Jack Buckland

John Wilberforce Buckland
Buckland in May 1890 (photo by R. L. Stevenson and L. Osborne)
Born	1864 Sydney, Australia
Died	1897 Suwarrow Island
Other names	Tin Jack
Occupation	island trader
Parent(s)	William Wilberforce Buckland and Harriet Emmeline Hopkins

John Wilberforce "Jack" Buckland (1864–1897), also known as "Tin Jack", was a trader who lived in the South Pacific in the late 19th century. He travelled with Robert Louis Stevenson and his stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892).

Jack Buckland was born in 1864 in Sydney, the eldest child of William Wilberforce Buckland and Harriet Emmeline Hopkins. His mother was born in Sydney in 1842, the daughter of John Hopkins, a ship chandler who died when she was young. Her father's business partner, John Carr, and his wife Eliza later adopted Harriet in addition to the ship chandler business. Buckland's father was from Wraysbury in England, the son of an auctioneer, William Thomas Buckland. Buckland's father worked as a merchant and shipbroker in Australia and in 1863 married the 21-year-old Harriet Hopkins in Sydney. Buckland was their first child, born in 1864. When he was 9, Buckland's family returned to England, leaving him with the now elderly John and Eliza Carr who adopted him as their son. John Carr was therefore Buckland's stepfather as well as step-grandfather.

The Carr family lived in a house called "Neepsend" in Lavender Bay, North Sydney. Part of this property was later sold and it was from this sale that John Carr made sufficient money to provide Jack with his allowance. John Carr died in 1881 and the money from the property sale was left in a trust from which Jack received an annual allowance. In 1883, now living on his own, Jack visited his parents and siblings living near London in England. Later he returned to Sydney and subsequently worked for Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, as a copra trader.

From the mid-1880s to about 1891, Jack Buckland was a trader at Nonouti atoll, in Kiribati (at the time known as the Gilbert Islands) and during the 1890s Jack Buckland, traded at Niutao and Nanumea in Tuvalu (at the time known as the Ellice Islands). The resident trade on Niutao after Jack Buckland was Fred Whibley.