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  [California Study Center]

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PITCAIRN ISLANDS STUDY CENTER, Pacific Union College, Angwin, California USA.

Herbert Ford, 559-592-0980, 559-732-0313.

A PITCAIRNER DIES

                        ANGWIN (Napa County) Calif., October 9, 2007—Another of the descendants of the sailors of the famed “Mutiny on the HMS Bounty” has died on Pitcairn Island, one of earth’s most remote spots. 

Vula Valma Young, 79, died in her sleep on the island Saturday, October 7, according to a report received from the island by the Pitcairn Islands Study Center here. A former island nurse and Island Council member, Mrs. Young had been in ailing health for some time.

Burial came quickly on Saturday afternoon in the island cemetery because no embalming is available on the remote South Pacific island which has neither air nor scheduled ship service.

Mrs. Young is survived by four children, Pauline, Elsie, Brian and Terry, and eight grandchildren. Her lineage can be traced back to Edward “Ned” Young, a midshipman on the British armed vessel Bounty.

In 1789, crew members of the ship, including Young, mutinied, setting their captain, William Bligh and those loyal to him adrift in a small boat on the Pacific Ocean. The mutineers successfully hid out on Pitcairn Island for nearly two decades before being found. Several Hollywood-style motion pictures and many books have recounted the incident making it one of the world’s best-known sea stories.

There are about 50 Pitcairners on the tiny South Pacific island, most of whom trace their lineage to the Bounty mutineers.

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