Bubs the Bumblebee children's nature books by Joyce Graham Fogwill

Website: www.BubstheBumblebee.com

Interesting facts:
The Mutiny on The Bounty and the Breadfruit

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is is a tree and a fruit native to the Malay Penninsula and the Western Pacific Islands.

In the 18^th Century, some plantation owners in the British West Indies petitioned King George III to import breadfruit trees from the Pacific Islands to provide food for the slaves living on the plantations. The HMS Bounty sailed from England in December 1787 with Captain William Bligh and a crew of 45 men bound for Tahiti, to collect breadfruit plants, and transport them to Jamaica.

They collected the Breadfruit plants, and set sail to the West Indies. On April 28, 1789, the first mate, Fletcher Christian and some members of the crew mutinied and took over the ship. The Captain and 18 crewmen were set adrift in the ship’s 23-foot open boat. They survived on very little food and water, and sailed for seven weeks, over 3600 miles, to safety in Timor. The mutineers took HMS Bounty back to Tahiti, where accompanied by 6 Polynesian men and 12 women, they sailed to the isolated Pitcairn Island, a small volcanic island of app. 2 sq. miles, in the southern Pacific, east south east of Tahiti.
There, they established a small colony and settlement that still exists. The majority of Pitcairn Islanders of today are directly descended from the mutineers and their Tahitian wives. Many of these islanders still have the surnames of some of the eighteenth century mutineers, and speak a dialect that is a hybrid of Tahitian and eighteenth-century English.
Breadfruits plants were eventually transported to Jamaica and today there are numerous breadfruit trees growing all over the island.