PITCAIRN ISLANDS - AN ENCAPSULATED HISTORY
by Horace A. Basham - horace@pin.co.nz
Part One: The First Ten Years (1790-1800)
The first inhabitants to settle the Islands were Polynesians of unknown origin. Someone reckoned from Mangareva some 490 km to the NW. The evidence are rock carvings, found by the early European settlers. The carvings are made up of roughly hewn stone gods, humans, animals, birds, starfish, and several objects that look like wheels with spokes. These could represent islands or moon and stars. There has been found mizens, earth ovens, and burial sites with human remains.
The main Island was named after the son of a marine, Major Pitcairn, on board Capt. Carteret's vessel HMS Swallow, who was the first to sight the island in 1767. The original name given was Pitcairn's Island. Never the less Capt. Carteret did not put a landing party on the island due to bad weather conditions. Capt Cook went looking for these islands. But his expedition was thwarted by some of his men going down with scurvy. A pity he did not land, he may have been able to supply his men with fresh fruit and greens.
It was the mutineers of the Bounty that finally settled the island with their Tahitian companions on 15 January 1790, after two months sailing around the Cooks, Tonga, and the eastern islands of Fiji looking for a home. Fletcher Christian remembered the existance of Pitcairn Islands and set sail for them. After landing on the island Christian returned to the ship to tell his companians that there were coconuts and breadfruit to be had. They had found an ideal home. It was lonely and it was warm. There was plenty to eat. With pigs, chickens, yams and sweet potatoes from the ship's stores. The ship was stripped of all it's removables. To remain invisible from any passing vessel looking for them they ran the Bounty ashore and set her alight burning it to the water line. It sank in what is now known as Bounty Bay. The community remained undetected for many years.
Of the other mutineers, Midshipman Edward Young who was well connected and 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 seamen of the times.
The Tahitians were treated poorly. This led to them revolting, killing some of the mutineers. They themselves were killed. Leaving in 1794 only Young, Adams, Quintal and McCoy, leading households of ten women and their children.
The next four years were peaceful except for occasional outbreaks by women. It was not an happy time for the womenfolk. Some tried to leave the island but were prevented by the men. As Young recorded in his diary, "building 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 each other, 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 landed just ten years earlier.
Part One: The First Ten Years (1790-1800)
Part Two: The End of Isolation (1800-1830)
Part Three: The Moves to Tahiti & Norfolk (1830-1856)
Part Four: Return to Pitcairn & Religious Conversion (1856-1864)
Part Five: Toward Modern Pitcairn (1864-1940)
I have reproduced in the main the first part of the "A Guide to Pitcairn" Published by the Government of the Pitcairn Islands. The booklet may be purchased from:
The Office of the Governor of Pitcairn,
Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands.
C/o British Consulate General,
Private Bag 92014,
Auckland, New Zealand.
Phone ++64 9 366 0186,
Fax ++64 9 303 1836.
Price is NZ$8.30 includes surface mail.