Henry Nott

Henry Nott was born in 1774 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. He came from a family of modest means and was trained as a bricklayer. He worked at his trade as a young man and had little formal education. He was converted at about the age of twenty and joined a Nonconformist church. In 1796, when the London Missionary Society was recruiting men for a mission to the South Seas, he volunteered. The society chose a group of thirty, most of them craftsmen, and he was among them.

They sailed on a ship called the Duff, which had been purchased by the society for the purpose. It was the first mission ship, and it carried the missionaries to the island of Tahiti. They arrived in March 1797. Nott was twenty-three, and he was a plain, serious man. The mission was to settle among the Tahitians and teach them the gospel. They were received by the local chief, and they built houses. But the work was hard. Several of the missionaries lost heart, and some left. In 1798, a number left for Australia, and the mission was reduced to a handful.

Nott stayed. He worked with a few others to learn the Tahitian language. He had a gift for languages and put his energy into mastering it. For years there was no response. The missionaries lived through wars between the local chiefs, through sickness and through poverty. They did not see a single convert for about fifteen years. In 1812, the Tahitian king Pomare II, who had been exiled, began to show an interest in the faith. In 1815, after a battle in which the Christian side won, he gave himself to Christ, and the island moved toward the gospel. Within a few years, the whole island had embraced Christianity, and idols were destroyed.

Nott's chief work was the translation of the Bible into Tahitian. He started with the Gospel of Luke, which was printed in 1818, and went on to the New Testament and then the Old. He worked with great care and often spent hours on a single verse. He consulted with the Tahitian chiefs and teachers. The task took many years. In 1836, he went to England to see the full Bible through the press. The Tahitian Bible was published in 1838, and it was one of the first complete Bibles in a Pacific language. He was said to have presented the first copy to Queen Victoria.

He went back to Tahiti in 1840 and spent his last years there. He did not leave a mark in public life, and he lived simply. He was known as a patient and exacting scholar. He had his faults. He was stubborn and sometimes quarrelled with his colleagues. He was also suspicious of the French Catholic priests who came to the island in the 1830s and was involved in the troubles that arose. He was in his last years in poor health.

He died on May 1, 1844, on the island of Tahiti, at the age of about seventy. He had given nearly fifty years to the people of the islands. His life shows that a man of little education, given to patient labor, can bring a whole people the Word of God in their own tongue.