History of The Pitcairn Islands - The Bounty Mutiny and The Settlement of Pitcairn

The Bounty Mutiny and The Settlement of Pitcairn

On January 15, 1790, the mutineers of Bounty and their Tahitian companions arrived on the island. The group consisted of Fletcher Christian and eight other mutineers from the Bounty. These were Ned Young, John Adams, Matthew Quintal, William McCoy, William Brown, Isaac Martin, John Mills and John Williams. Also with them were six Polynesian men and twelve Tahitian women, as well as a Tahitian baby girl named Sally, daughter of one of the women, who would become a respected person in the community. The settlers took everything off the Bounty and then burnt the ship to hide all trace of their existence. The wreck of Bounty is still visible underwater in Bounty Bay.

Though the islanders learned to survive quite comfortably by farming and fishing, violence and illness caused many problems. Much of the violence was caused by some of the mutineers and the Polynesian men wanting the same women, there being fewer women than men. Two of the women died in accidents in 1790, exacerbating the problem. Another problem was that when the land was divided between the families, the Polynesian men were not given any property and were treated like slaves by some of the mutineers, particularly Williams and McCoy. Two of the Polynesian men were killed by another Polynesian man, by order of the mutineers. The violence culminated one day in September or October 1793, when all four of the remaining Polynesian men attempted to massacre the mutineers. Martin, Christian, Mills, Brown and Williams were killed. The Polynesian men soon began fighting among themselves, however. One was killed during this fight, another was killed by one of the women, one was killed by Quintal and McCoy and a final one was killed by Young. This murder of nearly half of the island's population dramatically changed the community. With many of the mutineers having children with their wives, women and children began to outnumber the men. The women became dissatisfied and tried to leave the island. When this failed, they attempted to kill the men, but they eventually became reconciled.

Soon, Young and Adams, who began to assume leadership of the community and help the women and children as much as possible, drifted apart from Quintal and McCoy, particularly after McCoy discovered how to brew alcohol from a local plant. McCoy committed suicide while drunk in 1798, and Quintal was killed by Adams and Young in 1799 after he threatened to kill the entire community. Shortly thereafter, Young and Adams became interested in Christianity, and Young taught Adams to read using the Bounty's bible. After Young's death from asthma in 1800, John Adams was the only mutineer left alive on Pitcairn. Several ships had apparently discovered the island during the 1790s, and one even landed to pick coconuts, but these ships did not encounter the community. The community's first contact with a foreign ship came in 1808 when an American ship, the Topaz commanded by Mayhew Folger, landed on the island. The captain and crew were impressed by the community. They updated Adams and the growing population of women and children on the events in the world of the past 20 years, and promised to tell the world about what had happened to them. By this time, Adams had set up a school for the island's children, in which the teaching of Christianity was an important part. He was known as "father" by all members of the community.