Pitcairn's Island

 

Pitcairn’s Island is the third book of a trilogy, written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The first book, Mutiny on the Bounty, was about the sailing to Tahiti under the brutal control of Captain Bligh. The second book, Men Against the Sea, began as Blight and 18 of his loyal followers were cast a drift in an open boat that was 23 feet in length. The book was about their remarkable journey of 3,600 miles until they reached Timor which is now part of Indonesia. The final book, Pitcairn’s Island was about the fate of the mutineers and those who joined them along the way. The third book was first published in 1934 and it was the result of extensive research, much of it coming from a verbal history presented directly or indirectly by Alex Smith, the sole survivor of the mutineers from the famous mutiny when they were finally discovered in 1808. I had recently seen a short article about the very isolated Pitcairn’s island which in current times continues to be populated by the descendants of the mutineers, and that me to finding this book.

 

The Bounty sailed from Spithead, England in 1788. As the result of knowledge learned in prior expeditions to Tahiti, Captain Bligh was planning to gather breadfruit trees which were to be delivered to English plantations in the West Indies. After an extended stay in Tahiti, as it began the trip to the West Indies, the mutiny of the H.M.S. Bounty occurred on April 28, 1789. The crew was fed up by their harsh treatment by Bligh, but the mutiny itself was not well planned and was a nearly spontaneous event led by Fletcher Christian, the second in command. Fletcher and his crew returned to Tahiti for a relatively short time before sailing again. Nothing was heard of these mutineers for another 18 years when the Topaz, an American seal-hunting ship, Topaz operated by Captain Folger, stumbled upon Pitcairn Island in 1808.

 

After having made unsuccessful attempts to settle on Tupai (or Tubuai) Christian left Tahiti on the Bounty for the last time in September 1789.  His company consisted of himself, eight of his own men, and 18 Polynesians (consisting of 12 women and 6 men). Christian knew he could never return to the known world because if he tried to do so, he would be captured, returned to England, tried, and hanged. There had been a report of Pitcairn Island from 1767 when Commodore Byron reported having sighted the a very remote and tiny island although he never actually landed there. But his reports of the island’s location were actually150 miles in error. Christian thought it was so far from any other land mass that they were unlikely to be discovered, so it was there they were headed as they left Tahiti for the last time. After searching for the island for three months, they were fortunate to have found it.

 

While there were some happy times during the next years, for the most part, the fate of the survivors was mostly a story of tragedy. Among the eight seamen were people who thought themselves to be superior to the Polynesians, but they also sought to lay claim to the Polynesian women, including the wife of the chief. In addition, one of the sailors figured out how to brew his own alcoholic drink and that led to serious alcoholic consumption by at least five of the white men. Christian was one of the few mutineers who did not succumb to that malady. The women were mostly terrified of those white men who wanted to treat them as slaves, but the Polynesian men and white men ended up in a war in which the Polynesian men were murdered. It seems the only bright spot was the birth of a total of 18 children. By 1808, Alex Smith was the only living man, and 16 of the men who set sail from Tahiti had come to violent ends. Along with logs written by Christian, it was Smith who told the story of Pitcairn’s Island.

 

I found this to be a fascinating book of historical fiction which brought proper closure to the story of the Bounty.