent a small hand with one of the sections.  It was towards the end of his work.  In fact, the book was in its final review that I remember and about ready to go to print when he voiced his surprise to me that no one seemed to have composed songs in the local language until some 40 years earlier.  That’s when I mentioned Maude’s song, which would beat that timeline by almost 50 years.  The song, “Ucklun”, may be the oldest known sung in Norf'k.

This possibility surfaced some seven ago.  Maude remembered Audrey Scott (nee Robinson; Girlie’s sister) first singing "Ucklun".  It turns out that several girls of that generation remembered Audrey singing it.  Mary Selby is another.  Mary is now in her early-90s and Audrey is a few years ahead of her.  I’m trying to be circumspect, but you get a sense of time.  I gave Audrey a call and we got together.

Audrey always conducts herself with a regal bearing and I have never seen her not dress smartly.  I’m imagining this was always the case, even when Norfolk washed clothes in copper cauldrons and pressed them with heavy cast irons.  Charming, articulate; sharp as a tack.  To say the least, it was an enjoyable couple of hours listening to her reminisce of her school days 85 years ago.
 

Audrey Scott, "Bounty Day", 2010;
Photo by Kim Partridge.

Audrey says she didn’t write the song and believes it was written by her uncle, and the school’s headmaster, Gustav Quintal.  This delights me because “Guttie”, besides being my great-grandfather, is known today as the composer of some fairly solemn hymns.  The thought that he would also write a kid's ditty finally adds a smile to the seriously stern-looking portrait that hangs in the school library.

Gustav Quintal

Audrey recorded the song for me in 2008.  If you haven't yet, you can hear it by following the link below.  Her translation into English follows.  I'm pleased to say Audrey's doing well.  Thank you, Audrey.

Click below to play "Ucklun":

www.rickstours.nlk.nf/ucklun.mp3

Ucklun (Us)

I wish to show you all How hard we little kids find it
To read and write in good English And speak out our minds

We go to school nearly every day And try to learn things
We read and write and talk and play And sometimes we would sing

And when we all go home from school We never try to do
The things our teacher told us And [we] never talk it [ie English], too.

How can we learn if that’s what All of you are going to do
Cause you all know before I told you The thing I’m saying is true

We examined it again [And] We are worse than first I believed
Cause you all know the Englishman We never will deceive [them]

And because our examiners Are Peter, Tom and Jack
Don’t you all be frightened If we don’t get any prizes to take

Now I have finished and now I bet You’re all glad it’s me
Cause you all know before I told you The thing I’m saying is true

 - Rick Kleiner

380 Pipes and a Rear-View Mirror

I happened to run into Naomi Hallett at St. Barnabas Chapel while touring two journalists around Norfolk.  Naomi wears several hats on the Island, including being one of the Church of England organists who play the magnificent 380-pipe Henry Willis organ.  The walls of the Chapel are constructed of big blocks of local limestone which create excellent acoustics for the organ’s soulful, resonate tones.

 

The Henry Willis Organ: two views

 

I always enjoy the look on visitors’ faces when they first enter St. Barnabas and behold its elegant beauty.  Jaws drop and eyes widen.  The stained-glass windows are by the well-known pre-Raphaelite artists, William Morris and Edward Byrne-Jones.  The pews are hand-carved from New Zealand kauri, the ends of each inlaid with intricate patterns of mother-of-pearl.  The extensive marble mosaic of the floors and chancel come from Torquay, England.  It’s a truly exquisite example of an English country chapel, made wholly the more surprising by finding it a small Pacific island.  It’s another reason why Norfolk’s history is so colourful.  But if they can also hear the Willis played, that moment becomes one of the unexpected highlights of their trip.

 

Interior, looking towards the altar.

The organ arrived on Norfolk in 1875, about the time the Chapel’s construction began, and was installed by the Chapel’s consecration on December 7, 1880.  Until the 1950s, some young boy was charged with hand-pumping air through its bellows.  Albert Buffett was one of those former kids and recalls if the organist wanted more volume, he had to pump faster.  I guess it was suppose to be an act of devotional duty, but I imagine for an 11 year old it would have been like inflating a house. 

Something as prominent as the Willis, and as central to a service, would naturally hold a significance on a Sunday that only the most confident musician could match.  And their names still resound in the community.  To this day, I cannot see the Willis without imagining Tim Lloyd at the keyboard, a place for decades you would have found her on most Sundays.  It was Tim who installed a rear-view mirror above the keyboard to better monitor wedding ceremonies behind her.  Others mention Aunt Daisy Buffett and Anne Swift, before her.  And there are a number of organists alternating Sundays today.  Naomi is one of them. 

One of the things I love about Norfolk is its hospitality and informality, and it’s shared with everyone.  Naomi and I meet at the Chapel once a week, she to play and I to sing.  We do it solely for our pleasure and don’t take for granted at all how privileged we are to be able to enter such a historical space and fire-up the organ’s bellows, for fun.  However, when I mentioned to the journalists that visitors were welcome to play it, as well (as long as they knew how), and from whom to get the keyboard key, they simply couldn’t believe the community’s benevolence and trust.  But these acts of good will almost never go unrewarded in some fashion.  Twice I’ve had a visitor on a tour so proficient on a pipe organ they’ve ended-up giving a free concert during their holiday.  No one was more delighted than they to fit a recital into their itinerary.  You say you don’t play a pipe organ, but, perhaps, only a ukulele?  No problem.  Naomi’s brother, Donald, has a group of ukulele players meet at his house every Saturday.  Come join.

My two favourites.

 

- Rick

Spring Forward

It’s springtime on Norfolk Island.  The surest signs are when you first notice the rose-coloured petals emerging from the buds of the bush peach trees.  This happens about the same time each year that the white terns return.  I saw my first one alight on a pine in my backyard yesterday.  Soon the skies will be filled with them.  Oh, and the flying ants, another certain (and blessedly brief) sign of spring.  More on that later.

Photo by Dave Wiley

The white tern (Gygis alba) is a photographer’s delight.  The feathers are a snowy white, broken only by the jet-black of its eyes, bill and feet.  They have the ability to hover and if you catch them with the sun in the background, just so, you can see some beautiful gossamer silhouettes through the plumage.  Lazy people like them, too.  I’ve spent countless hours watching them from my verandah fly in incredibly tight aerial formations and have always considered it time well-spent.  These aerial exercises are especially intricate when the parents are teaching their chick how to fish.  But right now, they’re busy pairing-up and courting. 

That I’m aware, no one has tagged the white terns, so we don’t fully know where they winter.  But the birds are such an indelible part of our summer sky, it’s almost reassuring when you first notice their coming back.  Many of us believe the terns return to the same limb each year to raise their young.  This could be coincidental, but there are some limbs which will invariably have a chick on it and usually at the same place on the limb as the year before.  There is also the occasional case in which one of the parents has been killed nurturing the chick.  There will be feathers below, sometimes a carcass; usually the result of a feral cat.  It’s been my experience that that limb will no longer be used to nest, suggesting they may pair for life, as well.

Photo by Barb Mayer

The white tern has a couple of unusual characteristics.  Notably, it doesn’t actually build a nest, but will lay an egg in a shallow depression of the limb, with one or the other parent taking turns with incubation.  When the egg hatches, the chick for the first several weeks of its life needs to instinctively know not to move.  Occasionally, one will and fall prematurely from the tree.  Another characteristic is the parents don’t regurgitate food, but will feed the chick entire, small fish fry.  It’s not uncommon to find small fish that have fallen from a parent’s beak in the most unlikely places.  I had the opportunity of being on the top of Mt. Pitt with a visitor who had the look of almost Biblical wonder when he picked up a fish atop our second highest peak.  I hated to disappoint him.  Actually, I wish I hadn’t.  Who knows what new religion could have ensued?

Photo by "Island Life"

It’s difficult talking about white terns without mentioning an ominous phenomenon.  For some reason, to my eye beginning six years ago, their numbers have plummeted.  My guess is at least by half.  There may have been a trend we didn’t notice, but it seemed to occur between one year and the next.  They just didn’t come back in anywhere near the numbers expected.  Some people have speculated that it may be due to habitat-loss where they winter.  There was also a severe windstorm from Australia that year about the time the terns would have been in the vicinity.  Another concern is climate change, and a disconnect somewhere with a food source.  In any event, the population doesn’t seem to have yet rebounded.  The skies will still be filled, but there’s a noticeable absence, as well.

We’ll have the white tern until sometime in late May.  It happens every year, of course.  It’s also a sign that winter is approaching and the firewood had better be split.

- Rick

A Genuine Bastard.

Ungeria floribunda is its taxonomic name.  Common name: the Norfolk Island Bastard Oak.

The very presence of this now rare tree on Norfolk speaks to how much of this beautiful island we still cannot explain.  Not only is the individual species, floribunda, unique to Norfolk Island, but the entire genus, Ungeria, is, too.  This is astounding.  For a relatively young, small and remote land mass, it defies explanation.  I love it.

By way of comparison, in addition to the iconic Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophyla), the Auracaria genus includes some 18 other species ranging from South America across the Pacific to Australia and New Guinea.  These species numbers and broad geographic range reflect Auracaria’s long and diverse evolutionary history.  Similarly, the genus, Cyathea, contains two separate species of tree fern unique to Norfolk, one considered the tallest in the world, and over 400 other species spread across the globe.  Ungeria floribunda, however, the Bastard Oak, is the only species in its genus and the entire genus is found naturally-occurring only here. 

Bastard Oak

Attempts to explain this circumstance are complicated by Norfolk’s relatively young geologic age (estimated to be some 2.5 million years since the last volcanic eruption) and evidence (from Peter Coyne) suggesting it has been isolated from other land masses during all of this period.  Beginning with a naked volcanic landscape, you could expect some species to variously reach Norfolk and diversify within this short time span.  But to have an entire genus, this higher unit of time, seemingly just pop-up or somehow be the last to survive stymies even the most imaginative scientific mind.  “Kaa waa”, would be the local phrase.  Who knows?

Taxonomic names are useful both to systematically identify one plant or animal from another, and to indicate its evolution over time.  Common names, on the other hand, can reflect the local lore and be much more colourful, as well as easier to remember.  I’ve heard two explanations of how the Bastard Oak got its name.  It does have an oak-sort-of-look to its leaf.  The other explanation is it’s the only one in the family that doesn’t know its pedigree.  In any event, its mystery delights me. 

By the way, while reviewing Peter Coyne’s field guide, Norfolk Island’s Fascinating Flora, I think I recognised a plant in my backyard which Peter suspects may have become extinct.  If I’m correct, it’s the wild cucumber, Sicyos australis.  I won’t be able to confirm the species until it flowers.  But I wrote Peter with the good news and the even better news that I’ve since stopped trying to kill it.  It’s a creeper and no one could identify it, so I considered it just another introduced pest.  That I know, I have one plant left.  We’ll see.

- Rick

Cheryl Poulson's eye.

I recently had Cheryl Poulson on a tour.  She called me from Governor’s Lodge wanting to go on a photographic tour.  My answer was, “of course”, if we could find at least one other person.  There are a minimum number of people on a tour to make it worthwhile.  We scheduled a tour date, didn’t find another taker, and went anyways.  I’m glad we did.  It was worth it to me for the experience.  I think Cheryl had a good time, too.

Cheryl is a professional photographer.  She had also been on Norfolk for six days, which meant she had already seen the usual and basic.  We talked about her interests, what subjects she wanted to shoot – birds in the National park, mostly, but she was open – and we took off. 

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I don’t too often, photographers are different from the rest of us.  They see what we don’t and can spend a day being delighted with one thing after another.  One of the first places we visited was Aunt Amy’s, an uninhabited island home built sometime in the 1880s.  I wasn’t sure if it as an image was what she had in mind.  It fascinated her, from every angle and every lens. 

Aunt Amy's

Aunt Amy Christian was one of the Island’s first entrepreneurs, starting what was called the “Clothing Club” in the late 19^th- century.  A portion of the house was a shop and women would gather by horse-and-buggy to buy goods, exchange community information (usually about someone not present and always incorrect), and make clothes.  Then it would be a long ride back home.

Bloody Bridge from below.

If you’ve been a visitor to Norfolk, you no doubt have seen Bloody Bridge from the road.  (We’ll discuss how it got its name some other time because I don’t believe it’s true.)  Another view of Bloody Bridge is from the valley beneath as the stream empties a short distance into a stretch of coastline called Duffy’s Whale.  You have to straddle a low fence to get to the trails leading to the shore, and you’d want to follow a local the first time, but once you’re there you have a seldom-seen view of Nepean and Philip Islands in one direction and Gannett Point in another.  Es goodun fe lookorn.

Because a theme of my tour company is small group size and we travel in a van, we have the opportunity for conversation along the way.  It turns out Cheryl didn’t get into photography until she retired.  That was Day One and she’s since developed herself into a master.  One characteristic of that accomplishment, I think, is she’s able to anticipate her shot, to make her camera see what she does, and not have to delete so much.  (Just joking, but I imagine even masters on occasion delete with the same kind of puzzlement and relief as the rest of us.)

I’ll tell you now, after almost four hours, we never made it to the National Park.  I felt I had let her down a bit in not managing our time better.  But there was so much to do and see, and at each stop she would find an angle or focal length I would never have thought to use.   To wit, this is the best photo of the “other side” of St. Barnabas Chapel I have seen.

Back side of St. Barnabas Chapel - Poulson Photography

Like most of our visitors, Cheryl expects to return.  There’s definitely more for her to see.  I’ll take her to Monty’s, for one, near Crystal Pool, and perhaps to nearby Philip Island, where the vivid colours of the geology will make her hands tremble.  I hope to be able to feature her Norfolk photos on my website soon.

It was a great day.  I had a great time on my tour.  Thanks, Cheryl.

Norfolk Island Flora and Fauna Society.

            I had the members of the Norfolk Island Flora and Fauna Society at my house for a meeting last week.  It was at my house because the A & H Hall, the usual location, had no power and I knew because of a tour earlier that day that my house could handle guests.  I have my grandparent’s Kauri-wood dining table which can easily handle the seven people who arrived.  It’s a great table for dining and conversation, poker and meetings.  The 2006 High Court case of Bennett vs. the Commonwealth, which sought clarification of Norfolk’s constitutional relationship with the Australian Commonwealth, got its start at planning meetings around this table.  But that night, to me, it was the people around the table more than the topics that most impressed.  I was sitting with what constituted the history of the modern ecology movement on Norfolk, going back in some cases more than 50 years: Beryl Evans, Honey McCoy, Margaret Christian, Peter Davidson, Leigh Christian-Mitchell and Rob Ward.  Also around the table was Ginny Maidment, Community Laison officer for the Commonwealth, to offer advice on grantsmanship. 

            Beryl, together with her late husband, Owen, is the quintessence of environmental consciousness.  From their own pocket, they developed what amounted to a bona fide ornithological research centre on nearby Philip Island.  Philip is a bird sanctuary, some 1 x2 miles across, surrounded by steep coastal cliffs and is still not easy to access.  This was Beryl and Owen’s stomping grounds beginning over 30 years ago.  They made the terrain traversable in order to study close at hand the Island’s sea birds.   When I first went to Philip some  15 years ago, beginning with the vertical cliff just meters from the landing, virtually everywhere I’d need a rope and a hand or foot hold trying to reach the interior plateau I’d find one, and Owen and Beryl would have put it there.  The rope guardrails atop the south-facing 300 meter high cliffs, Owen and Beryl placed.  Making Philip their second home for months on end well into their 70s, they did it solely for their love of knowledge, which they would share freely with anyone who asked.  Beryl still does.  My favourite Owen story along these lines is, when I was newly arrived and trying to imagine ways of getting outside support for their work, I asked why he didn’t start publishing his findings.  Owen’s answer was he wasn’t finished yet.  My favourite Beryl story is when I was writing an article about them for the (now defunct) Pacific Island Monthly magazine and learned she had discovered two species of moth, but couldn’t remember where she had left the piece of paper to tell me the taxonomic names.  Two wonderfully unassuming characters.

            Honey is much the same: a tireless worker driven by her passion and concern for the ecology of the Norfolk archipelago (Norfolk, Philip and Nepean islands).  Among many other things, Honey has made the rehabilitation of Philip a priority.  Because of the introduction of rabbits to Philip in the 1790s, the island has been virtually denuded of vegetation for most of the last 150 years.  Fortunately, the rabbits were exterminated in the 1980s, which has allowed colonising plants (and thus windbreaks) to establish.  On her way to discovering several species of plants unique to the Island, Honey has for several decades slowly but steadily been re-establishing native plants on Philip.  Perhaps half of the island is now covered in some kind of vegetation, in part because of Honey’s nurturing.

White Tern

            Margaret’s knowledge has resulted in her publishing the definitive field guide to Norfolk Island birds.  This is a genuinely weighty task to contemplate, let alone do.  Her book is now an essential tool in the field.  She seems to get great delight, as all these folk do, in watching bird behaviour each year and in collecting anecdotes of various odd and colourful events across the Norfolk landscape over time.  Margaret has become the “go to” person when members of the community see something unusual and want to share it or find an answer.  But maybe the true answer person is Peter, who is also the Island’s Conservator of Reserves and head of Forestry.  Peter like the others is a keen observer of natural phenomenon, but he adds an additional measure of scientific training and technique to his conversation.  It can be a nice overlay to the grassroots observations of “lay” natural historians.  Peter, however, knows to defer when some of the older ones are speaking.

Springtime for two White Terns.

            Rob is Honey’s son.  Rob doesn’t yet know how much his mannerisms are like his mum’s.  That includes a concise mind, great earnestness, broad interests, and a true economy of expression.  Rob can demonstrate, as well, that humour needs few words.  A fly on the wall of their household would have learned a lot and occasionally wondered why it was laughing.

            I’m going to enjoy getting to know Leigh better.  In our small community, we know most everyone, but not necessarily well.  This is probably a good thing, but not always.  Leigh and I would chat a bit when we’d see other, but now I’ll see a serious side.  My left side is my serious side, which she’ll find out.

            There was a point at this meeting when President Margaret asked if anyone had “observations”.  People started sharing many of the things they had seen and learned of our natural environment since they last met - the return of the migratory white terns; assessing whether the “Tarla Bird” really does eat the embryos of nesting petrels; the condition of the tall  grass on Philip – which was like listening to doctors exchange diagnoses and treatment after hours.  These are the people who genuinely derive pleasure from nature and who are pained at the prospect of environmental degradation or of losing another species.  They still  meet, they still try because they’re optimists.  How many meetings do you actually walk away smarter?  It was cool.

(Photos courtesy of Norfolk Island National Park)

- Rick