Settlement by the mutineers: 1790 For two months the men on the Bounty combed the Cooks, Tonga and the eastern islands of Fiji for a home; and it was almost in desperation that Christian, recalling or stumbling on Carterets account, sailed eastwards again for Pitcairn, which he reached on 15 January 1790. With a joyful expression such as we had not seen on him for a long time past Christian returned from the shore to report that the people who had once planted Pitcairn with coconut palms and breadfruit had either died or left it. The island was lonely and inaccessible, uninhabited, fertile and warm; it exceeded his highest hopes. The Bounty was anchored in what is now called Bounty Bay and stripped of all her contents, including pigs, chickens, yams and sweet potatoes, which were laboriously hauled up the aptly named Hill of Difficulty to the Edge, a small, grassy platform over-looking the Bay. Then, fearing that if any European vessel sighted the ship retribution would inevitably follow, the mutineers ran the Bounty ashore and set her on fire so that no trace of her, or clue to their whereabouts, would remain visible from the sea. Fletcher Christian, the man who had led the mutineers to this remote island, was a son of the Coroner of Cumberland and of Manx descent on his fathers side. He had been to school with the poet William Wordsworth, was well educated and, in the words of a friend, mild, generous and sincere. Certainly his energy and cheerfulness drew both respect and affection from his fellows and, although he died a few years after landing at Pitcairn, he is still remembered as the founder and first leader of the settlement. Of the other mutineers, Midshipman Edward Young was also well connected and was devoted to Christian, whom he succeeded as leader; reckless Jack Adams, later to become Patriarch of Pitcairn, was a Cockney orphan; Mills, Brown, Martin and Williams were killed within four years of arrival; and of the other two, the Scotsman William McCoy and the Cornishman Matthew Quintal little good can be said, except that they were neither better nor worse than the average seaman of the time. On arrival the mutineers made themselves rough leaf-shelters where the village of Adamstown now stands, but the tiny community did not settle down without friction and, indeed, murder. The Tahitians were treated more as slaves than as fellow human beings and their revolt led to the slaying of some of the mutineers and, finally, to their own deaths. By 1794 only Young, Adams, Quintal and McCoy remained of the male settlers, leading households of ten women and children. The next four to five years were peaceful except for occasional outbreaks by the women, including an abortive attempt by some to leave the island. As Young recorded in his journal: building their houses, fencing in and cultivating their grounds and catching birds and constructing pits for the purpose of entrapping hogs, which had become very numerous and wild, as well as injurious to the yam crops, kept the settlers busy. Gradually the men and women grew reconciled to their lives and to each other, and all might have remained harmonious had not McCoy, who had once worked in a distillery, discovered how to brew a potent spirit from the roots of the ti plant (Cordyline terminalis). By 1799, Quintal had been killed by Young and Adams in self defence and McCoy had drowned himself. Then, in 1800, Young died of asthma, leaving John Adams as the sole male survivor of the party that had landed just ten years before.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:48:20 +0000
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