Mutiny of the Bounty and story of Pitcairn Island, 1790-1894Young, Rosalind Amelia
History
Mutiny of the Bounty and story of Pitcairn Island, 1790-1894
Young, Rosalind Amelia
Bounty Mutiny, 1789; Pitcairn Island
The opportunity soon came, and one day when he was in John Adams’
house, he was set upon and overpowered by the two other men. By means
of a hatchet the dreadful work of death was soon completed. The
daughter of John Mills (who lived to the age of ninety-three), then
a young girl of eight or nine years of age, was an eyewitness of the
awful deed, and used to relate how terrified were all of the little
band of women and children who beheld the blood-bespattered walls. The
dreadful scene was vividly pictured on her mind and memory through the
long course of more than eighty years.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
The Mutineers Discovered
THE TWO chief causes of trouble and mischief being now removed, there
was prospect of enjoying more tranquillity and peace than had ever
been known before. Of the fifteen males who landed on the island,
only two now remained. These two, Adams and Young, having the whole
responsibility of the young and increasing colony devolving upon
them, arose to the exigency of the case. Young was naturally of a
thoughtful and serious cast of mind, and the scenes which he and Adams
had witnessed, and in which they had participated, had the effect of
deepening the serious impressions that had been made upon them both,
and they resolved to train, as best they could, their own children
and those of their unfortunate companions, in the paths of virtue and
right. Young’s superior education better fitted him for the grave
undertaking; but he did not long survive his repentance. He had long
been afflicted with the asthma, and died of that complaint in the year
1800, about a year after Quintall’s death.
John Adams was now sole survivor. With a deep and abiding repentance
for his former course of life, he strove to amend the misdoings of
years by instilling into the minds of the young and rising generation
around him right principles. Alone and unaided in the gigantic task, he
suffered not his courage to fail in the endeavor, and his earnestness
of purpose, directed in a right channel, could not fail to win some
measure of success. The number of children that had been born to the
mutineers was twenty-three. Fletcher Christian left three children;
John Mills, two; William McCoy, three; Matthew Quintall, five; Edward
Young, six; and John Adams, four. John Williams, a Frenchman, Isaac
Martin, an American, and William Brown, an Englishman, left no children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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