Henry Nott, a bricklayer by trade, was part of the first London Missionary Society voyage to Tahiti in the ‘Duff’ in 1797. Once settled on the island, he and his fellow missionary John Davies, a Welsh grocer, set about translating the Bible into Tahitian. This was a daunting task as Tahitian was not a written language and its use of multiple vowels and glottal stops proved difficult to capture in conventional spelling. Nevertheless, Nott and Davies persevered and worked with the islanders to understand the subtleties of the language, such as the more than 70 Tahitian terms for prayer. By September 1814 the Gospel of Luke was completed in translation and later printed. Illness compelled Nott to sail to Britain in 1825, but he returned to Tahiti in 1827 and finished his epic translation in December 1835. Again back in Britain, he oversaw the proofing and printing of the new Tahitian Bible, presenting a copy to Queen Victoria in 1838. Despite recurring illness, Nott was determined to bring his Bible back to Tahiti, which he did in 1840. Some 3000 copies, packed into 27 crates, made up his precious cargo. The Bibles were eagerly received, being the only book in the language. Nott died in Tahiti in 1844 aged 70.