An Object Lesson

tant mother presaged a lifetime of love-hate relationships with women. He got along well with his dad and with mates.

more ways than one, he was a true Tasmanian devil, born on that Australian island soon after his father, Theodore, wed Marelle Young. She later described her son as “a dirty little brute…a nasty little boy.” Issues between Errol and his reluc -

Marelle descended from Midshipman Ned Young, Fletcher Christian’s real-life co-conspirator on HMS Bounty. When mutineers sailed Bounty to Pitcairn Island, they shanghaied twenty Tahitians, mostly women. Over several years, murderous dissension reduced English survivors to two, one of whom was Marelle’s ancestor. Ned died of natural causes after having fathered a number of children, including three with Fletcher Christian’s widow, Mauratua. As a child, Errol played with a sword mutineers took from Captain William Bligh.