Pitcairn's Plight

Rugged Pitcairn Island, the seagirt Pacific refuge of H. M. S. Bounty's, storied mutineers, heard nothing of Britain's last war until months after the outbreak. Word of it was finally brought to Bounty Bay by the crew of a Tahitian tramp. That was before a best-selling trilogy and a four-star movie made Pitcairn Island the most publicized hideout on the seven seas, and prompted a well-meaning, sympathetic U. S. to enrich the 200-odd hybrid islanders with all sorts of civilized niceties, including a powerful amateur short-wave radio station, VR6AY.

Last week, along with a months-high accumulation of mailbags, assorted comforts, phonograph records, clothing, etc. tagged for Pitcairn, the essential works of VR6AY, sent back last spring for repairs, lay in Panama, still waiting for a British merchantman which war orders sent elsewhere. Chances were, according to Pitcairn's best-informed friends and radio acquaintances, that the islanders were as much in the dark about this war as they were about the last. Worse yet, they were probably in extreme need of foodstuffs, medicine, other necessities, which in recent years they have got largely from tourist ships in trade for whittled canes and basketware. Pitcairn is no longer on a regular shipping itinerary and no ship is known to have called there since early summer.

When Pitcairn's native radio operator, Andrew Young, shipped VR6AY's ailing equipment off for repairs, he wrote to several U. S. radio ham acquaintances. A landslide, he said, had damaged the islanders' boats in Bounty Bay; rats (mostly Bounty descendants, too) were eating up the island's few crops, had even got into the orange trees; everybody was well but supplies were running low; the only hope of hearing from the outside world was through a tiny crystal set with only a 60-mile range, too short to reach the nearest shipping lane.

Last week, however, a U. S. relief expedition was being readied. In a Portland (Me.) berth, the 118-ft. yacht Liberty, under Capt. Kenneth Simpson, ordered provisions for a South Sea voyage. At Panama, Liberty planned to pick up Pitcairn's radio equipment, mail, whatever else it could find room for, hoped to sight the islands by Christmas.

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