Bubs the Bumblebee children's nature books by Joyce Graham Fogwill
Website: www.BubstheBumblebee.comInteresting 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
18th 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.
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