Published May, 2005
Located in: Special Collections
Call Number: Manuscript 8
Manuscript volume kept by Matthew Quintal and John Adams, crewmembers and mutineers of the ship HMS Bounty
On the morning of April 28th, 1789, twelve crewmembers of the HMS Bounty mutinied, capturing the ship and setting Lt. Bligh and his supporters adrift in the ship's launch. A group of the mutineers, led by Masters Mate Fletcher Christian, eventually settled on Pitcairn Island, where the small community, which included a band of Tahitian men and women, quickly disintegrated. By 1799 only three mutineers remained: Matthew Quintal, Edward Young, and John Adams (who had signed on board the Bounty under the assumed name Alexander Smith). Fearing Quintal’s volatile temper and drunken rages, Young and Adams murdered Quintal. Young died in 1800 of asthma, leaving John Adams the leader of a small colony of women and children. Adams, who by all accounts was a regenerated character, governed the Pitcairn Island community with a moral hand until his death in 1829, forty years after the mutiny.
The manuscript, reproduced here, was first owned by Matthew Quintal and was appropriated by John Adams after Quintal’s murder. The volume, which comprises 100 pages, contains only twelve pages with handwriting. The folio book includes partial autobiographies written by both Quintal and Adams, a short list of Tahitian words with English translation, the names and birthdates of Quintal’s children (who were born on Pitcairn Island), and a clipping from the “Worcester Evening Gazette,” dated 1881.
On February 7, 1808, Pitcairn Island was discovered by Captain Mayhew Folger, of the ship Topaz, and the mysterious fate of the Bounty mutineers came, at last, to light. Over the ensuing years, vessels continued to stop at Pitcairn, their captains curious to meet John Adams and to view the settlement he had created. Adams was in the habit of giving away relics from the Bounty to his visitors and presented Quintal’s book to Captain Reynolds of the ship Sultan of Boston. Reynolds donated the volume to the New England Museum, and by 1881, according to the clipping pasted in the volume, Matthew Quintal’s book was in the possession of Daniel Seagrove of Worcester. From Mr. Seagrove the manuscript volume wound its way into the collection of the State Library of Massachusetts, a seemingly peculiar resting place for a relic of one of the most famous mutinies in British naval history.
For more on the mutiny of the “Bounty” and John Adams (Alexander Smith) and Matthew Quintal, visit www.lareau.org/bounty.html.
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