Trevor Lummis - Telegraph Their leader, Fletcher Christian, had settled there with a handful of followers, plus six Polynesian men and a dozen Tahitian women. But their numbers soon dwindled on account of drunkenness, quarrels and mutual violence; and when the settlement was discovered by an American ship 20 years later, only one of the original mutineers remained alive, lording it over the women and children who made up the island's population. His appetite whetted, he secured a year-long bursary to study at Newbattle Abbey College in Dalkeith, an institution endowed by the 11th Marquis of Lothian for working people to enjoy a year of liberal studies. Lummis was one of six students accepted for a second year of study there, and in 1969 he graduated in History from Edinburgh University. Having taken further degrees at London and Essex Universities, he eventually become a senior research officer at Essex, specialising in 19th- and 20th-century social and oral history. He was among the first to apply computer archiving to oral history projects, contributing to a project which coded oral interviews for computer archiving and analysis. His work on the lives of East Anglian fishermen between 1880 and 1914 led in 1985 to the publication of Occupation and Society, for which Lummis conducted some 60 in-depth interviews with fishermen and their wives and children; many of them could recall the introduction of steam propulsion and other radical changes in working practices. Among his many other books, Lummis wrote Pacific Paradises (2005), recounting the discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii , based on manuscripts, contemporary newspapers, ships" journals and published sources. Lummis was a committed Marxist and enthusiastic feminist, and enjoyed good wine, rigorous debate and hard work . His home in France (to which he and his wife moved in 2001) was the site of ceaseless building and landscaping projects all undertaken by Lummis himself, as well as of his own carved sculptures. Trevor Lummis married, in 1971, Sandra Stallman (née Cohen), who survives him. Trevor Lummis, born August 25 1930, died September 23 2013