Career
McCoy was among the first wave of settlers to return to Pitcairn from Norfolk Island in 1859. He was the son of Matthew McCoy and Margaret Christian. He appears as Magistrate "James Russell Nickoy" in Mark Twain"s 1879 story "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn." There he is forced to resign his post through the political intrigue of an American interloper, Butterworth Stavely.
Jack London reinvented McCoy as a mythic hero and agent of redemption in the short story "The Seed of McCoy," based on a true incident of piloting a burning ship to safety in 1900.
