Tahiti on 11 October, Raiatea on 2 November, and Borabora on 7 December. On 26 October 1788, , under the command of Captain William Bligh, landed in Tahiti with the mission of carrying Tahitian breadfruit trees (Tahitian: "uru") to the Caribbean. Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist from James Cook's first expedition, had concluded that this plant would be ideal to feed the African slaves working in the Caribbean plantations at very little cost. The crew remained in Tahiti for about five months, the time needed to transplant the seedlings of the trees. Three weeks after leaving Tahiti, on 28 April 1789,
Lapwing (1769 EIC packet) normally brought provisions had not arrived. The famine was the Great Bengal famine of 1770, which killed an estimated 10 million people (a quarter of the population), in the area. It was caused due to the widespread forced cultivation of opium (forced upon local farmers by the EIC as part of its strategy to export it to China) in place of local food crops, resulting in a shortage of grain. Citations References Lapwing (1769 EIC packet) Lapwing was a packet ship that made two round-trips to India for the British East India Company (EAC). Currently, both her origin and her