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Tiny, volcanic, Pitcairn Island lies in the Central South Pacific
Ocean and is approximately two square miles in area with steep basalt
cliffs. Pitcairn is, literally, the size of a pinprick on the chart.
The island was re-discovered, in 1767, by the crew of a ship under the
command of British Naval officer Philip Corteret, and was named after the sailor that first sighted
it.
Although uninhabited at that time, archaeological remains on
Pitcairn Island indicate that it was inhabited between the 12th and 15th centuries by
Polynesians who had then, for some reason, abandoned it.
The mutiny on H.M.S 'Bounty' (originally a merchant ship, the 'Bethia')
that ocurred near Tofua, in the Tonga island group, on the 28th of April 1789 is well documented. In
case the tale has, somehow escaped you: Captain William Bligh, who ran the Bounty on
strict, and sometimes brutal, lines, incurred such resentment that,
finally, to alleviate their misery,
some of the fourty five crew, under the leadership of one Fletcher
Christian,
resorted to mutiny. Bligh and nineteen officers and men were ignominiously tipped into the ships 23' skiff with
a few provisions and cast off.
The Bounty was engaged in carrying breadfruit seedlings from Tahiti to the West Indies
as a cheap source of food for slaves on the sugar plantations.
Bligh was duly pelted with these plants by the mutineers as the skiff drifted aft of the ship. Captain
William Bligh then achieved the almost impossible
accomplishment of sailing the 5,823 kilometers (3,618 miles) to Timor in an open boat in 41
days, an incredible feat of navigation and stamina. The
only member of the crew to perish did so when hostile natives threw
stones at the crew when they landed and were searching for food and
drinking water. The boat had only a few inches of freeboard, or
height above the water, and the crew were obliged to bail constantly to
prevent a sinking. In spite
of the terrible ravages of the trip, Captain Bligh delivered all to
safety. As great a navigator as he was, it has to
be said that three mutinies erupted around him and it is well documented that even his peers disliked him and found him foul mouthed, uncouth and a bully. The British Admiralty, when they
received news of the mutiny, after the return of Bligh, sent H.M.S 'Pandora' to Tahiti to bring back the mutineers for
trial.
Of the men that had decided to stay in Tahiti, fourteen were caught but,
unfortunately, four of these were drowned when the Pandora was wrecked on the Great Barrier
reef. The surviving ten were brought back to Portsmouth and court marshaled,
three of them being hanged.
Fletcher Christian and eight shipmates, accompanied by some islanders,
including several women, had sailed for the island of Pitcairn months
before and were unaware of the fate of their fellow mutineers. The beautiful
'Bounty', only six years old, was beached and burned on Pitcairn Island
which was still uninhabited in 1790 when the mutineers arrived. To these desperate men it must have seemed a Paradise, for Pitcairn is lush and fertile.
The ship having been destroyed, to avoid it being spotted by any
shipping that might be searching for the crew or passing by, the
mutineers had thus committed themselves to remaining on the island. The community
was discovered, in 1808, by some American whalers. John Adams was the only surviving member of the
'Bounty's crew. Although the Admiralty was informed of Adams' whereabouts
,they chose to leave him to live out his days on Pitcairn. John Adams died on the island in
1829 and the only village on the island is named after him. Adamstown is
near Bounty Bay on the North coast. By 1856, the
population on Pitcairn had exploded to such an extent that over two hundred islanders requested to
leave. They were removed to Norfolk Island but many returned to Pitcairn as a result of homesickness.
To-day Pitcairn has approximately seventy inhabitants (maybe the
population will emulate the Polynesians and desert the island
altogether) and is almost untouched by the 21st century, unsurprisingly,
as there is no room even for an airfield . The
island is partially surrounded by a reef so that about half a mile off is as close as you can get, in anything other than a
multihull, in most places. The big rollers make landing in a dinghy very
difficult, thank goodness...that way there will always be somewhere on earth that
hasn't got a neon hamburger sign on it.
Pitcairn Island is a dependency of the United Kingdom and New Zealand is its Judiciary. In 1957,
the remains of the 'Bounty' were discovered on the South of the island.
More recently, the wreck of H.M.S 'Pandora' was found and is being
surveyed. Many artifacts have been secured, including the deck cage in which
four of the mutineers were locked, drowning when the ship went down.
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