Mutiny on the Bounty

Mutiny on the Bounty
Pitcairn Island, Pitcairn Islands

Pitcairn Island, Pitcairn Islands

Ok then, hands up if you have ever heard of The Pitcairn Islands? Yep I thought so, until a few months ago we had never heard of them either. The Pitcairn Islands are the last of the British Territories in the Pacific and they have something of an interesting past and thanks to our on-board lecturer on the Oceania Marina we had several afternoons learning all about the history before we arrived there.

I am sure that you have all heard of Mutiny on the Bounty, well it turns out that this is not just an old rubbish movie, it is actually a real piece of history with Pitcairn Island at its centre.

Back in 1787 Captain William Bligh set sail on the HMS Bounty; his mission was to sail to Tahiti to collect Bread Fruit plants which would then be taken to the West Indies where it was hoped that they would provide a cheap food source for slaves. However things were not to run smoothly for Captain Bligh, enroute to Tahiti the ship faced bad weather and despite huge efforts to round Cape Horn off the Coast of Chile it was fruitless and they had to turn back to and took far longer to round the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa instead. In 1788 Bligh finally arrived into Tahiti and ventured onto the Island to make peace with the Chieftain. Thankfully the Chieftain remembered Bligh from his visit with Captain Cook 15 years earlier and after giving numerous gifts and requesting only Breadfruit plants in exchange Bligh’s crew were welcomed onto the Island. Things were still not ideal as the Breadfruit plants that Bligh needed were not yet ripe and it was to take 5 months of waiting until they were large enough to transport. During this time, Bligh’s crew were living quite the high life, with minimal duties and many promiscuous locals keeping them ‘entertained’. By the 1 April 1789 the HMS Bounty was stocked with Breadfruit and ready to set sail.

There is much debate about what happened between the 1 April and the 29 April, whether Bligh was a truly cruel tyrant who punished his crew and pushed them towards a mutiny or whether the inexperienced crew were unused to the rigours of sea after the freedom and sexual licence on Tahiti may never be known…. Whichever it was there was about to be a Mutiny on the HMS Bounty.

Led by who he thought was his close friend and confident Fletcher Christian, in the early hours of the morning Captain William Bligh was taken from his quarters, bound and placed in a 23 foot launch with just 5 days of provisions and basic navigational equipment. Fletcher had somewhat overestimated the size of the mutiny and over 18 loyal midshipmen voluntarily joined Bligh in the dangerously overcrowded launch. The Bounty was now made up of 25 crew; including loyal mutineers, loyalist detained against their will and those who could not fit in the launch.

For most this mutiny would have been a death sentence but Bligh was an expert navigator and aside from losing one of his loyalists to hostiles on Tofua island where they hoped to get provisions he commanded a 47 day journey where he safely landed in Timur.

Back on the HMS Bounty, Fletcher Christian and his crew of 24 mutineers were not experiencing the blissful life that they had anticipated after the mutiny. They were facing hostile welcomes on the islands that they attempted to land and even their return to Tahiti was not as welcoming as previously. On the 22 September 1789 Fletcher Christian set sail from Tahiti with only 9 mutineers and 20 Polynesians, 14 of which were female. After months of searching on the 15 January 1790 Christian finally set eyes on Pitcairn Island, they landed, stripped the boat of everything valuable or useful and on the 23 January 1790 set fire to the HMS Bounty so it would vanish without a trace.

Pitcairn proved to be a perfect refuge for the mutineers, it was uninhabited, inaccessible, yet had plenty of fresh water and fertile land. Life was good and for a while the mutineers and the Polynesians lived a peaceful life, however over time relations weakened and tensions arose over how the Europeans saw the Polynesians as property. In 1793 there was all out war between the inhabitants and 5 mutineers including Christian were killed. Over the years the mutineers met their demise thorugh suicide and murder until just one, Adams, remained. He took it upon himself to ensure the 9 remaining women and 19 children were educated and cared for.

In 1808 an American sealer Topaz came unexpectedly upon the island and discovered the thriving community. In 1814 2 British war ships happened upon Pitcairn and after hearing reports the Admiralty decided to take no action against the remaining mutineer. Adams died in 1829 and the population of the island is still made up almost entirely of descendants of the mutineers.

So there you go, who would have thought that a tiny little island in the pacific that no one has ever heard of had such an awesome history. Pitcairn is a British territory, just 2.2 miles long from east to west and at present has a population of 36 people. At its peak in 1936 there were 250 residents. The main religion on the island is Seventh Day Adventists. Agriculture, honey production and tourism are the main income generators. There is diesel generated power 10 hours per day, no radio, 2 TV channels and very slow and expensive internet, they do however have telephone lines. At present Pitcairn is offering land incentives to anyone willing to take up residence there!! http://www.immigration.pn/ in case anyone is tempted?!

The problem with living on Pitcairn is that it is still as inaccessible as it was when the Bounty landed there in 1790, much to the disappointment of everyone aboard the cruise we discovered a few days into our journey that we would not be able to dock on the island the residents would be coming aboard to talk to us and to set up a market on this ship. There was very nearly a Mutiny on the Oceania Marina at this news. It doesn’t really take a genius to work out that an island that is home to 36 people and at the height of its residency housed 250, cannot handle a cruise ship of 1200 passengers and several hundred crew all suddenly coming ashore. Pitcairn gets supplies from New Zealand 4 times a year at 3 monthly intervals so aside from the handicrafts and honey produced on the island there is nothing there for tourists or indeed locals to buy most of the year. We took the news in our stride as there was little point trying to argue it, but some passengers were so upset they spent the entire 17 days writing letters to Oceania and complaining that the visit to Pitcairn was their only reason for being on the ship, I find that quite hard to believe and think that maybe they should have done their homework a bit better.

So the day dawned that we woke up to find the sun rising over the infamous Pitcairn Island, the decks were full of people watching as we circled the Island and the long boat full of Pitcairn residents moored up to the ship to unload their market supplies. The market was absolute chaos, it was pretty much the only time aside from the Gala Afternoon Tea that the whole ship seemed to accumulate in the same room. There was a fair bit for sale surprisingly from wooden carved canes, to hand made jewellery, Pitcairn stamps and patches and the local honey.

Another interesting bit of information that we had learned in our lectures about Pitcairn was that there was a rather controversial court case on the island in 2004. Pitcairn has teachers and police officers usually from New Zealand or the UK who do one or two year contracts on the island. In 1999 a female police officer from the UK was on assignment on Pitcairn and she uncovered allegations of sexual abuse when a 15 year old decided to press rape charges. ‘Operation Unique’ was launched and every women who had lived on Pitcairn in the last 20 years was interviewed. In 2004 7 men living on Pitcairn (including the mayor) went on trial for 55 charges relating to sexual assault and all but one was convicted. A further 6 living elsewhere were also tri
ed.

The case brought huge controversy both on and off of Pitcairn with many of the residents defending the actions of the accused, blaming the UK police for making the girls press charges. Records on the island showed that most girls bore their first child at between 12 and 15 years of age as was the norm in the Polynesian culture that the Pitcairn Islanders had lived by for so many years.

The UK government built a prison on the island for the men to carry out their sentences, however there was a problem in that with such a small population 6 men being incarcerated meant that island life could not continue as normal, these men were the ones that were able to operate the long boat to bring provisions to the island from the passing cargo ships and without them the island would have no supplies so eventually they were released from the prison and were granted home detention so that they could carry out their roles on the island. When we had our on-board lecture the final slide was a mug shot of all the men that had been convicted so it was a little shocking to say the least to see those same faces on the cruise selling us carved wooded canes.

We had a good look around the market stall and Tim even let me buy a necklace and a pair of earrings made out of seeds called Jobs Tears as a memento. There was one Pitcairn Islander that stood out from all the others, not because we had seen his mugshot, but because he was nearly 7 feet tall and was dressed as a pirate. Pirate Pawl is most definitely one of Pitcairns more eccentric inhabitants and we were first in line to get a selfie with him. He had a huge stall full of carved bone jewellery and we got chatting to him and his wife who was originally from New Zealand. We were due (according to our schedule) to be playing Bag-o-bean but we quickly changed our schedule and set about trading with pirates. Pirate Pawl and his wife were smokers and they were running low on cigarettes on the island and also had to pay a small fortune for them, we however were on a tax free boat and cigarettes were just $2 a packet. So off we went with our pirates bootie and bought all the cigarettes that the bar would sell us. Pirate Pawl was so happy with our haul that he let us each pick any piece of jewellery from his stall that we wanted. Seriously how cool is it trading with pirates in the Pacific Ocean in 2015!

We may not have stepped foot on the actual island but having 34 out of 36 of the island inhabitants on board was as close as I think most people will ever get. The boat looped around the island to give us the full 360 view which we watched from the comfort of the pool deck. As the sun was starting to set the islanders hopped back into their longboat and made their way back to shore and back to the crazy little island that they call home.

When we had booked the cruise I had not even spared a thought for what or where Pitcairn was but it was a fascinating place with an amazing history and somewhere that we were extremely lucky to have seen.