Charles Nordhoff & HMS Bounty.

[Mark Odegard]

Barry informs us:
>BATIK
>
>STORIES OF THE ISLAND WORLD
>by Charles Nordhoff
>Harper & Brothers, New York
>1857

For the year 1857, this cannot be *the* Charles Nordhoff, of the pair
Nordhoff and [James Norman] Hall, of _Mutiny on the Bounty_ etc. fame. The
_Bounty_ Hall has the dates 1887-1947, as cribbed from this page:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nordhof.htm

The interest in South Seas stuff (batik comes from Indonesia), however, is
suggestive. Part of the _Bounty_ trilogy relates the (arguably) single
greatest feat of dead reckoning in the (*recorded*) history of navigation:
William Bligh made it from Tahiti to Timor in a longboat. Admiral Bligh,
whatever else he was, was perhaps the best sailor the Royal Navy -- or
probably any other navy -- has ever produced.

Has Barry (or his source) made a typo with the date, or are we to look for a
Nordhoff family connection with the South Seas? The latter, I think.


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