History
Norfolk Island, which appears never to have been settled by Polynesians, was first sighted by James Cook on 10 October 1774. Fifteen convicts were among the first settlers who arrived on 6 March 1788, only weeks after the First Fleet reached Port Jackson to found Sydney. As a result of food shortages, shipwrecks and native timber that proved too brittle for building, many gave up and moved to New Norfolk, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
Norfolk Island was abandoned for 11 years before colonial authorities decided to try again in 1825. Governor Darling planned this second penal settlement as ‘a place of the extremest punishment short of death’. Under such notorious sadists as commandant John Giles Price, Norfolk became known as ‘hell in the Pacific’.
The second penal colony lasted until 1855, when the prisoners were shipped off to Van Diemen’s Land and the island was handed over by Queen Victoria to the descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty, who had outgrown their adopted Pitcairn Island. About a third of the present population is descended from the 194 Pitcairners who arrived on 8 June 1856.
