Pitcairn Islands Study Center, 1 Angwin Ave., Angwin,
California USA Herbert Ford - hford@puc.edu - 707-965-6625 - 707-965-2047
RACE TO SAVE PITCAIRNER’S LIFE IS LOST
Angwin (Napa County), Calif., May 22 -------- The race to get a seriously ill Pitcairn islander to a hospital in Tahiti for emergency medical treatment was lost Saturday afternoon (May 21) when Terry Young, 53, died on board the yacht Xplore which was taking him to Mangareva in the Gambier Islands.
Young, who had been having intense abdominal pain since Thursday, May 19, was diagnosed at Pitcairn’s medical center with acute appendicitis. It was decided that what was suspected to be a ruptured appendix would be best cared for at a full-care hospital rather than at Pitcairn’s limited facility..
The captain of a yacht which was passing Pitcairn Island on Friday agreed to carry Young to Mangareva where a medical evacuation aircraft was scheduled to fly him to the closest hospital, at Tahiti, some 1,200 miles from Pitcairn Island.
When the yacht had completed about two thirds of its voyage to Mangareva, which is located some 300 miles from Pitcairn, Young suffered a sudden attack and died despite prolonged, heroic efforts to revive him.
On Sunday, May 22, he was buried in the public cemetery in Rikitea, a small, pearl-farming village on Mangareva.
Carlyle Terry Young was born on October 14, 1958, on Pitcairn Island. He was the son of Samuel Carlyle Young and Vula Valma Warren.
A direct descendant of midshipman Edward Young, one of the mutineers of the British ship H.M.S. Bounty, Young was known on Pitcairn as “Toge.” He lived for a time in New Zealand, and through much of his adult life served as the island’s electrician and as an engineer.
Pitcairn Islands Study Center, 1 Angwin
Ave., Angwin, CA, USA. Herbert Ford, 707-965-6625, 707-965-2047, Fax: 707-965-6504,
Email: hford@puc.edu, Website: http://library.puc.edu/pitcairn
