Island of the Mutineers: Life on the World’s Smallest Dependent Territory
Tucked away in a secluded corner of the Pacific lies a small volcanic outcrop known as the Pitcairn Islands—known to be the world’s smallest dependent territory. Teeming with tropical life, Pitcairn Island is home to a meager population of fifty. These islands do not need to be densely populated to have a vibrant culture and unique history, though.
The Pitcairn Islands were first inhabited by the crew of the HMAV Bounty, who were journeying from Tahiti with a store of breadfruit saplings to be delivered to the West Indies. There, the breadfruit would serve as slave food. On April 28, near the island of Tonga, the master’s mate, Fletcher Christian, and 25 other petty officers and seamen seized the ship from their oppressive commander. After a good bit of squabbling, Christian attempted to establish himself and his crew on the Pacific Island of Tubuai. Unable to kickstart a colony there, they sailed back to Tahiti, where they narrowly escaped British authorities at the cost of several men hanged or incarcerated. The rest of the mutineers were never captured.
However, this is not where the story of the mutineers ends—after their daring encounter with the authorities, they set out to sea once again. Strife and sickness plagued the ship full of women, children, and the remaining mutineers as she drifted, lost at sea until they found the islands we know today as the Pitcairn Islands. Named after the son of Major Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, the island could have been a mid-ocean pitstop for whalers or a community of ex-sailors and their Polynesian families like the other islands in its latitude, but an outbreak of scurvy saved it from becoming a decrepit outpost or the tropical residence of former sailors. Fortunately, Christian had been drawn to the particularly uninteresting sector of land and sea by the accounts of Captain Philip Carteret of the HMS Swallow and led his crew to their new home.
On January 15, 1790, the Bounty dropped her anchor in what we now know as Bounty Bay. The island, having been deserted for over two decades, had exceeded the expectations of the young mutineer. He announced to his famished, exhausted crew and passengers that the original colonizers of the island had left or died, leaving the cultivated plants behind to thrive in the tropical soil. The mutineers were lucky to finally take refuge on such a hospitable island, one that was teeming with coconut palms, breadfruit, and many other resources that would keep the mutineers and their future descendants alive to this day. The entirety of the Bounty’s cargo was offloaded, livestock and root vegetables laboriously hauled from her hold to the top of the hill we now call the Hill of Difficulty to the Edge. From there, the true settlement of the Pitcairn Islands began. The Bounty was set on fire and sunk, likely due to fear of discovery by authorities still searching for the mutinous crew. Following the destruction of their ship, the new inhabitants of the islands fashioned themselves homes of various tropical leaves, their small refuge turning into today’s Adamstown.
The colonization of Pitcairn did not come easily, though. Unfortunately, the Tahitians who had accompanied the mutinous crew were treated more like slaves than people, tortured and forced to work like they had in other plantations in the Indies during that era. This vile mistreatment of the Tahitians led to their eventual insurrection in 1790, which led to the demise of the Tahitians. The strife did not end there, though; four crew members were slain by Polynesian passengers of the Bounty in 1793. In 1798, Scottish sailor William McCoy discovered how to distill alcohol from the ti plant Cordyline terminosa (not to be confused with the common houseplant Cordyline fruticosa, another edible plant of the genus Cordyline). The Scotsman became severely inebriated and drowned himself. The last of the Bounty’s crew, Cornishman Matthew Quintal, Midshipman Edward Young, and the Cockney Jack Adams left as the only male settlers to lead the meager colony of women and children.