‘It seems almost incredible,’ said Mr. Banneret, ‘that a canoe carried on a man’s shoulders should be safely handled amidst such terrific surges, but I recollect seeing Australian aboriginals at Two-fold Bay carrying their bark canoes _on their heads_ to the water, and fishing successfully when it was by no means smooth. English-speaking strangers proved themselves to be unsurpassed boatmen—to be recognised in the aftertime as such amongst the best whalemen in the world. Twenty years had elapsed since Fletcher Christian and his mutineer associates, with their Tahitian wives, had left Mataavai Bay. During the whole of that time the actors in the tragedy had disappeared from mortal ken as completely as if they had been sunk “deeper than plummet lies,” with their broken-up and abandoned vessel the _Bounty_.’
In 1808 Captain Mayhew Folger first came upon the little community of Pitcairn Island; in 1814 the Anglo-Tahitians had increased to the number of forty. Nothing was done by the British Government until 1825, when Captain Beechey, in the _Blossom_, on a voyage of discovery, paid a visit to Pitcairn Island. A boat under sail was observed coming towards the ship. The crew consisted of old Adams and ten young men of the island. The young men were tall, robust, and healthy, with good-natured countenances, and a simplicity of manner combined with a fear of doing something that might be wrong, which prevented the possibility of giving offence. None of them had shoes or stockings. Adams, in his sixty-fifth year, was dressed in a sailor’s shirt and trousers, and wore a low-crowned hat. He still retained his sailor manners, doffing his hat whenever he was addressed by the officers.
Sir Thomas Staines’s letter, written on 18th October 1814, stated that every individual on the island (forty in number) spoke excellent English. They proved to be the descendants of the deluded crew of the _Bounty_. The venerable old man, John Adams, was the only surviving Englishman of those who last quitted Tahiti in her. The pious manner in which all those born on the island had been reared, and the correct sense of religion which had been instilled into their young minds by the old man, had given him the pre-eminence over the whole of them. And to him they looked up as the Patriarch of their tribe.