Bounty Bible

The Bounty Bible is a Bible that is thought to have been used on HMS Bounty, the ship famed for the Mutiny on the Bounty.

In January 1790, nine of the mutineers from the ship and their Tahitian companions (six men, eleven women and a baby) settled on Pitcairn Island, having anchored HMS Bounty in a small bay on the northern side of the island and set it on fire after everything of utility was landed. Pitcairn had ample food, water and land for everyone and a mild climate. However after four years the community was in turmoil due to discontent and disorder fuelled by home-distilled alcohol and disputes over women that eventually led to the deaths of all but two of the mutineers; the survivors being Ned Young and John Adams (also known as Alexander Smith).

Young was an educated man and had been accepted as the leader of the island with Adams as his friend and deputy. He taught Adams to read using a Bible from HMS Bounty, which had been presented to the ship by the Naval and Military Bible Society (now the Naval Military & Air Force Bible Society) prior to sailing from England. When Young died of asthma six years later Adams ruled the community of 11 women and 23 children and had them follow a Christian way of life, as described in the Bible, observing the rules of the Church of England. He built a school and educated the children, using the Bible to teach them to read and write a little. In September 1808, the crew of a sealing ship from New England named the Topaz captained by Mayhew Folger landed on Pitcairn to take on water and they found that the inhabitants spoke English and were devout Christians.

Adams died aged 63 on 23 March 1829 and the Bounty Bible was reportedly taken from the island on 17 July 1839, having been bequeathed by a grandson to a carpenter named Levi Hayton from the whaling ship Cyrus, who took it home to Windsor, Connecticut. In 1876 all the inhabitants of the Pitcairn Islands became Seventh Day Adventists after a successful Adventist mission. The Bible was presented to the Connecticut Historical Society in 1896.

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