After leaving Tahiti on 22 September 1789, Christian sailed
Bounty west in search of a safe haven. He then formed the idea of settling on
Pitcairn Island, far to the east of Tahiti; the island had been reported in 1767, but its exact location was never verified. After months of searching, Christian rediscovered the island on 15 January 1790, east of its recorded position. This longitudinal error contributed to the mutineers' decision to settle on Pitcairn. The group consisted of British sailors
Fletcher Christian,
Ned Young,
John Adams,
Matthew Quintal, William Brown, Isaac Martin, John Mills and John Williams;
William McCoy; six Polynesian men (Manarii/Menalee, Niau/Nehou, and Teirnua/Te Moa from
Tahiti; Taroamiva/Tetahiti and Oher/Hu from
Tubuai; and Taruro/Talalo/Tullaloo from
Raiatea by way of Tahiti) and twelve Tahitian women (
Mauatua/Maimiti/Isabella, Teehuteatuaonoa/Jenny,
Teraura/Susanah,
Teio/Mary, Vahineatua/Bal'hadi/Prudence, Obuarei/Puarai, Tevarua/Sarah, Teatuahitea/Sarah, Faahotu/Fasto, Toofaiti/Hutia/Nancy, Mareva, and Tinafornea) as well as a Tahitian baby girl named Sarah/Sally, daughter of Teio, who would become a respected person in the community. On arrival, the ship was unloaded and stripped of most of its masts and spars, for use on the island. On 23 January, five days after their arrival, as the seamen discussed whether to burn the ship, Quintal set the ship ablaze and destroyed it, either as an agreed-upon precaution against discovery or as an unauthorised act. There was now no means of escape. The island proved an ideal haven for the mutineers—uninhabited and virtually inaccessible, with plenty of food, water, and fertile land. For a while, the mutineers and Tahitians existed peaceably. Christian settled down with Isabella; a son,
Thursday October Christian, was the first child born on the island, and others followed. Christian's authority as leader gradually diminished, and he became prone to long periods of brooding and introspection. sketch of
Susan Young, the only surviving Tahitian woman on Pitcairn's Island
Racial tensions Gradually, tensions and rivalries arose over the increasing extent to which the Europeans regarded the Tahitians as their property, in particular the women who, according to Alexander, were "passed around from one 'husband' to the other". The lower-caste Tahitian man, Hu, was often a victim of the white men's beatings and abuse. Martin treated the islanders including his wife with disdain, causing increasing discord. McCoy figured out how to distill brandy from ti-root and built a
still. He, Quintal, and some of the women were continually drunk. In 1791, after working side-by-side with the islanders to perform the daily tasks that sustained the colony, some of the seamen decided to loaf in the shade all day while they coerced the Polynesian men to complete the tasks too hard for the women to perform. Quintal and McCoy required the unmarried man Te Moa to do all their work, and Martin and Mills similarly abused the other lower-caste islander, Nihau. McCoy and Quintal often abused and bullied both the Polynesian women and men. Rosalind Young, a descendant of
Ned Young, relayed a story handed down to her that Tevarua went fishing one day but failed to catch enough fish to satisfy Quintal. He punished her by biting off her ear. He may have been drunk at the time, because he and
William McCoy were drunk most of the time, consuming McCoy's brandy. Tevarua fell—or, some believe, killed herself, by leaping off a cliff in 1799.
Adams leads women and children Young and Adams assumed leadership and secured a tenuous calm disrupted by the drunken behaviour of McCoy and Quintal. The two men and some of the women spent their days in an alcoholic stupor. Some of the women attempted to leave the island in a makeshift boat but could not launch it successfully. On 20 April 1798, McCoy attached a rock to his neck with a rope and leapt over a cliff to his death. Quintal became increasingly erratic. He demanded to take Isabella, Fletcher Christian's widow, as his wife, and threatened to kill Christian's children if his demands were not granted. Ned Young and John Adams invited him to Young's home. There they overpowered him, and killed him with an axe. Young and Adams became interested in Christianity, and Young taught Adams to read using the Bounty's Bible. Young died of an asthma attack in 1800. Adams lived until 1829.
Contact reestablished After Young succumbed to asthma in 1800, Adams took responsibility for the education and well-being of the nine remaining women and 19 children. Using the
ship's Bible from
Bounty, he taught literacy and Christianity, and kept peace on the island. This was the situation in February 1808, when the American sealer
Topaz commanded by
Mayhew Folger came unexpectedly upon Pitcairn, landed, and discovered the, by then, thriving community. News of
Topazs discovery did not reach Britain until 1810, when it was overlooked by an Admiralty preoccupied by war with France. In 1814, two British warships, and HMS
Tagus, chanced upon Pitcairn. Among those who greeted them were Thursday October Christian and George Young (Edward Young's son). The captains,
Sir Thomas Staines and Philip Pipon, reported that Christian's son displayed "in his benevolent countenance, all the features of an honest English face". On shore they found a population of 46 mainly young islanders led by Adams, upon whom the islanders' welfare was wholly dependent, according to the captains' report. After receiving Staines's and Pipon's report, the Admiralty decided to take no action. Henderson Island was rediscovered on 17 January 1819 by British Captain James Henderson of the British
East India Company ship
Hercules. Captain Henry King, sailing on
Elizabeth, landed on 2 March to find the king's colours already flying. His crew scratched the name of their ship into a tree. Oeno Island was discovered on 26 January 1824 by American captain George Worth aboard the
whaler . In 1832, a
Church Missionary Society missionary arrived. He reported that by March 1833, he had founded a Temperance Society to combat drunkenness, a "
Maundy Thursday Society", a monthly prayer meeting, a juvenile society, a Peace Society, and a school. In the following years, many ships called at Pitcairn Island and heard Adams's various stories of the foundation of the Pitcairn settlement. Adams died in 1829, honoured as the founder and father of a community that became celebrated over the next century as an exemplar of Victorian morality. Over the years, many recovered
Bounty artefacts have been sold by islanders as souvenirs; in 1999, the Pitcairn Project was established by a consortium of Australian academic and historical bodies, to survey and document all the material remaining on-site, as part of a detailed study of the settlement's development. The Pitcairners were visited often by ships. During the 1820s, three British adventurers named John Buffett, John Evans and
George Nobbs settled on the island and married children of the mutineers. Following Adams's death in 1829, a power vacuum emerged. Nobbs, a veteran of the British and Chilean navies, was Adams's chosen successor, but Buffett and
Thursday October Christian, the son of Fletcher and the first child born on the island, who had the task of greeting visiting ships, were also important leaders during this time.
Resettlement Fearing overcrowding, the islanders requested the British government transport them to Tahiti. In 1831 the British government relocated the islanders there. But they found it unlike the home they remembered, full of "immorality, saloons, vile dances, gambling, and scarlet women." The descendants could not adapt to the changes in Tahiti, and a dozen people, including Thursday October Christian, had died of disease. The islanders were now even more leaderless, as alcoholism became a problem. They returned to Pitcairn after six months, aboard the ship of
William Driver.
New settlers In 1832, an adventurer named
Joshua Hill, claiming to be an agent of Britain, arrived on the island and was elected leader, styling himself President of the Commonwealth of Pitcairn. He ordered Buffett, Evans and Nobbs to be exiled, banned alcohol and ordered imprisonments for the slightest infractions. He was eventually driven off the island in 1838, and a British ship captain helped the islanders draw up a law code. The islanders set up a system whereby they would elect a chief magistrate every year as the leader of the island. Other important positions on the island were those of schoolmaster, doctor and pastor. Nobbs, however, was the effective leader of the island. Under this law code, Pitcairn became the first
British colony in the Pacific and also the second territory in the world, after
Corsica under
Pasquale Paoli in 1755, to give
women the right to vote.
British colony Traditionally, Pitcairn Islanders consider that their islands "officially" became a British colony on 30 November 1838, at the same time becoming
one of the first territories to extend voting rights to women.
Move to Norfolk Island By the mid-1850s the Pitcairn community was outgrowing the island and they appealed to
Queen Victoria for help. Queen Victoria offered them
Norfolk Island. In 1856, all 163 residents boarded
Morayshire and crossed the Pacific to Norfolk Island, formerly a prison colony, an isolated rock between the North Island of New Zealand and New Caledonia. They arrived on 8 June after a miserable five-week trip. Eighteen months later, sixteen returned, and they were followed by 27 others in 1864. In 1858, while the island was uninhabited, survivors of the shipwreck of the
clipper Wild Wave spent several months there until rescued by . These visitors had dismantled some houses for wood and nails and had vandalised John Adams' grave. The island was also nearly annexed by
France, whose government did not realise that the island had just been inhabited. George Nobbs and John Buffett stayed on Norfolk Island. By this time, an American family named Warren settled on Pitcairn Island. During the 1860s further immigration to the island was banned. In 1886 the
Seventh-day Adventist layman
John Tay visited Pitcairn and persuaded most of the islanders to convert from the
Church of England to his faith. He returned in 1890 on the missionary schooner with an ordained minister to perform
baptisms. Since then, the majority of Pitcairn Islanders have been Adventists. Important leaders of Pitcairn during this time were
Thursday October Christian II,
Simon Young and
James Russell McCoy. McCoy, who was sent to England for education as a child, spent much of his later life on missionary journeys. In 1887, Britain officially annexed the island, and it was officially put under the jurisdiction of the governors of
Fiji.
Late 19th century visited Pitcairn Island on 18 April 1881 and "found the people very happy and contented, and in perfect health". At that time the population was 96, an increase of six since the visit of
Admiral de Horsey in September 1878. Stores had recently been delivered from friends in England, including two whale-boats and
Portland cement, which was used to make the reservoir watertight. HMS
Thetis gave the islanders of biscuits, of candles, and 100 lb of soap and clothing to the value of £31, donated by the
ship's company. An American trading ship called
Venus had recently bestowed a supply of
cotton seed, to provide the islanders with a crop for future trade. One crime of note during this time was that of a double murder committed in June 1897, and which concerned Harry Albert Christian, great-grandson of
Fletcher Christian. Christian admitted having murdered, for jealous reasons, one of the island women, Julia Warren and her child, the bodies of which he subsequently threw into the sea. The bodies of the victims were never found. A commission was brought to Pitcairn onboard
HMS Royalist in order for Christian to undergo trial for murder. Having been found guilty Christian was sentenced to death and detained, under effective
house arrest, until he was put onboard
HMS Royalist and transferred to
Suva,
Fiji. Christian was
hanged at Suva Gaol on October 8, 1898.
20th century The islands of Henderson, Oeno and Ducie were annexed by Britain in 1902: Henderson on 1 July, Oeno on 10 July, and Ducie on 19 December. The population peaked at 233 in 1937. It has since decreased owing to emigration, primarily to
Australia and
New Zealand. In 1938, the three islands, along with Pitcairn, were incorporated into a single administrative unit called the
Pitcairn Group of Islands. By the 1930s and 1940s, diminished shipping and tourism to the island resulted in the residents selling many of the pre-European cultural items and
Bounty-related paraphernalia to private individuals for income. In 1940 and 1941, the British government sent
Henry Evans Maude and his wife
Honor Maude to the islands to modernise the government, and to establish a post office and issue stamps in order to generate revenue for the people. == Current society==