Amerioan 7eekly, December 81. 1939,
e Hands of War, tike the Bony Hands of
Death, Grip Pitcairn Island.
O 19S9. by Amrrknn W^kly. Inc.   Gr+*t Britain Rljrhtu R<    • ¦ i 1
//\%# / HAT has happened to the world ?"
^A/ L»tUe forlorn Pitcairn Island.
? ? whose 215 inhabitants have been
left to slow starvation, is wondering. They are
victims of a war which they probably haven't heard
of yet and may never live to hear about.
AH they know is that long months have passed
without a ship stopping, or even a passing plume
of smoke appearing on the horizon.
After the tiny South Sea islet was made fa-
mous by the book and picture of "Mutiny on the
Bounty," the big outside world which these de-
scendants of the old mutineers had only heard
about did a very nice thing. It presented them
with a short-wave radio set. Station VTJ6AY, which
was able to talk with Mrs. Dorothy Hall, radio ama-
teur, of SprfngfieTHTLong Island, N. Y.
Rut one of the last visiting ships took their
precious set away for repairs and that was the
last they have heard of it.
The radio apparatus is at Panama, all fixed and
ready, but the islanders will probably not see it
again or perhaps any ship until the end of the war.
If this war lasts as long as the last one, what will
that first ship find?
Perhaps a lot of famished or dead people and
a multitude of black rats.
~rtZC*e rats are one of the main reasons whv
Pitcairn .\?land is not the South Sea paradise it
has been desc ribed as being,
but rather a rocky trap on
which human beings cannot
survive indefinitely without
food, medicine and other
supplies from overseas.
By choosing that forbid-
ding rock for their haven,
the nine mutineers of the
Bounty escaped hanging, but
they sentenced themselves
and their descendants to life
imprisonment even beyond
the third and fourth genera-
tion, which Divine wrath im-
poses on the lawbreaker. It
may even be for this genera-
tion, a death sentence.
It will be slow starvation.
When the weather is right
they can launch their boats
in treacherous Bounty Bay
and catch fish. But the en-
tire catch must be eaten at
once, since they have no way
of preventing it from spoil-
ing immediately in that hot,
moist climate. Also they
have a few goats and
chickens, whose milk and
eggs help keep the babies
from dying in infancy, and
there are one or two coconut
palms.
Oranges they have in su-
perabundance, so much so,
that the children learn to
hate orange juice before they
are old enough to talk. It is
the Pitcairn youngster's
equivalent of spinach.
Mrs. Hall, who for a long
time was the voice of the out- /
side world to the little dot of
rock lost in the vastness of
the racific Ocean, has heard
their daily problems and
probably knows the people
hotter than most anyone else.
She explains-why they do
not balance their diet with
vegetables grown in the fer-
tile patches to be found in
the island's uneven soil.
Mrs. Hall says:
"The islanders cannot
plant potatoes and other--,
vegetables, for before these have time to reach a
size large enough to make them worth eating, an
army of rats comes in the night, pulls them all up
and devours them. Farmers have their scarecrows,
but nobody has found a way to scare or keep out
the huge Pitcairn rat
"Therefore, most everything must be imported
except oranges, melons and a few other fruits.
Most of the necessary food used to be gotten by
barter with Tahiti. In exchange for the luscious
Pitcairn oranges the Tahitians shipped coconuts
and beans, but little else.   It was almost enough,
for the precious beans supplied vegetable protein.
What they lacked was animal protein.   The Pit-
cairn islander's hap-
piest dream is sitting
down to a feast of meat
"Meat, however, must
be brought by ships
traveling either from
England or New Zea-
land. The islanders
trade for tinned meats,
but having nc refriger-
ation, the meat goes
i bad if left exposed to
the air for very long.
Yet so ravenous are
the natives for it that
they take a chance,
and therefore ptomaine
poisoning is one of their
most common com-
plaints. There is no doc-
tor on the island and
few medical supplies to
speak of."
These medical sup-
plies perhaps should be
spoken of, since they
are what might be
called "museum pieces."
They consist of a shelf-
1 o a d of dust-covered
bottles, mostly sent
ashore by captains of
ships in the long ago.
Their ancient labels
have long since become
illegible with age. If
someone were able to
guess what is in them,
nobody on the island
has the medical under-
standing to administer
the stuff, and even if
they did, probably the
drugs have lost their
potency.
Nevertheless, they are "treasured, under lock
and key, along with the rudder of the old Bounty
which years ago was fished out of the sea. The
British Government has forbidden the islanders to
sell this historic memento of the sea's most darintr
mutiny.
the big rats which plague the island are some-
thing of a mystery. Apparently they were not there
when the mutineers and their Tahitian wives took
possession. Unquestionably the Bounty, like all
ships of those pre-fumigation days, swarmed with
them. When the Bounty was burned and scuttled,
presumably none of them swam ashore because
there were no complaints during the first half
century or so of occupancy by the mutineers.
Certainly none swam ashore from any of the
visiting ships, because these dare not lie to nearer
than a mile and a half from the treacherous shore.
The islanders go out to the ships in their own open
boats which have to be small enough to be hauled
up on dry land when not in use. Possibly a pair of
rats managed to hide in one of the small return
cargoes and get ashore unobserved, although this
is hard to imagine. Perhaps a pair came ashore on
some floating wreckage.
The island rodent is not the common wharf
and ship rat, well-known to sailors the world over.
It is an ancient species, rapidly becoming extinct.
The Pitcairn rat is the black one which first suc-
ceeded in more or less domesticating man. It sailed
on Pharaoh's galleys and went to Troy with crafty
Ulysses, and to the Crusades with Richard the
Lion Heart
It is the same black rat which brought the
germs of the black plague from the Orient to
Europe during the Middle Ages. But, within mod-
ern times, the grey rat has taken to the sea and
is rapidly driving its predecessor from the face of
the earth. Pitcairn Island is no paradise for man
but it certainly is a sanctuary for the black rat.
A rat is meat; and though detestable, is digest-
ible, as proved during the siege of Paris in the
Franco-Prussian War and on many other occasions.
The islanders however, have not been able to de-
vise effective rat-traps, mostly because of metal
shortage. As for ammunition, what little they have
is treasured like gold. The shortage of metals is
due to the shortage of water. There is no spring
or well on the island which, like the Rock of
Gibraltar, is wholly dependent on rain water.
There is no lack of rain, in fact during what
corresponds to Winter, it does little else but rain,
converting the place into glistening rocks and a
waste of clay mud, but all this rainfall quickly
runs away.
In order to catch enough for all purposes the
houses are roofed with corrugated iron, instead of
the usual tropical thatch. The water is carefully
drained into barrels and cisterns. The iron rusts
through from the underside and in spite of eternal
vigilance, the replacement cost uses up almost all
the island's pitiful little export balance over and
above its barter for food with New Zealand.
Now, it cannot get any more for love or money.
The feeble trickle of money that used to come
in before the war put an end to all commerce, was
hoarded against purchases from mail-order houses
and others who would not barter but insisted on
cash. When not swapping with New Zealand
sometimes the colony was able to make shipments
of oranges at a profit of two shillings (50 cents)
a crate. This was far from a net profit because
they had to buy the crates and deduct deprecia-
tion on them. With each shipment therefore al-
few selections,
for thinking
that a second
choice would
be any better.
In spite of
their intermar-
riage for 150
years, the col-
onists are a
fairly sturdy,
healthy lot, —
with none of the degenerative diseases
supposed to arise from inbreeding.
Strangely enough, the only common
defect is bad teeth, the very thing which
in prosperous, civilized countries is usually
blamed to soft, refined foods of which
these people know nothing. Presumably
it is an hereditary defect handed down
from the original handful of mutineers,
and perhaps aggravated by unbalanced
diet. It seems to be one more bit of evi-
dence that the so-called "natural life" is unnatural
to the modern human being.
Though it has no doctor, the island might,
considering the tooth situation, have felt itself
lucky that there was a dentist among its members.
Instead, he happened to be its most unpopular
inhabitant. For one thing, he came there uninvited
from New Zealand and the islanders are as clannish
as any royal family of Europe.
Also his usefulness was considerably impaired
by the fact that he had soon used up his drugs,
cements for fillings and other supplies, and had no
money with which to replace them. Therefore,
about all he could do for his disapproving patients
was pull their teeth without any form of anesthetic.
For this thankless operation his fee was an
I. 0. U. for one fish, next time there was a catch.
When that catch came the dentist and everyone
else on the island had more fish than he could pos-
sibly eat before it spoiled. Under such circum-
stances it is a bit hard for any dentist to show a
sunny disposition.
But the deepest cause for his unpopularity was
that, justly or unjustly, he was blamed for a previ-
ous condition much like what confronts the island
today. For months the little community mysteri-
ously found itself a pariah, shunned by everything
afloat. Finally they discovered that a typhoid
epidemic was supposed to be raging on the island.
It took some time to convince the ports from which
ships that might pass Pitcairn sail, that there was
no truth in the story.
Later the island's Chief Magistrate announced
that he had satisfied himself that the dentist,
boarding a visiting ship, had told the captain that
the place was full of typhoid, just because a score
of the natives happened to be sick abed with a
somewhat unusual form of the common tropical
dysentery.
Quite likely the Pitcairn people are now blam-
ing their dentist for what is really the fault of
the war. Ships that stop at Pitcairn are bound to
be small tramps and do so more from curiosity
and kindness than any hope of profit.
These rusty little craft carry no doctor, and
should any contagious disease be caught from the
island, it might be a serious matter for the crew,
and officers before they could reach port for
medical care, to say nothing of the loss of time
and money in quarantine. One can hardly blame
them for being on the cautious side.
ways went a fervent plea to the sailors to ask the
stevedores to be gentle with the oranges so the
crates would be returned undamaged.
But stevedores can't change their habits for
a few wretched strangers far away.
Local transactions between natives are almost
exclusively a matter of credit and barter, with
very little money changing hands. Taxes, such as
there are, are mostly in the form of labor, fish,
and most anything but currency. One thing how-
ever, must be paid for, strictly cash in advance—
matrimony.
When a man feels like marrying he is not ex-
pected to ask the girl; and if he does, it has no
significance legally and officially. He must get
her parents' consent. This done, he pays the sum
of five shillings ($1.25) into the community treas-
ury, for which he is entitled to post on the doors
of the community hall a written notice announc-
ing the banns.
After that has been there four weeks, they may
marry.
At any time within that period, if the youth
changes, his mind, he may pull down the notice,
take it inside and get back three shillings of his
original five. The girl has no right to tear it down
nor has she any legal redress in the way of a
breach-of-promise claim.
Heart-balm suits are unknown at Pitcairn and
so are divorces. Every boy and girl have known
each other since they were babies, they are all at
least cousins, therefore the colony sees no excuse
for making a mistake for any reason, with such
Four years ago, before the false alarm about
typhoid, Pitcairn became a pariah, for the solid
. reason that an epidemic of measles was so ram-
pant there that it killed 93 of the populace. So
desperate were some of the. stricken that they
begged to take some of the contents of the ancient,
unmarked medicine bottles, in the wild hope that
possibly they might happen to pick something
that would be good for measles. They seem to be
without much nursing skill which, added to the
lack of doctor and medicines, makes life risky
even when there is no epidemic.
Mrs. Hall says:
' 'when someone breaks a leg he or she must
wait until a ship comes and if, as usually happens,
it is one that does not carry a doctor, wait some
more. When Andrew Young, the island's radio
operator, got his index finger smashed by his
boat's rudder, infection set in. It was many weeks
before a ship with a surgeon passed and by that
time all the surgeon could do was amputate it.
He was lucky not to have lost his life by blood-
poisoning.
"One of the daughters of the Chief Magistrate
fell out of a tree and iniured her back. It was six
weeks before they could get her to New Zealand
ind when she returned it was as a hopeless cripple.
Dne of her thoughts as they brought the woman
back was how she would break the news to her
own little daughter that her mother would never
be able to walk again.
"But the child was not among the group stand-
ing on the shore beyond the breakers as the boat i
was brought in. They accompanied the mother to
a little new grave in the cemetery. While she was
away in New Zealand, another ship had stopped
and let the islanders have some canned beef—
which they left too long exposed to the air, with
the inevitable result.
"The islanders were warned to be careful
about eating it but, driven by their meat-hunger,
they took a chance on eating it. The little girl
had been among the unlucky and died of ptomaine
poisoning. Yet, some people think it a paradise
because there are no steam heat and landlords.
"When the war started, most freight traffic in
the South Seas stopped, and without this traffic
the islanders cannot hope to live indefinitely.
Nothing but humanitarian motives will bring a
ship to Pitcairn now, and in a world war humani-
tarian projects have to be weighed carefully as to
their probable results. In any such weighing the
unhappy island is bound to be found wanting.
"The amount of money required to save only I
about 200 islanders would place ambulances at.
the front and save many times that number of;
lives of wounded soldiers. Britain's first duty is
to her own soldiers. Even if a rescue flight from
Australia or New Zealand could be financed, j
where would they get a plane when the Govern-1
ment needs everything of the kind there is to win
the war? i ~>
- "The islanders have almost no reserve assets
to withstand this unintentional but terribly-effec-
tive war blockade. Having almost no money at all
they have depended mostly on 'good Samaritans'
to furnish them with clothes, books and other
luxuries.' By 'luxuries' I do not mean such things
is cigarettes and lipsticks. These people consider
such things as needles and thread, in fact anything
without which it is possible to exist, as luxuries.
"The radio set on which Andrew Young talked
to me was donated and sent to Pitcairn by radio
companies for publicity purposes—but they for-
got to send extra parts. It came about through a
radio operator telling a radio company of the pitiful
attempts of Young with a little set which could
just barely whisper out ten miles to any ship that
happened to pass that near. So Young and his com-
munity were rewarded by a real set, over which I
talked constantly with Andrew Young, until he
began to have trouble, and finally, the 'voice of
Pitcairn' died utterly.
"When the set began to break down I told him
to ship it by the next boat to Panama where some
radio amateurs I know would fix it. Much of this
I had to arrange by mail. The last letter I received
from Pitcairn was on August 20th and the set was
at that time in Panama and was scheduled for
shipping back on September 3rd. But war was de-
clared and the ship that was to have passed Pit-
cairn to drop off the repaired transmitter found
it had to alter its course and could not stop at th«
island.
"The set is still in Panama and the islanders
are probably wondering what will become of them
without it.
"I don't see how they can know that a war has
broken out and, even if they have guessed it, I
doubt if they would realize how a conflict between
nations on the other side of the earth might dis-
locate traffic on their part of the globe.
"The only way to save themselves would be to
put their children, sick and injured, in their few
little open boats and head for Tahiti, largest of
the Society Islands group. This voyage in such
tiny cockle shells across 1,800 miles of deserted
seas is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but
with luck they might make it.
"With still more luck these moneyless people
might be able to borrow a nailing
vessel big enough to go back with
and rescue the rest of the colony.
"This would probably be some
old fishing smack so unsea-
worthy that its owner no longer
cared to risk his life in it. But
with patching up and a lot more
luck, they might get away with
it. The worst of it is that, not
knowing why they are neglected
this time, the islanders may keep
on hoping and waiting until they
have neither strength nor provi-
sions left for the long, dangerous
venture."
Another person who knows Pit-
calm, and not only through his
ears as does Mrs. Hall but also
his eyes, is Lewis S. Bellem, Jr.,
who visited the lonesome rock to
help install the radio transmitter
whose loss is so tragic in the
present emergency, Ho says:
"In the nine weeks I spent on
Pitcairn Island I witnessed an
appalling state of affairs and
found that even today the island-
ers are 'paying' for the crime of
the Bounty and that they are
fully conscious of it. It might
fittingly be renamed, 'Penance
Island." Every word and action
of the natives seems to reflect a
desire to atone at last for what
they call 'the great sin' of their
ancestors, a century and a half
ago.
"A rigid moral system has
been observed for the last hun-
dred years, enough, one would
think, to have atoned for all the
sins in the calendar, but there
seems to bo in their minds no
statute of limitations against the
mutiny on the Bounty. The man
who put the colony on this rig-
orous moral basis was John
Adams, who outlived all the
other eight mutineers. Conscience
stricken and tormented by re-
morse, in his old age, he man-
aged to convert the colony to a
creed something like that of the
Seventh Day Adventists.
"No islander smokes or drinks,
though drink is one of the few
luxuries which this penniless
people can make without cost or
importing anything. Quiet, brave,
rarely complaining under condi-
tions which would be unbearable
to anyone else I ever knew, the
natives try to make the best of
things. In parties of fifteen to
eighteen men, with sometimes a
woman or two, they set sail in
their little open boats for the
French Island of Mangareva, 300
miles away, where the Malay
natives, as poor as themselves,
may have nothing to swap for
their oranges, but always there
is the chance that they might
have a coat, a pair of shoes, a
bit of metal or even a phono-
graph record, preferably reli-
gious, which would make the trip
worth while.
"Ships stop more often at
Mangareva and therefore these
sailor discards are more plenti-
ful.
"The nearest land of any sort '•
to Pltcairn is Henderson Island
which Is uninhabited and 100
miles away. But they often go
there to gather wood for the
carved canes, boxes and other
trinkets which they are able to
trade, though rarely for money.
"The Pitcalrner's dreary day
begins at dawn. Do they wake
themselves up with a nice hot
cup of coffee? They do not!
There is no such thing on the
Island. Most of them will tell
you that they know what it Is
because they have had it, and so
they have, after a dreadful
fashion. When they row out to
the little tramp steamers whose
time is not too valuable to pre-
vent them from wasting some at
Pltcairn, the cook throws some
more water to boil on the old
coffee grounds that are always
simmering at the bottom of a
huge pot on the back of his gal-
ley stove.
"In due course of time the
cook pours out for each visitor
a cupful of such bitter stuff that
it would cause a riot In a Bowery
boarding house and is one of the
reasons why calling a man a
'son of a sea-cook' is a deadly
insult on the ocean. But with a
spoonful of condensed milk
added, the islander sips it with
delight. It ia one of the high spots
of his life, well worth the back-
breaking row of a mile and a half
each way.
"The islander fortifies himself
for his long day with a nice
long drink of tepid rain water. ,
There Is nothing else In the
of food or drink for man, woman
or child until 11 A. M., when
everyone sits down to breakfast,
which Is usually beans in some
form, but often is fish, and oc-
casionally meat, a la ptomaine.
On empty stomachs, the children
go to school in a little shack
called the school house, and they
stay empty until that same
eleven o'clock breakfast. They
may always have an orange if
they wish, which they usually
don't.
"Pitcairn has 70-odd houses,
mostly of the shanty type and
all perched on posts to be clear
of the rush of waters from the
tropical downpours. Most houses
have corrugated  iron  roofs to
"One thing found in almost
every household might be rated
as a luxury in most any other
land, but on Pitcairn is In a class
with the Bible. This la the phono-
graph, and nothing on the Island
struck me as more pathetic. It
is an almost unvarying rule to
play two or three hymns before
retiring each night.
"Never will I forget one eve-
ning as I trudged from the radio
shack to my quarters hearing the
strains of something produced by
a blunt needle from a worn-out
record. In. this island where
everyone is poor beyond belief
there are degrees of poverty.
This family was so,poor that It
could not afford that absolute
This Old Sketch of George Young. One of the Bounty Muti-
neers, With His Native Wife and Family. Depicts a Happy
South Seas Existence That the Inhabitants Are Not Knjoying
Today, Largely Because the War Is All But Starving Them Out.
catch that rain, the only water
supply there is. The walls of all
the homes are bright with the
grinning faces of moving picture
queens, cut from magazines after
the last inhabitant has publicly
admitted that he or she has read
every word of them.
"And others are photographs of
their friends mostly in America.
These are friends whom they
have never seen and never will.
Just shadowy, kindly beings who
have corresponded and sent them
things.
"The household equipment has
a distinct naval character, con-
sisting of slightly decrepit deck
chairs and condemned dining
saloon chairs. The slightly-
chipped and cracked china often
bears the names of merchant
lines that have long been out of
existence. The kitchen is a lean-
to shack where meals are often
prepared over open fires. The
bread Is baked in stone ovens
which arc preheated for hours
before the dough is put in.
necessity of an iron roof, having
only thatch. This meant that the
head of the house must get
water from one of his relatives
and. since all are related, this
could mean anyone.
"Through an uncurtained and
unscreened window I saw the
owner of the hut. In a dim glow
probably from his fireplace. The
sad resignation of tho man's
countenance was something I
have never seen equalled In any
painting. It made me stop and
watch. For a full fifteen minutes
he played that same record, some
sort of organ piece, over and
over. Evidently it was the only
one he had and so worn that
musically, it was almost a total
loss. He had only a thatched
roof, only one religious record,
but he had a machine, it worked,
and that was enough. He sym-
bolized Pitcairn Island.
"The official ruler of this
crumb of British soil is tho
British High Commissioner of
the Western Pacific, but he never
goes there and never sends a
representative for the good rea-
son that he is located at Suva,
in the Fiji Islands. 4.000 miles
away. He manages to get oc-
casional reports from captains
of English ships who atop there.
"The local representative of
the law Is the Chief Magistrate,
of all things, a lineal descendant
of a ring leader of the mutiny,
just as Andrew C. Young, only
radio-minded man on the Island,
is descended from another of the
nine mutineers of the Bounty.
With the Chief Magistrate is a
committee who frame the local
laws which everyone unites in
enforcing.
"These consist mostly of regu-
lations for conserving the island's
slender assets. In their misery
they have reverted to a form of
communism as peoples com-
monly do, in poverty and despair,
as a last resort. Most everything
from the fish catches to what-
ever may be obtained by barter
from the ships is distributed by
the committee. It Is not neces-
sary to keep books to remember
what each family has gotten in
these distributions for many
years.
"Anyone can tell when it is
the Sabbath on Pitcairn by look-
ing at the islanders' feet. On that
day and almost none other the
grown-up native wears shoes,
with rope soles and canvas tops
made right on the Island. Week-
days the-men. besides going bare-
foot, wear any sort of nonde-
script combination of unmatched
coat, pants and vest that hap-
pened to have been dealt out to
him in the various distributions
of sailor's cast-off clothing.
"But for the Sabbath each man
has cherished a carefully-pressed
and spotless, if somewhat thread-
bare and shiny, uniform of an
officer ih some merchant marine
discarded by someone on a visit-
ing ship. They walk around
garbed in the faded glories of
captains, chief engineers and
pursers.
"The women, having no uni-
forms, try to show respect for
the Sabbath by wearing the best
they have, including sometimes
a pair of stockings and have to
let it go at that.
"The weekday, barefoot habit
is a serious matter when the big
rains come and all Pitcairn is
transformed into a sticky, slith-
ery mess of clay. Such tin cans
as have not been used for their
precious metal are buried by
order of the committee to pre-
vent cutting those bare feet. But
always the rain streams seem to
find out the burial places and
carry them where the islanders
will step on them.
"A considerable percentage of
the deaths on the island have
been due to lockjaw from ralny-
senson infection of the foot.
"A Pitcairner brought me a
magazine article and asked what
the writer meant by an 'under-
privileged person'. I told him I
didn't know. How could I explain
that the wretchedest pauper in
the United States is a plutocrat
compared with tho richest na-
tive of Pitcairn.
"Paradise! It's a poorhouse."
tThp. F.nilt