552 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
Williams records that— 
Not very long after this, a large ship did actually arrive; and from the 
description the natives gave me of her, I have no doubt but that it was the 
Bounty, after she had been taken by the mutineers. This vessel did not 
anchor, but one of the natives took his little canoe, and summoning all his 
courage, ventured to go on board. On returning to the shore, he told his 
astonished countrymen that it was a floating island; that there were two rivers 
of water flowing on it; that two large taro plantations, with sugar-cane, bread- 
fruit, and other trees, were growing there, that the keel scraped the bottom 
of the sea; for he dived as deep as man could go, and could not see its termina- 
tion. I account for these singular statements, by supposing that the pumps 
were at work while the man was on board, which he mistook for rivers, or 
streams, and that the two plantations, bread-fruit trees, etc., were the large 
boxes which were fitted. up throughout this vessel for those exotics, which it 
was the specific object of the Bounty to convey from Tahiti to the West Indies. 
From this vessel was obtained a pointed piece of iron, about two feet six 
inches in length, which the natives immediately dedicated to the gods... 
(Williams, 1838, pp. 201-202) .” 
An even more detailed account of this visit was later given by 
Maretu, a local authority on the early history of the island, who 
informed Dr. Wyatt Gill that Goodenough, who called at Rarotonga 
during the year 1814, was not its discoverer, since before him— 
There came here a very large ship, but the people did not land. Two 
canoes went off to that ship, and bartered some goods from the white people, 
amongst them the Anae; they purchased these things with fowls, coconuts, and 
bananas. As they left, a man named Maia stole a large box from the ship, 
and in it was found the orange and the motini. Makare was the name of the 
captain. One of the chiefs who went on board, named Tamarua, reported that 
they had taro swamps and young banana trees, besides young bread-fruit trees 
and many packages of anae, with stones also. They were wild with astonish- 
ment at that ship. It was from thence we obtained the first oranges, whilst 
Kaputini procured a mautini from there (Gill, 1911, p. 192) .” 
We have the authority of Stephen Savage, the Rarotongan scholar 
and translator of Maretu’s statement, that Makere is the Maori trans- 
literation of McCoy; motini (or mautinz) is the pumpkin and anae a 
species of fern, though it may also have had some other meaning in 
Maretu’s day. The “stones” referred to were thought to have been 
iron implements. 
19 Basil Thomson, in quoting this passage, is apparently so concerned at its implications 
that he flatly accuses Williams of error, arguing that “the tradition must have referred to 
Bligh’s visit to Aitutaki before the mutiny when the decks were encumbered with bread- 
fruit, for we know that the first thing the mutineers did after setting their captain adrift 
was to throw all the bread-fruit plants overboard, and that they steered direct for Tahiti” 
(Edwards and Hamilton, 1915, pp. 40-41, footnote 2). A further example of the reluc- 
tance of historians to accept evidence tending to discredit the time-hallowed theory that 
the Bounty went straight from Tahiti to Pitcairn is mentioned in footnote 25. 
2A MS. translation of Maretu’s autobiography in the Library of the Polynesian So- 
ciety states that the Rarotongans also obtained braces and belts from the ship, and recog- 
nized the mato (a tree that grew on their island) among the vegetation on board. No one 
came ashore “because of the rain” (Maretu, MS., 1949, p. 4). For Goodenough’s visit, 
which Gill wrongly thought had occurred in 1820, see the Sydney Gazette for Oct. 22, 1814. 
