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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
'The Far Land swells in the cause and effect of actions of passion. Brandon Presser's fascinating narrative of the relentless consequences of the Bounty mutineers asks: were they brave or damned? They lived so very troubled ever after. You can't make this stuff up!' TOM HANKS 'The Far Land hits a lot of my pleasure centers: remote islands, then-and-now non-fiction, historical mysteries and forthright travelogues. The first night I started reading, I dreamed about Pitcairn Island.' MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD, 2021 Booker Prize shortlisted and 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlisted author of Great Circle A THRILLING TALE OF POWER, OBSESSION AND BETRAYAL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the South Pacific and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era: the whereabouts of a band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian companions. Seven generations later, the island is still inhabited by descendants of the original mutineers, marooned like modern castaways. In 2018, Brandon Presser went to live among its families; two clans bound by circumstance and secrets. There, he pieced together Pitcairn's full story: an operatic saga that holds all visitors in its mortal clutch - even the author. Told through vivid historical and personal narrative, The Far Land goes beyond the infamous mutiny on the Bounty, offering an unprecedented glimpse at life on the fringes of civilization, and how, perhaps, it's not so different from our own.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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vFor my grandpa and his untold stories of the South Pacific
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I traveled to Pitcairn in 2018, it was not my intention to write a book about the infamous HMAV Bounty’s mutineers and their descendants. But the longer I spent there, the more questions I had: How did forty-eight people come to live on an island impossible to access by commercial conveyance? And what really happened to their forebearers who settled on the lonely rock some two hundred years prior? Every time I peeled back the proverbial onion, I found another layer that seemed more unbelievable than the last. This operatic saga of treason and obsession—paired with the abject strangeness of a modern society of castaways—was, quite simply, the most fantastical story I had ever come across in my fifteen-plus years as a journalist.
It’s so incredible, in fact, that the history of the mutineers’ violent undoing reads more like an epic novel. But I can assure you that this is indeed a work of nonfiction—every sentence on every page was weighed and considered after three long years of rigorous research, combing through hundreds of resources from old captains’ logs and newspaper clippings to the other tomes penned by writers who have similarly descended down into the darkness of Pitcairn. Fact-finding continued beyond the library too; in-depth interviews and seminars with historians, psychologists, religious scholars, and experts on Polynesian culture helped paint a more fully formed perspective on xboth the causes and effects of tribalism, trauma, psychopathy, paranoia, and survival in the bleakest of conditions.
In the past, the Pitcairn chronicle has largely been illuminated through the mutineers’ point of view (Fletcher Christian in particular). Here, great care has been taken to dismantle the misogyny and racism inherent in the white, colonial male gaze, offering broader insight into how this diverse cast of characters grappled with the overwhelming adversity of their very real fates. Relative to the British sailors, little is known about their Tahitian consorts, who—in previous accounts of the Bounty’s journey—have been othered and infantilized through the use of broken English. In this version, the dialogue attributed to the women (and some of the secondary seamen) has been tweaked to more accurately reflect the reality that they were just as rational, cunning, and self-actualizing as the men long considered the heroes of this tale. This is the only rejiggering in an otherwise authentic recounting of what took place following history’s favorite mutiny: eighteen years of solitude on the most remotely inhabited island in the entire world.
Enthusiasts and academics will find a comprehensive reference and bibliographical section at the end of this book detailing each piece used to put this puzzle together; it is my hope and intention, however, that you simply enjoy the narrative herein as a story whose details happen to be wickedly true.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
THE BOUNTY CREWMEN
William Bligh:commander
John Fryer:master
Fletcher Christian:master’s mate
Thomas Huggan (Doc): surgeon
John Hallett:midshipman; Bligh’s protégé
Thomas Hayward:midshipman; Bligh’s protégé
Peter Heywood:midshipman; Christian’s protégé
Edward Young:midshipman
William Brown:assistant gardener
Thomas Burkitt:able seaman
Charles Churchill:master-at-arms
Isaac Martin:able seaman
William McCoy:able seaman
John Mills:gunner’s mate
John Millward:able seaman
Matthew Quintal:able seaman
Alexander Smith:able seaman
Matthew Thompson:able seaman
John Williams:able seaman
THE TAHITIAN WOMEN
Mauatua:leader of the Tahitian women; Christian’s companion
Susannah:an aristocratic Tahitian; Young’s companion
Jenny:Mauatua’s friend; a low-caste Tahitian
Faahotu:Mauatua’s maid; a healer
Tevarua:Susannah’s maid; Quintal’s companion
Obuarei:Susannah’s maid; Smith’s companion
Nancy:Tararo’s companion
Teatuahitea:Brown’s companion
Teio:McCoy’s companion; Baby Sully’s mother
ON TAHITI
Teina:chieftain of a prominent Tahitian clan
Itia:Teina’s wife
ON TUBUAI
Tamatoa:chieftain of western Tubuai
Tinarau:chieftain of southern Tubuai; Christian’s enemy
Taaroa:chieftain of northern Tubuai; Christian’s ally
THE POLYNESIAN MEN ON PITCAIRN
Tetahiti:Tubuaian warrior; Christian’s blood brother
Oha:Tubuaian teenager; Tetahiti’s cousin
Minarii:Tahitian boy
Teimua:Tahitian nobleman
Niau:Tahitian teenager
Tararo:nobleman from the island of Raiateaxiii
THE DESCENDANTS (MODERN-DAY PITCAIRNERS)
Steve Christian: patriarch of the Christians
Olive Christian:Steve’s wife
Carol Warren:matriarch of the Warrens
Jay Warren:Carol’s husband
Isabel Christian:Steve and Olive’s granddaughter
Shawn Christian:Steve and Olive’s son; mayor
Meralda Warren:Jay’s sister
Simon Young:a recluse
JAMES NORMAN HALL’S DESCENDANTS ON TAHITI
Kate Hall:granddaughter
Nancy Hall Rutgers:daughter; Kate’s aunt
Maps
xvii
xvix
CHAPTER 1
TURN ON THE QUIET
February 2018
The bed was twice as long as it was wide. A plank, really, with a yellowed mattress well worn by the various sleeping shapes of a family that had inhabited the house for generations. I lay flat on my back—it was too humid to tuck my legs under the sheets just yet, and the pedestal fan on the floor craned its neck high enough to let the little swivels of air tickle the bottoms of my feet.
Why were they late? I had already switched off the light—a futile attempt to slow the parade of roaches and moths that descended upon the dwelling every evening. I hid my iPhone deep beneath my pillow to check the time—the glow from the screen mustn’t escape the room and alert the lurking creatures. It was 10:03 p.m. Yes, they were definitely late. Minutes felt like hours as I waited, gulping the fan’s last breezy blasts, the mugginess still unabated.
I could hear them coming. The faint putter of their quad bikes grew louder as they trundled down the dirt track. They parked so close to the house that I could listen to their furtive footsteps as they searched for the dial in the overgrowth. And then it happened: everything shut off. My fan, the only noise, sputtered to a gentle halt, yielding to the oppressive, flat heat, which mummified me as I lay motionless in the dark. I was now keenly aware of my breathing as I began to descend—deeper and deeper—into this newfound sea 2of quietude, swimming through the leagues of soundlessness. There was no dull hum from the refrigerator in the kitchen, no distant ambulance rushing to save a life. Nighttime was different here. The silence was complete.
Every evening at 10 p.m. the island’s power shut off. When I first arrived, the electric cuts would catch me off guard. Sometimes I’d be brushing my teeth, other times I’d be scribbling notes over a cup of tea. But now I was prepared: a cool shower first, a glass of water by the bed, and several crucial minutes of ventilated air before the stillness.
The island’s lifeline was a single generator, but diesel fuel was costly and scarce, so a weekly schedule—like a chore wheel—was devised among the islanders denoting who, each night, would be responsible for staying up past their bedtime to turn on the quiet. Locals dreamed of a more sustainable energy source like solar panels, but progress is painfully slow in a place where everything arrives by a boat that takes three months to deliver its supplies. No airplane has ever landed here—the volcanic crags are too steep to support a runway, and the distances too vast for a small craft, like a helicopter, to make the trip. Only a hulking cargo freighter dares to brave the journey but four times a year, the same vessel that brought me here and the same one that will—God willing—get me off this rock on its next passage.
Until then, I would perform my nightly ritual—a study of silence.
It was still too hot to slip my feet under the covers. I wriggled my toes and made strange little shadows in the starlight that shone through the window. But there was no glass in the frame. No, there hadn’t been a pane in the window for years—decades, maybe. The whole house had become overwhelmed by nature. Long vines reached through the shutters like the spindly tentacles of a kraken ready to drag the entire structure out to sea.
My thoughts turned to Fletcher Christian and how he had contemplated the quietness here. Did he fear he would perish from the unrelenting humidity? Did the shadows of the night play tricks on his stony gray eyes? Upon arriving on the island, Christian scoured his ship’s timbers to build himself a cabin—now a whisper of a ruin beneath the floorboards of this rickety, shitty house. He then 3torched the rest of his vessel in the bay, forever condemning himself to life as a castaway.
Christian was the ringleader of a band of nine infamous mutineers who, in April 1789, commandeered His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty and, along with their Tahitian brides, launched a quest to find an idyllic island that had been incorrectly plotted in the British Navy’s nautical logs. Dubbed Pitcairn, after the fifteen-year-old deckhand who had first spotted it, the green dot was scribbled on a big blue chart of the Pacific some two hundred miles west of its actual location due to an error in longitudinal reading. After many months at sea, Christian and his men finally found their promised paradise—by the end of their third year, almost all of the mutineers would be dead.
It wasn’t fever or thirst that had racked the castaways, but the inextricable qualities of humanity that led to their most violent demises. You can call it love, jealousy, or greed, but really it was the need for power disguised as the pursuit of happiness.
Now, I don’t want to spoil everything just yet, but in a way you already know this story. It’s the oldest one the book: the ineffable quest to return to paradise. So foolish were the nine mutineers who pinned their Edenic dreams on a place fiercely governed by the laws of the wilderness. So foolish were the thousands of people who followed over the centuries, hoping to change their fate on this two-mile bump in the sea. They would all come to realize that we can travel to the farthest recesses of the planet, but we are never truly able to escape ourselves.
Perhaps I was a fool too, even though I knew full well that it would not be an island idyll. But Pitcairn called out to me nonetheless, much like it had to the liars, thieves, and despots of years gone by. And now, lying in my pooling sweat, it was hard to remember why.
Pitcairn has captured the imagination of many. Mark Twain wrote about it. Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novelized 4the origin story of the island’s settlement in a triad of spellbinding books. Oscar-nominated movies have been made, a Broadway musical too. But I was the only obsessive who had turned his infatuation into an actual trip—a journey famously described by a National Geographic explorer as taking longer than getting to the moon.
A journalist by trade, I couldn’t shut off the electricity in my brain that had sparked years of travel across the world—from the glacial shelves of Svalbard to the tribal lands of Papua New Guinea—in search of my next story. I needed to know what happened when you fell off the map.
So from New York City I had set out in search of an outcrop not much larger than Central Park. Commercial liners dwindled to puddle jumpers—with each leg of the voyage the aircraft got smaller and smaller, like Russian dolls, until there were no more planes. Days and nights were then spent in the windowless hold of the rusting freighter as it cruised through seas so ruthless and vast that the British Navy, despite its best efforts, was never able to locate the mutineers’ hideaway. The giant blue swells heaved the shipping vessel through one final swath of the Pacific—long thought to be lifeless—until it finally reached the last place on Earth.
Maybe Pitcairn was never meant to be found.
I should wait until the morning to ponder these questions further. Besides, the critters were coming now—spiders and vermin. I gently slid my legs under the covers and pulled the sheets up to my chin. Yes, tomorrow I’ll boil a cup of water from the cistern and swirl in a heaping spoonful of Nescafé crystals. With the clarity of caffeine, I’ll stare into the stony gray eyes of the descendants of Fletcher Christian from across the breakfast table and try to understand why, seven generations later, there are still forty-eight souls who have chosen to remain exiled in this wilderness.
Until then I must unbusy my mind and sleep—it’s the only way to pass the time until dawn, when a spin of the chore wheel tasks the next castaway to flick on the diesel generator and rescue me from this silent, wretched heat.
CHAPTER 2
THE STRANGEST HELLO
February 1808
The hunt was over, but the deck of the Topaz remained varnished in burgundy like a banquet table after a bacchanal. There were no more seal pelts to be found as the small vessel drifted up from the bottom of the world toward the equator in its desperate search for supplies—the situation had become dire.
Captain Mayhew Folger slowly ran his tongue along the crowns of his teeth, examining every crooked ridge and valley—some porcelain, some bone. Saliva began to pool in his mouth as he desperately swallowed every drop of the sweaty, salty spittle. The sloshing of the half-empty casks was mocking him—but no, he must save the rum for trading when they finally reached civilization.
Although his crewmen loathed skimming the Antarctic waters for furs, Folger preferred the polar conditions to the vastness of the South Seas that now surrounded him. The chilly nip of the wind kept him alert, and the purple glow of the infinite sunshine had a captivating quality. He enjoyed sailing from iceberg to iceberg, stringing them together like pearls on a necklace. But now, the canvas jackets and woolen socks were buried deep within the ship’s hold next to a final supply of sea biscuits pocked by burrowing maggots. Even in his linen tunic, his skin was irritated by the muggy midday heat. 6
The days were palpably shorter now, and there was something about the darkness of a tropical night that unnerved Folger; a stormy sky was indistinguishable from the rollicking waves. The light, refracted by the beads of humidity in the air, haunted him too, casting shadows on the distant clouds and creating peculiar shapes that piqued his imagination: a serpent, a tiger, his mother, a scythe.
Folger stared off the stern of the ship, bored. Today, his idle mind saw a sprawling city along the horizon—towering smokestacks and church spires looming over rows of town houses and factories. Perhaps it was Boston; it had been almost a year since he had left home.
“Land!”
The excited cry from the crow’s nest startled Folger; he clamped down on his tongue until it bled. “It’s land, sir,” repeated the young crewman as he negotiated his way through the tangle of cordage. He pointed in a westerly direction and handed Folger the spyglass. Through the rusting oculus appeared a snaggletooth of stone protruding from the rolling waves.
The Topaz’s two masts creaked and yawed as they altered course to race toward the islet against the quickening afternoon. Folger unfurled his nautical charts and studied them like an incantation. He moved his gaze from point to point, naming each dot on the map under his breath as he touched them with his quill: Nuka Hiva, Marutea, Mangareva, Tubuai. There was nothing, however, plotted in the seas that lay ahead.
Although not an explorer, Folger clenched his jaw in excited anticipation. It was the early nineteenth century—surely the entire world had been already discovered. So how then had this little island evaded the marauding English, French, Dutch, and Iberian navigators who greedily claimed each landfall in the name of their respective empires? It must be empty or of little worth.
A second call from up high interrupted Folger’s quiet speculation. “Fire! Captain, I see a fire!” By now the ship was close enough to appreciate the island’s verticality: an impregnable battlement of granite and red rock with a carpet of lush green undergrowth. The castle governed a sprawling kingdom below—sharks and whales its 7loyal subjects. Without an obvious harbor, Folger dropped anchor only a few hundred yards offshore and was stunned to watch his entire rode unravel before the iron clunked against the ocean floor. High on the ridge, the glow of several campfires was easily noticeable in the waning twilight, and as evening set in the glittering embers became indistinguishable from the banner of stars.
Who were these isolated souls that had never been touched by the industrializing world?
Old tales of vicious savages quickly circulated among the crew. Feral tribesmen once ruled this faraway realm of the planet, and perhaps this was their final bastion. Some sailors begged to raise the anchor and steer the vessel away, others clamored to go ashore. Folger saw only one option: he would deploy two rowboats at first light to garner new provisions. Forfeiting the potential opportunity to restock their supplies would have mortal repercussions.
Weary from a restless night’s sleep, Folger ordered all twenty of his crewmen to the main deck in the gravelly light before dawn to tug levers, source oars, and ready two dinghies to be lowered into the unrelenting swell. While monitoring their progress, he marveled at a time, years prior, when he had weighed the occupational hazards of captaining a merchant’s vessel. Freezing to death on the ice sheets of Antarctica or being looted by pirates were the two main scenarios that worried his wife back home, but dying by the hand of a warrior from an undiscovered nation had never crossed his mind. It was, however, his decision to launch the exploratory foray, so he would be a man of intention and lead the party ashore. Folger paused to glimpse the horizon just as the rising sun splashed across the sea. He wondered if he’d live to see the end of this very short day.
A half whisper—“Captain”—broke Folger’s introspection. His second mate was hastily pointing back toward the island, where a small outrigger canoe had been deployed from the shore. Uneasy, the crewman began to reach for a sealing pistol. Folger squeezed the 8sailor’s forearm tightly, urging him to drop the firearm. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
From the mysterious island came three young oarsmen who fiercely paddled against the crashing waves. Each stroke, performed in unison, moved them closer to the Topaz with astonishing speed. Their clothing was rudimentary—small swatches of tapa cloth strung around their waists for modesty—save a straw hat with a wide brim and large black feather worn by the eldest of the three rowers, who steered the vessel from the back.
Folger locked eyes with the man in the hat: like two slate pebbles in shallow pools. He then raised both of his arms high in the air to show that he wasn’t harboring a weapon. Through the biggest smile he could muster, Folger let out a booming “Hello!” And the strangest, most unexpected sound was returned: a perfect echo—“Hello”—in crisp and proper English.
“Who are you?” the man in the straw hat continued.
Stunned, the sealers exchanged silent glances during an extended pause. They were over nine thousand miles from Great Britain.
“This is the ship Topaz of the United States of America. I am its master, Captain Mayhew Folger.”
“We do not know of America … Is it in Ireland?”
By now the relentless swell was knocking the outrigger against the hull of Folger’s ship. He flung a rope over to the islanders, and as they fastened the two vessels together he studied them more closely. Their tall, bare bodies showed not a trace of indulgence—each muscle and sinew rippled across their hairless chests. And although they spoke the king’s English, they bore few European traits—their lean anatomies lacquered in the same auburn tint as the wood of their tiny craft. All three were teenagers but possessed a certain wide-eyed innocence often lost in adolescence.
“Who are you?” Folger continued the volley.
“We are good Englishmen.”
“Where were you born?”
“In this place which you see.”
“How then are you Englishmen if you were born on this island?”
“Because our father is an Englishman.” 9
“Who is your father?”
“John.”
“John, who?”
“Don’t you know him? Our Father John?”
Folger paused. It was clear that the young men knew that a wide world existed beyond the confines of their tiny island, but they hadn’t grasped the concept that humans are not all acquainted with one another.
The man in the hat broke the silence. “Then perhaps you know Captain Bligh?” Folger did. And the mood immediately shifted among his crew. Everyone in the seafaring world knew William Bligh, commander of the HMAV Bounty, who was famously betrayed by his lieutenant Fletcher Christian and several other sailors, then cast out into the abyss when they seized control of the ship. If Bligh had once surveyed this island then surely it would have been dutifully logged. Could Father John be one of the mutineers? They were never heard from again after commandeering Bligh’s vessel. Was this their island hideaway?
“What is your name?” Folger asked.
“Thursday October Christian.” He puffed his chest. “For the day and month on which I was born.”
Christian. Yes, this couldn’t be a coincidence. There must be a relation to Fletcher Christian. “I would like to invite you and your Father John aboard to be my personal guests,” continued Folger, eager to learn more.
The three oarsmen unraveled the tethers and returned to their island with the invitation. For the next two hours, Folger paced back and forth with anticipation until he saw the raft reemerge from the island, but without an additional passenger. “Father John would like you to be our guest instead,” Thursday October said, gliding up against the ship ready to welcome Folger on board.
Pangs of curiosity overpowered Folger’s sensibilities. He dashed to his quarters and searched for his finery—a ruffled cravat and a navy blue tailcoat. There was no time to make a contingency plan should he be held prisoner on the island; he slid a furring knife deep in the pocket of his trousers as a precautionary measure. 10
Progress was slow as the fierce undertow dragged the canoe further out to sea before hurling it earthward on the crest of each tidal crush. A final wave ambushed the oarsmen as they made landfall, tossing Folger onto his hands and knees in the shallows of a small beach. Sopping wet, he reached for Thursday October’s helping hand. The young men in their loincloths seemed unfazed, already dried by the midday sun. Folger cursed the impracticality of his overly formal vestments, which weighed him down like chain mail.
“Come. We invite you for a meal.” Thursday October led the way up a treacherous path snaking toward the settlement high above. Folger gasped for breath as they climbed. “Had I known …” Step. “I would have brought along a barrel of rum from my ship as a thank you.” Step. “Or even to trade for more supplies …” Step. “I would be so grateful to benefit from your island’s fecundity.” Another step.
Thursday October stopped and looked back at Folger trying to keep his balance. “We are a society free of vice and sin,” he said, then turned around to continue the lead. “We are in need of nothing here.” He paused once more at a felled coconut, smashing it open with the single strike of a nearby rock, and handed it down to Folger. “But I can see that you are in need.” Folger slurped the contents of the coconut dry, letting the juice splash across his face. The sweet fizz washed away the fetid aftertaste of cured meat and seawater that had settled on his palate, and lent him enough vitality to finish the slog up toward even ground.
On the plateau, the relentless foliage had been twisted and tamed into what approximated an English common—a gated clearing patrolled by waddling chickens. On the far end of the pen sat a man and woman under the sprawling canopy of a single banyan tree. Rising when he noticed Folger’s arrival, the man took several steps forward until he reached the perimeter of the tree’s shade, where he waited. The woman stood close behind—his consort.
Folger hoisted his posture as he approached them and sucked the air through his teeth, now blanched with coconut milk. “I’m Captain Mayhew Folger of the American merchant vessel Topaz.”
“I’m John Adams,” the man said, his voice too gentle to escape the shadows in which he remained. As they shook hands, Folger 11studied him more closely. He had a dark complexion—so tan from the unyielding sun that it was hardly different from the tawny skin of the Polynesian woman at his side. Long, wiry shanks of hair—tendrils perpetually damp and encrusted with sand—tumbled down from a large straw hat that hid his balding crown. He was definitely an Englishman, and wore a sailor’s costume stitched for a younger man—his belly now pressed against the white linen fabric, testing the threshold of its buttons. If he were truly a mutineer from the Bounty, then he couldn’t be any older than forty or forty-five; the tropics had ravaged him. His eyes were sunken in—chasms, really—too deep to discern any meaning from his glances, but then Folger noticed a certain look of pity mirrored back in his direction.
Still wet, Folger attempted diplomatic airs in vain, combing his strands of straight brown hair with his fingers to distract from the gauntness of his face. He was surely five or ten years younger than Adams, and much more handsome, but navigating the depths of the Pacific had uglied his mien as well.
“You must be tired from your journey. We have prepared a banquet for you,” Adams continued. “But first I’ll need your knife.”
Folger, surprised, feigned confusion. “My knife?”
“Yes, your knife. The one in your pocket. I need it.” Adams’s tone seemed suddenly stern as he extended an empty palm. Folger reluctantly ran his hands through the folds of his trousers, excavating the rusty blade.
“There is no violence here.” Adams raised his other hand, lifting the bound pages of a tattered Bible into the sunlight.
“You are a society free of vice and sin,” rehearsed Folger.
“Indeed.”
Adams’s wife took the weapon and vanished into the two-story house behind the great banyan. Folger slowly followed, passing a crackling fire that warmed an iron cauldron. He ran his fingers along the intricacies of the exterior walls—the remnants of a ship’s keel, too elegant to have been crafted by the island’s rudimentary tools—and glimpsed a room full of European furniture through the open entryway.
“I was told you’ve heard of the Bounty,” interrupted Adams. 12
“Yes, I know of the Bounty. Everyone knows of the notorious Fletcher Christian and the Bounty.” Folger had memorized the ship’s manifest like a nursery rhyme, but John Adams was not one of the names of the nine mutineers. “It is you, however, that I do not know.”
“I was there, I assure you. But that was a long time ago—another lifetime really …”
Folger wanted to prod further but was interrupted by a procession of islanders coming to examine their very first visitor. Under the generous awning of the banyan tree, they laid down the trappings of a feast: pale yams and plantains boiled in coconut milk, roasted chicken, grilled fish, and a whole hog speared from snout to tail. Over thirty people gathered in the square, mostly teenagers and children dressed in simple bark cloth like Thursday October. They were too bashful to make eye contact with Folger, save one young girl brandishing an undaunted smile of brilliant, bright teeth. She handed him a delicate hibiscus flower more radiant than the autumn maple leaves back home in New England and led him by the hand toward the outdoor hearth. Folger slinked off his coat, still sopping wet, and sat with the others on the ground as they passed around dishware—an indiscriminate assortment of naval china and hollowed-out gourds. Adams joined the circle and said grace:
Suffer me not, oh Lord to waste this
Day in Sin or Folly but let me
Worship Thee with much Delight.
Teach me to know more of Thee and to
Serve Thee better than I have ever done before.
That I may be fitter to dwell in Heaven
Where Thy Worship and Service are Everlasting.
“Amen.” Folger could barely temper his starvation as he inhaled the meat and vegetables, pausing only to field Adams’s questions.
“Tell me, Captain, what have I missed after all this time?” Adams asked, half muffled as he mashed a boiled yam with his teeth. By Folger’s calculations, it had been almost two decades since the Bounty’s mutineers sought refuge at the end of the world—a world that 13had changed so dramatically since the dawning of the new century. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, inspiring thousands of new immigrants to cross the Atlantic. And the French had cut the heads off their monarchs, wanting liberté for all, only to embrace Napoleon’s tyranny, which had plunged the republic into a series of bitter wars. Adams, delighted to learn of England’s prosperity by comparison, sucked the morsels of stewed vegetables off the tips of his fingers in order to properly clap his hands. He then offered details about the Bounty in return: “In 1767 Captain Carteret, aboard the HMS Swallow, spotted land which he deemed ‘so high it could be seen from fifteen leagues away.’”
“Pitcairn,” Folger interrupted. He had a copy of Carteret’s logs back on his ship. The island had been written off as a mirage as it was never spotted again.
“Yes. After we reclaimed our fates from Captain Bligh we spent months searching for a suitable home until we chanced upon Carteret’s Pitcairn. And without a good anchorage, as you’ve seen—and a crew and a ship too weary for more seafaring—we ran the Bounty against the rocks and dismantled the vessel timber by timber to build our new island home, then destroyed the remains so as to not excite the curiosity of passersby.”
“Where are the other mutineers now?” Folger wondered.
“Swept away by desperate contentions.” Adams’s voice got quieter.
The older women—of whom there were four or five—exchanged piercing glances with Adams. He began to measure his words. Folger remained silent, rapt.
“On our journey to Pitcairn we rescued six Polynesian sailors from a watery grave; they joined our colony, and, all told, we numbered around two dozen. The first few months were peaceful—we settled the land and constructed our farmsteads—but the tribesmen soon rose up, jealous of the harmonious relationships with our Tahitian brides. They stole our guns, killing all of my compatriots in a single night; there was a bullet meant for me, but by the grace of God I was spared. Our brave and vengeful wives righted the wrong, and we’ve been alone ever since, unbothered by the vicissitudes of civilization.” 14
“I hope my presence hasn’t disturbed your hidden community,” Folger said, worried that Adams would resent his unintentional discovery.
“Secrets are like water. They seep into the crevices and cracks—every cleft and fissure. They fill holes, and sink even the mightiest of galleons.”
“Like the Bounty?”
“The truth always leaks out. I know this to be an inevitability.” Adams spoke more forcefully—his words weren’t just for Folger, but a sermon for his shipwrecked congregation.
After the meal, Adams invited Folger to explore the rest of the island. They passed several more homes, each one a different configuration of Bounty timbers and indigenous thatch. A few of the children followed closely behind, tugging at Folger’s trousers to point out strange insects and hand him an assortment of ripe fruit plucked from the trees. Pitcairn was small, but the turrets of earth and punishing incline created the illusion of vastness—a lost continent. From a lookout sheltered by a rocky overhang, Folger could see the Topaz far below, its two little masts bobbing in an otherwise empty sea—not a single speck of land could be spotted.
Folger noticed his shadow getting longer. “I should start making preparations to return to my ship.” Adams quietly bowed his head, acknowledging Folger’s request, and started down the trail leading back to the village. Deep in thought, they walked for many minutes until Adams spoke. “What will you tell your men about this day?”
“That a new country thrives here, and its citizens hold the answer to one of the world’s greatest questions: the fate of the Bounty’s missing mutineers.”
“And I should expect that the Admiralty will hear the details of our meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Oh rods of scorpions and whips of steel which conscience shakes!” Adams wailed. “Not sharp revenge, not hell itself can find a fiercer torment than a guilty mind!” 15
Folger placed his hand on Adams’s shoulder to quell his angst. “I will be sure to tell England of the good Christian people here on Pitcairn’s Rock too.”
“Piety has been my penance. And these children should not be made to atone for the sins of their fathers.” Eighteen years of exile was a harsh enough punishment for his crime.
As they returned to the village green, Adams’s wife waved them over to the banyan tree where the older women and their daughters were beginning to gather bushels of fresh provisions for Folger to take back to his men.
“I do hope this request is not misconstrued as ill-mannered, as I am very grateful to have indulged in your bounty: Might there be a token less perishable—proof—I could carry back so that when I recount your story to those at home they do not think I’ve gone mad in these remote waters?” Folger turned to Adams, who then disappeared into the darkness of his house. He promptly reemerged with two items: a small wooden box containing a rusting azimuth compass, and a Larcum Kendall marine chronometer that looked like a silver pocket watch. He handed the gifts to Folger. “We have no use for these as we never plan on leaving this paradise.”
Stone by stone, Folger followed Thursday October back down the mountainside, with the younger oarsmen close behind carrying the baskets of fruits and vegetables for his languishing men. As they launched the outrigger into the twilight, he could hear an evening prayer from above, a madrigal sung by the children of castaways.
Father! Let our supplications
Find acceptance in Thy sight;
Free from Satan’s foul temptations
From the perils of the night.
Oh, preserve us,
Till return of morning light.
16On the bow of the Topaz, Captain Folger stared back at the rediscovered island. Adams’s campfire had been snuffed out and was now nothing more than a pyre of smoldering embers. Folger dangled the Bounty’s chronometer by its chain, twirling it on the tip of his finger. The waxing moon had eclipsed most of the starlight; its beams flashed against the metal of the timepiece as it spun around.
From deep within his coat pocket Folger produced not a skinning knife but the delicate hibiscus flower from the young girl. He plucked the petals from the bulb, pressing them tightly between the last two pages of his logbook until they stained the parchment red. He unscrolled his nautical charts and let his plume bleed a single droplet of ink where Pitcairn properly stood—25°02'S 130°00'W—righting Captain Carteret’s erroneous markings from over forty years ago. A smile crept across his face as he chronicled the events of the day. He had inadvertently solved one of the greatest nautical mysteries of all time. Racked with anticipation, he tongued the interior architecture of his mouth once more.
When the morning light returned, the ship turned east into the rising sun and toward South America, over three thousand miles away. The day felt auspicious; the seas were finally calmer and the winds favorable. Little did Folger know, however, that the Topaz was sailing directly into hostile territory. Six weeks later, the ship would be pummeled by gunfire from the Spanish fleet, and the story of Fletcher Christian’s fate locked away in the bowels of a naval prison along with Folger and his men. His only proof of the encounter—the chronometer and azimuth compass—was seized as contraband, never to be returned to the captain.
It took a haggard Folger over fifteen months to finally arrive in Valparaíso, Chile, where he reported his findings to the Royal Navy. And a second year passed before his logbook reached the Admiralty in Britain. Navy officials promptly buried the transcript under bureaucratic rubble, devoting their attention to the ongoing war with France instead.
In 1813, a full five years after his faraway encounter, Folger vigorously penned a letter from his new home in Massillon, Ohio, 17attempting to solicit the interest of the Admiralty once more. But it wasn’t until 1814 that the news finally spread, when two ships sailing in tandem, the HMS Briton and the HMS Tagus, happened upon Pitcairn not knowing of Folger’s discovery. With the Napoleonic Wars drawing to a close, Britain finally acknowledged the blemish on its naval record. The Bounty’s fate quickly filled the pages of periodicals around the globe, igniting the imagination of millions.
But which of Fletcher Christian’s comrades was John Adams? Could Adams have been Christian himself, so reviled by the British Crown that he adopted an alias during his eighteen years of solitude? And, more importantly, was Adams’s account of his time on Pitcairn and the fates of the other fugitives even true? The real identity of the mysterious mutineer would remain hidden. But secrets are like water—they always have a way of trickling out …
CHAPTER 3
ARTOCARPUS INCISA
August–December 1787
William Bligh penned his correspondence with polite precision. “My dear Sir, I have heard the flattering news, that you intend to honor me with the command of a vessel to go to the South Seas.” He showed no trace of the bitter disappointment he harbored. “After offering you my most grateful thanks, I can only assure you I shall endeavor, and I hope, succeed, in deserving such a trust.” He added one last flourish of his quill—the slashed strokes of his autograph, meticulous yet grand—before folding his note in half.
A short time later, the letter arrived in London’s Soho Square, at a lavish town house filled to the chandeliers with oddities and artifacts collected from every corner of the known world: feathered headdresses, jade pendants, and long canoe oars that once stroked the surface of foreign oceans. Over the last decade, the home of Sir Joseph Banks—president of the Royal Society, England’s academy of sciences—had become an unofficial museum, a mad scientist’s lair where tens of thousands of botanical specimens had been dutifully dried and logged with detailed renderings.
Banks had become a fixture of polite society after traversing the globe with Captain James Cook on his first round-the-world tour aboard the HMS Endeavour. The official mandate of the mission was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, and thus be able 19to measure the distance between the Earth and its star through solar parallax. But secretly the Royal Navy had also hoped to find a much-mythologized southern continent in the heart of the Pacific. Banks personally funded the inclusion of his elite entourage on board—four distinguished scientists and four servants from his estate—and turned the voyage into an ambitious attempt to document all the world’s living wonders. He recorded over 1,300 new species of plants—sketching bougainvilleas in Brazil and giant winika orchids in New Zealand—and excitedly wrote about the unique leaping abilities of a never-before-seen “kangaru” creature in Australia. But it was the spirited recounting of his time on Tahiti—“the truest picture of arcadia”—that propelled the hobbyist to fame after the three-year journey was complete.
The mere knowledge of Tahiti’s existence seemed to subvert the word of God. While visiting the island, Banks readily partook in all of its locals’ pursuits: fishing, naked dancing, attending strange rites of human sacrifice, and “making gifts” of the beautiful women sent to his tent—abhorrent vices by Christian doctrine. And under his exaggerated macaroni fashion, Banks hid a constellation of small tattoos. Although the Tahitians knew no temperance to their carnal pursuits, they were also blissfully free of the lust for power and possessions that etched canyons of disparity between Europe’s prosperous and poor. The perfect escape fantasy from greedy, rainy London, Tahiti quickly became a mainstream obsession as well.
But of all the oddities stashed in the cargo hold of the HMS Endeavour—and of all the titillating tales told at the banquets and balls that followed—the one item that most captured Banks’s botanically inclined imagination was a fleshy orb that weighed down the branches of the Tahitian mulberry: Artocarpus incisa, known colloquially as breadfruit for its starchy consistency and toothsome bite. Supposedly, with eyes closed, one could not discern the difference between a morsel of the baked wedge and a crusty loaf fresh from the oven.
The plant’s magical properties—hyperbolized like Tahiti’s other virtues—also excited the imagination of several wealthy landowners 20in the Caribbean, including Duncan Campbell, who ran a large plantation in Jamaica and a fleet of private ships that indiscriminately moved convicts and cargo across great oceans. Triangle trade was booming—rum and sugar zipped between continents—but the management of African slaves had become a costly prospect. Perhaps the introduction of breadfruit to the West Indies could be a more efficient means of feeding the landowners’ human capital?
Campbell tried to solicit a merchant vessel to undertake the procurement of some breadfruit seedlings, but the project was deemed too cumbersome and costly for a trader to turn a worthy profit. So Campbell called on Banks to help inspire a bit of benevolence from the Crown. The Royal Navy soon agreed that a voyage to the legendary island was a worthy investment in the prosperity of England’s slave trade, especially after losing its new-world colonies during the recent American Revolutionary War.
“One hour’s negligence may at any period be the means of destroying all the trees and plants which may have been collected,” instructed Banks. A special ship would need to be outfitted to ensure the mission’s success. The Royal Navy thusly purchased the Bethia—which happened to be one of Campbell’s mercantile cruisers—and spent a small fortune remodeling the craft. First came a protective copper plating to safeguard the hull from both woodworm and Tahiti’s tropical waters, which threatened to turn the ship’s well-worn timbers into rotted mush. Then, a sprawling greenhouse took up half the lower deck in the only area on board with windows, and a special stove was installed to help regulate the temperature of the plant cuttings as they drifted through different climates on their eventual journey from Tahiti to Jamaica. The ship measured almost ninety-one feet in length, weighed just over two hundred tons (around half the volume of Cook’s Endeavour), and had three decks and three small tenders for shoreside ferrying. The only item on board that remained untouched was the thirty-foot figure of a woman in full riding habit that adorned the ship’s front under the long reaching arm of the bowsprit. 21
Newly refitted, the Bethia was the Royal Navy’s strangest little watercraft and, in honor of its equally unusual mission, was duly renamed: His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty.
The Bounty now needed a captain, and at Campbell’s suggestion Banks urged the Admiralty to offer the job to William Bligh. Bligh had helmed one of Campbell’s merchant ships in the West Indies; he also happened to be married to Campbell’s niece.
As kings crowned their princes, so, too, was the calling in of familial favors an implicit part of everyday life in England. But the Age of Discovery had begun to close the gap between the nobility and the other classes; the ocean was an arena in which ambitious commoners played war games alongside the sons of dukes and earls. Bligh was one such gentleman who sought to climb the rungs of society all the way to the upper decks. He inherited his frosty blue eyes from his peasant mother, who died when he was a child, and his tight curls of black hair from his father, the head customs officer at the Royal Navy’s dockyards, which gave a teenage Bligh an advantage when signing up for a life at sea.
Slightly shorter than the average man, and with the white skin of a porcelain doll, Bligh—now just shy of his thirty-third birthday—may not have looked the part of sea captain, but his experience did in fact make him a worthy choice to lead the mission. Like Banks, Bligh was one of the few Englishmen to have witnessed the fantasies of Tahiti firsthand. Eight years earlier he served aboard the HMS Resolution on Captain Cook’s third and final voyage around the globe, a fateful journey that ended abruptly for Britain’s most celebrated navigator when he was pelted with stones and stabbed to death on the island of Hawaii by its indigenous inhabitants. After returning to England, Bligh was the only member of Cook’s inner sanctum not to receive a promotion—likely due to the lack of distinction in his pedigree—so he sought work aboard private trading ships instead.
In his concise letter to Banks, Bligh expressed his gratitude to the scion of scientific discovery for offering him a return to the Royal 22Navy with his first command posting, but a half-size vessel filled with shrubbery was not what he had in mind.
And there was more to complain about besides the large amount of space he would forfeit to the delicate breadfruit: He would receive a reduced salary. With space for a crew of only forty-six (again, roughly half the size of Cook’s Endeavour), Bligh would have to double as the ship’s purser, responsible for balancing the vessel’s expenses. He would, however, be allowed to skim the coffers of any funds not spent on rations or repairs—a system the Royal Navy regularly implemented to incentivize accountants not to overspend. And as the mission was of a scientific nature, the usual marine marshals—dispatched for disciplinary purposes—were replaced with a botanist and gardener, meaning Bligh would also moonlight as the Bounty’s only security detail. He had hoped these command caveats would earn him an appeal to his vanity with a formal promotion from lieutenant to captain, but his repeated requests for an advancement were categorically denied—such honors were only bestowed during wartime.
After the botanist and gardener—and the usual assortment of warrant officers, like a carpenter and sailmaker—Thomas Huggan joined the Bounty’s ranks as its surgeon, despite his reputation as a bumbling old drunkard. Once again Bligh waved his quill, sending a spate of politely incensed letters to the Admiralty demanding a more suitable doctor. His appeals were unsurprisingly ignored, but Bligh was allowed to staff the rest of his crew with sailors of his own choosing, starting with the midshipmen (young officers in training).
Bligh had finally ingratiated himself into the upper echelons of society, and now its members came calling for favors. His desk was stacked with correspondence: requests from influential acquaintances hoping to place their teenage sons and nephews aboard his ship so that they may break into a career at sea. The Royal Navy recommended hiring two such apprentices. Bligh chose six, and a few extras that he crammed onto the ship’s decks under different titles, honoring a handful of flippant promises made to friends of his wife’s family, since he, too, found himself painted onto the Bounty’s register by the light brushstrokes of nepotism. 23
In September, the fledglings left their nests, traveling from every corner of Great Britain to gather on the docks at Portsmouth, the same piers on which Bligh’s father had worked, surveying the arrival of imported goods from all over the world.
“I heard Mr. Bligh watched Captain Cook die at the hands of murderous savages.”
“I heard Cook’s limbs were ripped apart, his body torn into pieces—one for every continent he discovered.”
John Hallett and Thomas Hayward came from prominent middle-class families, whose new money afforded their sons the full battery of etiquette and elocution lessons to smooth their unrefined behavior into pastiches of perfect gentlemen—their pubescent propensity for gossip and self-righteousness notwithstanding, blemishes on otherwise polished facades, like the pink peppering of mild acne that freckled their cheeks.
“Yes, boys, it’s true,” Bligh interrupted. He had arrived unnoticed, startling the circle of teens during their rapturous exchange of rumors. They quickly tugged at their jackets to shake out any unwanted wrinkles and craned their casual posture into awkward at-attention poses.
“And had I been in command of the landing party, instead of watching the hideous display from a rowboat,” Bligh continued, “I guarantee that James Cook would still be alive and well today.”
Most men would have been deeply affected by witnessing such a massacre, but Bligh was haunted more by the circumstances of that fateful day than the torturous dismembering of his mentor. The landing party was disorganized, its sailors easily spooked, “not a spark of courage or conduct was shown in the whole business.” He was sure that if he had been in charge of the mission, he would have been brave enough to stand his ground against the sudden ambush by the Hawaiians.
Bligh squinted at his midshipmen, trying to estimate how each one would soon fare on the open seas. Their dark blue coats and rippled black hats looked more like costumes than uniforms. They seemed younger than the descriptions offered by their esteemed contacts—the families and friends who had secured their tenures 24on the ship. A few were not yet sixteen, boys emerging from the chrysalis of childhood knowing only of the vast world through the books that lined the libraries and salons of their families’ country estates. Even the debauchery of nearby London was just as much of an abstraction as the monstrous jungle vines of faraway lands newly drafted in Banks’s botanical journals.
As the group continued to exchange formal pleasantries, another man joined Bligh’s side—not too much older than the boys, but already toughened by a sea voyage or two. He was tall, verging on lanky, and his olive skin—perhaps tanned in warmer climes—starkly contrasted with the milky hues of the delicate youths. It would have been easy to assume he was of Spanish or Portuguese extraction if it weren’t for his eyes—like two pewter coins that hinted at a Norse or Celtic heritage instead—and his prim British cadence: “Pleasure to meet everyone. I’m Fletcher Christian.”
“Mr. Christian was once a midshipman like yourselves,” Bligh added—the two had twice sailed together on mercantile missions in the West Indies—“and it is by my own special request that he joins us on this, a most ambitious of scientific missions.”
At twenty-three, and with a promotion to master’s mate aboard the Bounty, Christian was well on his way to captaining a ship of his own in ten years’ time, like Bligh, though a naval career seemed like an unusual prospect for a young man with such a distinguished pedigree who had once shown great academic promise.
