Skip to main content

Mutineers’ Descendants


Pitcairn Islands is a country whose history reads like a thriller.  It consists of four volcanic islands out of which only Pitcairn is inhabited.  The total population is 42.  That is, Pitcairn Islands is a country with 42 people: as big as an Indian joint family.

The people of Pitcairn are the descendants of the Bounty mutineers as well as the Tahitians who accompanied the mutineers.

ByRobert Dodd - National Maritime Museum
The Bounty was a ship that was commissioned to collect and transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the British colonies in the West Indies.  During the five-month layover in Tahiti, indiscipline crept into the marrow of the sailors.  The idle mind is the devil’s workshop. 

Back in the ship after a long and frolicsome sojourn on the Polynesian island, the crew met with serious disciplinary measures from Captain Lieutenant William Bigh.  However, it was the captain who ended up being punished.  The crew rebelled against him.  There was a mutiny on the ship led by Fletcher Christian.  The mutineers seized control of the ship.  They put Capt Bligh and 18 others in a launch and set them adrift in the Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. 

Capt Bligh was both fortunate and skilful enough to save himself and his companions.  One year after being cast into the ocean, Bligh and his companions reached England in April 1790.  Retaliatory action started.  HMS Pandora was despatched to apprehend the mutineers, 14 of whom were captured in Tahiti.  But Christian was intelligent enough not to stay in Tahiti.  He and others who had settled down on the Pitcairn Island escaped the retaliation.  It is their descendants who live on the island today.

The country was recently in the news because of its former Mayor who was sentenced for sexual abuse of children.  The Mayor faced 25 charges.  Child abuse is very common on the Island.  One-third of the men on the Island (that is, seven in number) are guilty of the crime.  The Island has become so notorious that no child can enter it without first getting an “entry clearance application” sanctioned. 

England is spending three million pounds every year to attract new settlers on the Pitcairn.  The climate is good.  The British government is subsidising a lot of things.  And yet there are no takers for the migratory offer.

It is not easy to reach the island, of course.  It takes a 36-hour voyage by a 12-berth boat which sails once in three months.  The return ticket costs $5000 from Mangareva in the French Polynesia. 

For a detailed account of the mutiny, Caroline Alexander's The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (2004) is ideal. 

Here are some pictures from Pitcairn Islands from the National Geographic site.

The Island is just 3.6 km long








PS. Written for Indispire Edition 116: #DiscoverACountry

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Amit AgarwalMay 7, 2016 at 12:47 PM

    Very interesting info!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 7, 2016 at 2:08 PM

      I came across this curious place by chance and thought it worth writing about.

      Delete
  2. Dr. Priyanka Shanbhag ShroffMay 7, 2016 at 8:53 PM

    Had never heard of this place! Very interesting, and curious as you said.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 7, 2016 at 9:06 PM

      If I could, I would visit the place which the UK is spending so much money on.

      Delete
  3. HemaMay 8, 2016 at 11:30 AM

    What an odd little place!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Abhijit RayMay 8, 2016 at 3:12 PM

    Very pretty pictures and nice information.

    ReplyDelete
  5. sunaina sharmaMay 8, 2016 at 6:38 PM

    Interesting information.....

    ReplyDelete
  6. wingsMay 9, 2016 at 7:18 PM

    Curious indeed! Now your blogs have started taking me places ;)
    I think it is an ideal place for spending time in solitude, but I think life will become like that of Robinhood!

    ReplyDelete
  7. wingsMay 9, 2016 at 8:33 PM

    Curious indeed! Now your blogs have started taking me places ;)
    I think it is an ideal place for spending time in solitude, but I think life will become like that of Robinhood!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 9, 2016 at 10:13 PM

      Not an ideal place with those paedophiles around.
      Glad you've chosen to go some places with me.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more