After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Real Mutiny on the Bounty: Revenge in Paradise (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Mutineers, manhunts, uninhabited tropical islands and...SHIPWRECKS! The second part of the story of the Mutiny of the Bounty is even wilder than the first. This time we follow HMS Pandora as it hunts down the mutineers, and uncover the incredible story of how a group of mutineers and Polynesians escaped to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn.Written by Maddy Pelling.Edited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ 

Early November 1790. The Portsmouth Dock was alive with activity as the HMS Pandora prepared to set sail. The scent of saltwater and the promise of the ocean beyond mingled with the stench of tar. Ropes hissed as sails hoisted into position, boots thudded on the loading planks, and in the air, gulls cried that the way ahead was clear. captain edward edwards stood on the quarter deck his expression grim his orders were clear to sail to the south pacific hunt down the mutineers from the bounty and if possible bring them and the ship back to britain it was all, the valuable property of the Royal Navy and His Majesty King George. Edwards sympathised with Bly, the bounty's overthrown captain. In fact, he'd faced a similar

mutiny himself years before. Here was a chance to prove himself to the Admiralty. He would deliver swift and hard justice for all. Fletcher Christian, the bounty's master's mate, would be the biggest prize. Edwards looked around, imagining months from now, Christian being unloaded in irons down the plank. The city crowds would surely applaud the man who had brought this enemy of empire to face punishment. The sails above Edward's head unfurled and the ship groaned as it began to move away from the harbour wall. Soon Pandora and all who sailed in her would be cutting speedily through the choppy Atlantic. England's coastline long since disappeared. What awaited them, though, was uncharted, their fates uncertain. Would they find the mutineers hiding from the long arm of British retribution?

Or would they be forced to return embarrassed and empty-handed to the heart of imperial administration? The End Well, we're about to try and answer some of those questions. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddy. And in this episode, we are picking up from where we left off with the story of the mutineers aboard the ill-fated HMS Bounty. Now, if you haven't listened to our previous episode on the mutiny, I think you probably should. Go back there, listen to that first, and then join us again here. And we will have all the

details lined up in perfect narrative form for you, just so that we're not confused. So if you haven't listened to that, pause this one, go back. Okay. Anyone who's left with us, I presume you've listened to episode one. Good. So the last time we heard from any of the men aboard the bounty, we were in London with Lieutenant slash Lieutenant Bly, the commander, controversial, the commander of the voyage overthrown by his own men. Now he had been vindicated after his court martial and declared a victim of this terrible crime, which was a crime against empire and, of course, British military discipline. We heard how Bly would go on to have a long and pretty eventful, actually, career as an agent of empire, ending his own story on the other side of the globe in Australia. But, and this is the purpose of this episode,

what about the mutineers themselves? The men who had set him adrift in the ocean with little hope of survival. From Bly's perspective and the perspective of the British, these men were traitors. They were outcasts. They should, as Maddy was saying at the start, be hunted down and made to face the noose. But how did they feel about their situation? And most pressingly, what would they do next? Thankfully, we have Maddy who has immersed herself in all things mutiny and bounty to tell us more. Maddy, fill us in. Where are we with this particular story after we've left these men?

Well, firstly, I want to say I'm so glad we've got to do a second episode on this, because there is still so much story to tell. What I think is so fascinating about the story of the bounty is that at the moment when Bly is mutineered against on the deck of the bounty, and Fletcher and his men put Bly into that rowboat and set him adrift. The story splits into two halves. We've got Bly trying to make his way back to Britain. We know he gets there. We know he tells his story. We've also got these mutineers and we're going to follow this story today. So in lots of ways, I want to say up front that that is a really oversimplified narrative actually of these two halves. And we're going to delve into some of the nuances of that, the different group dynamics within the mutineers, what happens to them because they split off in

different branches. And then we've also got this extra storyline going on. HMS Pandora, with Captain Edward Edwards at its helm, has been sent by the British out into the world to hunt down mutineers and bring them to justice. So it's a real race against time. Brilliant. Just for simple people like me, because I get confused so very easily. It's true. I just want to make sure, it really is true. I just want to make sure that I have all my ducks in a row. So we have the Captain Bly narrative, which he has gone back to London, he has been exonerated. We have the mutineer narrative, which is they're still on the island and they are living a completely different life. And the third strand to this then is going to be the journey to bring

these men back to Britain and get some justice. Yeah, absolutely. So we have two timelines going on now. I want you to bear them in mind that we've got at the end of 1790, we've got HMS Pandora leaving Britain under the captainship of Edward Edwards, heading out to hunt for the mutineers. But in order to tell the story of the mutineers themselves, we need to go slightly back a few months earlier to the end of 1789 into the beginning of 1790. So the last time we saw them and we talked about the image, the print, they'd pushed Bly out into sea. They were causing chaos on the ship. They were throwing the breadfruit plants, remember those, off the side of the deck. They were in the captain's cabin throwing his

bedding out the window. It was a nightmare. All discipline had gone out the window. And to a certain extent, Fletcher Christian, who was largely described as being the leader of the mutiny, his authority, it's not so clear. It's not so clear what all the motives are. Everyone's got their own things going on, their own motivations, their own resentments. So we're now left with this gang of men who are loosely under the control of Fletcher. What's going to happen next? So the first thing that they do, and I think we covered this a little bit in the end of the last episode, is that they turn around immediately and go back to Tahiti, where they've had the most brilliant time. They have started relationships with people on the island. They have sort of immersed

themselves in the local culture and the Tahitians are mostly welcoming to these Europeans and have brought them into their community. So they go back and when they get there, the group almost instantly splits into two because most of the men initially want to stay on Tahiti. Why wouldn't you? It's an incredibly beautiful place with welcoming people. And it seems like a bounteous place full of fertile land and beautiful fruits. And there's food, there's farming to be done. An idyllic life could be had here for them. However, Fletcher and others are very aware that the British are going to come for them. There's no way that there's not going to be retribution. And so Fletcher and a handful of men decide that they want to leave Tahiti. It's just not safe.

And we see this split. Some of them stay. They're willing to take their chance in order to try and live this idyllic life. Fletcher sets off. Sorry, go on. And there's an irony here, isn't there, Maddy? Because the reason, or one of the main reasons, it seems, that the mutiny took place, if I remember correctly from episode one,

was that they wanted to go back to Tahiti. So now that they have gone back to Tahiti, now they're going, actually, we need to get out of Tahiti. Absolutely, yeah. And this is a story that is full. We're going to see these ironies again and again and again. It's people's poor decision making.

It's people's lack of clarity, lack of looking ahead. That's constantly the problem. Now, before Fletcher and his smaller group of men leave the island, they actually agree with the Tahitian leaders to take some locals with them. So they take 12 Polynesian women, who most of them have been in relationships with Fletcher and the other man, and also some of the Tahitian men with them. And this is a really interesting decision. I think it speaks to the Polynesian seafaring culture and the moving from island to island. And I think it maybe isn't as unusual as we would maybe perceive it to be that they that these tahitians would want to throw their lot in

with these condemned mutineers who you know presumably have a bullseye drawn on all of their backs but that is the situation and so they set off on the bounty don't forget they still have the ship so they are still able to sail around that actually that's so true they still have the bounty okay that's yeah so really worth so they have this floating home but of course the bounty itself is a prize that the navy is going to want back so whilst it is a useful tool for them it's also a massive beacon saying hello we are here come and capture us so they float around for a little bit and they sail from island to island. But in the South Pacific, some of the indigenous people on various islands are not friendly to Europeans. And so it's dangerous for them to land. And they're really struggling to find a place to go to.

Now, if you think back to when Bly is put in the longboat and abandoned in that way by the rest of the crew, he's allowed certain items to take with him. But all of his charts and maps, Fletcher, Christian, demands that they're kept on board. And he now turns to those really helpful resources in order to try and work out what to do. And it takes him weeks, if not months, of poring over these maps, trying to look for somewhere British ships do not pass with any regularity, that's not close to any British ports, trading routes, all of that. And of course, that's very difficult in a time of really huge naval activity in this region. And eventually, he comes across a account, a book written by a man called Philip Carteray in 1767, so a couple of decades earlier. And this was a voyage on a ship called HMS Swallow that went around the world. And in that, he describes in passing, in a tiny

little sentence, an island that he... These are Philip Carteray's words. He says, it appeared like a giant rock rising out of the sea. It was not more than five miles in circumference and seemed to be uninhabited. That's a very important point in terms of what Fletcher Christian is looking for. Cartier continues, he says, it was however covered with trees and we saw a small stream of fresh water running down one side of it. I would have landed upon it, but the surf, which at the season broke upon it with great violence, rendered it impossible. Now, this sounds like an ideal island. It's got fresh water on it. It's uninhabited. Importantly as

well, it's really hard to access. And while that will inevitably prove a challenge for Fletcher, Christian and the others trying to get onto the island, it means that a lot of people aren't going to bother because it looks too hostile. So this is a perfect hiding place. And so he sets off to do it. So the name of this island is Pitcairn Island. And what's also crucial for our story is that, and this is initially a problem for Christian, is that it's plotted incorrectly on the maps it has.

So it takes them literally months, months to find it. So they are sailing around searching for it. It turns out it is 188 nautical miles east of its position as recorded on the map, which is not great for finding it. But again, once they do find it, they realize nobody is going to find them there it's hidden on the map in the wrong place it is hostile hard to get to but it has all these ingredients once you get onto the island for living a healthy and secure life so it's absolutely perfect the question is is this going to be their lucky break?

And what's going to happen to this very small insular group once they get there? No, I mean, it's not going to be their lucky break. It can't be their lucky break. I'm just, why haven't I rooting for these people, by the way? I feel like I should be rooting for them. At the same time, there's something in the back of my brain that's going, don't root for these guys, don't root for them. But I have a feeling that this is not going to be their lucky break, but I have a feeling that you're going to be able to tell us exactly what happens next.

Thank you. Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. As the bounty sped towards it, steered by its skeleton crew, Pitcairn rose like a green jewel out of the sea. After months of searching, they had found it. Its elusiveness and the mistake in its coordinates on the map made it the perfect hideout. Surely they were safe from the British here. The question, though they did not know it yet, would instead be whether

they were safe from themselves in this isolated haven. Soon Fletcher was ordering for the anchor to be lowered. The ship was stripped of its masts and spars. Anything that could be used as building materials on the island was ripped from its place on the bounty and taken ashore. On January the 23rd 1790, not long after their arrival, the decision was made by the mutineers and their fellow Tahitians to burn the ship. The risk of it being spotted was simply too great, and soon Fletcher and the others watched from the cliffs of their new home as the vessel whose name was already so infamous back in Britain lit up the night sky.

It sizzled as it fell apart and sank charred beneath the waves. when months later hms pandora passed by pitcairn on its way to tahiti its captain and crew had no idea it harbored the very men they had been sent to capture by march 1791 pandora had reached its destination now for those of the bount's crew who had stayed in Tahiti, there would be hell to pay. Edwards, true to form, showed little mercy or compassion. He refused to distinguish between those who had been active in the mutiny and those who had remained loyal to Bly. All were rounded up, clapped in irons and stowed below Pandora's deck, before Edwards pulled anchor and set off, hopping from island to island in search of Fletcher and his renegades. For the mutineers turned prisoners, things would soon become desperate. Life on board Pandora was

brutal. They were routinely flogged and assaulted by the crew and, when not chained below, left out on deck in the sun until their skin blistered. But the true disaster was still to come. After weeks of island hopping, Pandora came suddenly upon the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Immediately the ship ran into trouble, groaning as her underbelly was torn and shredded. In no time at all the ship had begun to sink. Panic ensued and everywhere men rushed to their stations, bailing out water and climbing over one another to heave themselves to the top deck. In the bowels below, the prisoners from the bounty struggled in vain against their chains. They did have help. Some were released in time,

swept along with the rest of the Pandora men up to the surface. Others were not so lucky. By the time the tip of her mast had slipped beneath the water, Pandora had lost 31 of her crew and, with them, four of the prisoners. The survivors looked on in horror, huddled together in longboats similar to that used by Bly. Now, ironically, they would follow his route back home to Britain. The first thing I need to say is that Maddy Pelling is solely responsible for me liking naval history now, because I never, ever liked naval history until we started doing this podcast. And now I'm like, oh my God, naval history is so exciting. And claiming that as a victory.

Yeah, it is a victory because I would never have gone near it prior to this. So just to round up a little bit so we're clear on the different timelines that are unfolding. We have the bounty mutineers who are with the ship, who have gone to pick Cairn with the Tahitians. And they are there.

They have burnt the ship and to get rid of the evidence essentially which seems like a wild decision i mean that is that is a final measure they are not getting off that island ever well it also says how uneasy they are right because it says we we know they are looking because in my head i'm like well you're so far away from everything in the world you'll probably be fine but no they are not resting on their laurels here. They're going, no, destroy the evidence. This is too big a thing to have floating around. We'll totally be caught.

So that's that. On the other side of things, HMS Pandora reaches Tahiti, gets the mutineers that remained on that island, takes them, shackles them, brings them, well, attempts to bring them back to Britain. However, whilst they're searching for the other mutineers who are on that island, takes them, shackles them, brings them, well, attempts to bring them back to Britain. However, whilst they're searching for the other mutineers who are on Piccairn, unknown to them,

they crash into the Great Barrier Reef and absolute chaos, by the sounds of it, unfolds. So this is where we now are in the middle of this particular story. Yeah, and you know, for Edwards, it's so embarrassing. He has previously been on the receiving end of a mutiny on his own ship. I think it's the HMS Narcissus a few years earlier. Now he's been put in charge of the Pandora. He is the great hope of the Royal Navy because of course they need to make an example of these mutineers they can't allow this to go unchecked they've sent a whole ship and a whole crew which is you know expensive and those are vital resources they've sent them

with the sole purpose of hunting these men down and bringing them back to britain to be hanged basically just to say about the wreck sites this is so fascinating obviously we lose there's four prisoners who die. And it seems to be because they're chained up and they're not released in time, which is pretty horrendous. Now, the wreck site itself was actually dived, dove, given. Definitely not given, but I like it. Not that, we'll go with that. First in 1986, and then on multiple dives in the late 90s and remarkably because of and i read an archaeological report and this is my

very inexpert interpretation of this because of the way the ocean moves there and because of the environment on the ocean floor human remains have survived pretty much in place and also because they can tell by the fact that they haven't washed away or been moved by marine wildlife that they were in the bowels of the ship when the ship went down and that's why they've been sort of pinned in place and because of the the environment that preserves these human remains so well there was still soft tissue on some of the bones when they were looked at in this in the 1980s. Absolutely incredible. Now, that archaeological record combined with the archives actually gives us really tangible people. So the four, I'm going to tell you a little bit briefly about the sort of physicality of these four men who were lost, because I think

one of the great things about the Bounty story is that tangibility of history, because even though it's centuries ago, as we're going to see, there are these threads that come through to the 20th and the 21st century, actually. And it just seems so visceral. So among the crew and the prisoners to be lost, these four prisoners, and the first of these, Henry Hildebrandt. We know from records he was 25, because remember the Bounties crew were all really young. He's 25, he has fair hair, he has a left arm shorter than the other one because it's been broken in the past. Interestingly, he was born in Hanover and he spoke pretty broken English, which again, fascinating. He was tattooed in several places, as most of the crew of the Bounty were, and I'm going to talk a little bit about this in a second. He was tattooed in several places as most of the crew of the bounty were. And I'm

going to talk a little bit about this in a second. He was also treated for venereal disease when he was in Tahiti, which is again, something we're going to see of a lot of these men. Just talking about the sort of physicalities of some of these others. We've got Richard Skinner, who was 22. He had scars on his ankles, also treated for venereal disease then we've got we have a midshipman called george stewart who was 23 i love this so he has dark hair he's quite slender he's described as narrow chested and has a long neck he's got a tattoo of a star on his left breast and on his left arm he's got heart with darts also just the line underneath that, tattooed on backside. No more information. And what I think is so fascinating about that is in the way that people often tell the history of

tattooing in Europe is that there's this sort of myth that it was brought back because of the Captain Cook voyages, coming into contact with Polynesians and being tattooed by them and bringing that process back. We now know that's not the case. And actually there was tattooing going on in Europe well before that. And I think what we're seeing on some of the bodies of these men who die aboard the Pandora is actually tattooing from Britain. So the star on George Stewart's chest and the heart with the darts, very typical of nautical tattooing in Europe at that time. But then when he's tattooed on his backside, I would venture a guess that's possibly a tattoo that he's had done

in Tahiti during his time there. So you're getting these interesting cultural encounters happening on the bodies of the men themselves that of course we don't survive anymore, but it just makes their history and the experiences they've been through so tangible. So that's the Pandora. It sank. Now Edwards does get back to Britain with the rest of the prisoners. Immediately after this, after the sinking, yeah. Yeah. So he basically takes the same route that Bly does to get back. They're in the longboats over the Great Barrier Reef. They do manage to eventually meet up with various British warships and they are taken as passengers back to Britain, including some of the prisoners, the mutineers

from the bounty who do face justice back home. But we're going to move now to Pitcairn Island and what happens to the rest of the mutineers. So we last saw them when they burned the ship. They're now isolated. And we know, they don't know this, but we know that Pandora has passed them by months before without realising that they're there. So what is life like for people on this island? Do you want to take any guesses? Well, they're quite safe now in one sense,

even though they don't know that. Okay, what is life like on this island? I'm wondering about resources that are going to be available on the island. It's five miles long, you mentioned at one point. So unless it's quite fruitful, there's only going to be so much ground to cover. Exploration can be done quite quickly. I'm imagining that you're on the face of the fact that you're asking the question it means that it hasn't gone well as per usual this is after dark

yeah so i mean look to begin with everything is going according to very flimsy plan they've arrived there they are organized in a sort of strange community. There are some people who are partnered up. So Fletcher Christian is in a relationship with a Tahitian woman. Some of the other men are. And you start to get family units emerging. So children start to be born. I believe there was a child who was already born of a Tahitian mother and one of the bounty mutineers back in Tahiti who's brought

to Pitcairn but we start to see others arriving including now you've heard of Wednesday Adams Fletcher Christian's son is born he's the first of many children to be born he's called Thursday October Christian and I kind of love it I sort of love it and there's a an account given by christian that i saw in passing when i was researching this where he says he chose that name because he didn't want it to sound like a kind of name that you would get back in britain he wants to cut ties and so he calls his son thursday october christian because he's born on a thursday in october it's also quite man friday-esque as well which is interesting thinking about sort of imperialistic overtones and the sort of racist

tension between europeans and tahitians and that's something that we're going to sort of see really defining the story of pitcairn in lots of ways, I think. So for a while, they're living plentifully and in peace, and everything is going okay. But Christian's authority starts to diminish and the resentments start inevitably to build up because the story of the bounty and its mutinies is nothing if not a story of human interest. It's what happens, it's a Lord of the Flies situation. It's what happens when you put men who don't particularly like each other at the beginning, at the outset, in close quarters, whether it's on a ship or afterwards on an island. It's not going to end well.

There is an inevitability about it, isn't there? There is a sense that put these men who are already under pressure into a situation that is relatively isolating. into a situation that is relatively isolating. And if it's not immediately fruitful and successful, and that success can't sustain itself, then the first person they're going to turn against is the leader of the mutiny, kind of saying,

listen, you promised us something, this golden land, and actually we're not quite able to, I'm assuming, maybe even get food together or whatever it is. But I do agree. I think it's so inevitable that this would break down.

Yeah. So what happens next is hotly debated. And there's not a lot of records, basically, to piece together these events. But disease starts to creep in. People start to get ill. The food they're trying to grow becomes diseased. Mental illness. There's lots of accounts of Christian himself becoming kind of prone to these long brooding moods where he isolates himself from everyone else. And he's obviously,

you know, it's a form of introspection. He's presumably looking back at what's happened with the mutiny and Bly and don't forget they were friends when they set off from Britain they were the one of the few allied pairs on the bounty and look where he is now in the South Pacific on an island he's never going to get off there's also tension building between the European men and the Tahitian men there's again because these the sort of slightly amalgamated family structures that are including European men and Tahitian women, and the Tahitian men as well, these start to break down or the boundaries start to become blurred and tensions rise. Now, in September 1793, we know that several

of the mutineers are killed, possibly including Christian himself. Although his death is, again, debated. There's suggestion in some camps that he maybe took his own life, or maybe he was murdered. One of the Tahitian women later reports that Fletcher, Christian's actually killed in his own garden while he's just clearing plants to make himself a nice outdoor space and that someone shoots him in the back. So it's really unclear. Also, the graves of most of those murdered mutineers are not marked on Pitcairn. So it's really hard to find their bodies, what happened to them. It's really unclear. But one thing that I want to draw attention to, I think is lost from the Hollywoodized version of Pitcairn, is the Tahitian women. And I think their contribution is absolutely

fascinating. So there are 12 Tahitian women who come on the bounty to Pitcairn. We've got Tua, we've got a woman called Tararua. And these women are, by their European male partners, given English names, Susan and Jenny, amongst others. And there's really fascinating research actually been done by a professor of geography called Donald Patrick Albert, who has actually plotted the travels of some of these women prior to their coming to Pitcairn. And afterwards, some of them actually did manage to leave the island in the decades afterwards. And again, it speaks to the Polynesian seafaring culture. And it gives us some insight into them as individuals, their experiences, and the contribution that they made to the community that they chose to build on Pitcairn with these

mutineers. However, by the end of the 18th, going into the 19th century, there is only one of the bounty mutineers left, there's a man called John Adams. And in 1808, an American ship called the Topaz comes unexpectedly across Pitcairn and it lands to see if there's anything there and discovers what is by then actually a thriving and quite peaceful community. John Adams is at its head and he's very much the patriarch. And he is seemingly responsible for the welfare of nine surviving women and 19 children. Now, interestingly, he's been using the bounty ship's Bible to teach them English and to teach them literacy, ship's bible to teach them english and to teach them literacy they can read and write and this christian element becomes a really important part of their story in the 19th century and by the time

of the victorian era there's a real narrative about pit can being a sort of colonial success story and it's so fascinating it's to do with europeans civilizing the tahitians and it's a real it becomes this real sort of imperial stronghold or a sort of prime example which is fascinating because of course in the 18th century these men are the lowest of the low they have committed the worst crime imaginable against the empire. And in the century afterwards, they're held up as a sort of shining example of this. Now, what's so fascinating is that when the American ship lands in 1810, it does pass on the news to Britain that it's found this island with the bounty mutineers. But at this point, Britain is at war with France and there's a huge global

conflict going on and all of its ships are needed elsewhere. There's fighting across the British Empire. So the mutineers are sort of forgotten. They're almost forgiven their crimes. And in 1814, we get two warships, the HMS Britain and the HMS Tagus that land on Pitcairn. Again, sort of by chance, they're just sort of passing through. And they don't take John Adams, who's the only one left at that point, as a prisoner. They are sort of fascinated by this community. And actually they meet a lot of the now grown up children or sort of suddenly coming into adulthood,

children of the mutineers, because we're now in the second generation of them. And one of the men aboard, I think the HMS Britain in 1814, actually sketches Thursday, October Christian, Fletcher's son. And I'm going to make you describe this image because it's so striking and it's so interesting. And I think there are so many different messages within this image. Gosh, there really are. It's a fascinating image. I don't think I've seen another early 19th century image quite like it. It is the depiction of a man wearing light coloured clothing and a light coloured hat. is plumage, which is coming down just to the side in front of his face. He looks at us directly. His hair is long and curled, and it's falling into his face and over his shoulder. I really have never seen a picture of an early 19th century man look like this. The garment that he's wearing is very tailored looking, actually, but sleeveless.

And through the sleeve then is a slim but muscular arm, which seems to be holding on to what appears to be some maybe form of tool. I think it's maybe a spearhead. I mean, it is a remarkable image. And I think it almost looks like a Hollywood version of a costume if you were shipwrecked on an island. And over the years, your clothes sort of disintegrated. And I almost feel like he's wearing some of his father's clothing, the hat and what looks like almost a waistcoat, maybe. But it feels too tailored almost for that. And look at the cut of the neck as well.

There's something very unusual about that. But obviously what you're saying probably makes far more sense. But it just, it seems so deliberate because they match so specifically. And the lines are very clean. I don't know. Again, either way, I've never seen anything like this. And you've got that emphasis at the same time on his muscularity and the fact that he has these bare arms and he's holding this quite rudimental tool. And I suppose for the crews in 1814, the British crews who come across this island, the people that they find there and the

second generation of Pitcairnians are absolutely fascinating to them. They are obviously mixed race. They are European and Tahitian. They are using the implements from the bounty, the weapons from the bounty, the clothing from the bounty, and they're sort of frozen in time, but they're a sort of interesting hybrid community that's been built from the wreckage of a ship that they've deliberately destroyed. And they've built this isolated, completely brand new life for themselves. And they are something of a curiosity. And of course, that is tied in with imperial ideas of fascination with indigenous people as well. And this, going back to the idea that John Adams had taught them all English from the Bible, there's a sort of an interesting dichotomy there between European cultural values and religious moral values, and how those same people perceive the Tahitians on the island. And the combining of the two

is something that the Brits who encounter it feel they need to narrativise in order to make sense of it. And that's how it becomes this sort of so-called success story. And Britain really claims these people for themselves. So in 1838, it actually becomes a British overseas territory, which is, again, fascinating given the men who founded this island trying to escape it. I guess this is a very 19th century response now to what was an 18th century event in many ways, because what you see the just pre-Victorians, or actually no, 1838, so we are technically into the Victorian period, is trying to categorise and classify

and control, essentially. Whereas the Georgians had their fair share of that too but there was still an element of kind of chaos going on towards the end of the 18th century even though this is only what 40 and another so like it's 50 what 50 years ago since the mutiny had taken place just over maybe again maths so we've had Trafalgar, we've had Waterloo, the ideas of masculinity have changed and are continuing to change. And so it really is interesting that this religious politeness, which is now seen as a really core part of Victorian masculinity, that maybe it hadn't been there to the same extent in the georgian period only you know half a century prior this now seems it can be used to sell this disaster as a success story that's really interesting that that's maybe part of the reason why britain sort of claims

pitcairn and its descendants for itself just as an aside i found this really fascinating that in the 1950s a french photographer and diver actually went to pitcairn and he again dove divan who knows the the wreck site of the bounty that had obviously been set on fire and today there are lots of elements of the ship some of its weaponry its cannon i think it's bell and its anchor possibly on the shore for people to see uh pitcairn but when when he went down to the wreck site he took several nails from the ship, obviously would have held the wooden boards of the ship together.

And he had some made into cufflinks, which is interesting. But he also, later on in his life, went to the Pandora wreck site on the Great Barrier Reef and he left one of the bounty's nails at the Pandora site, which for marine archaeologists is probably infuriating. But I find that quite meaningful, that tying together of the fates of those two ships that sort of collided in this odd way in terms of their storylines, their timelines. And although

one was hunting the other and never actually found it, their fates are quite similar, which I just find fascinating. I'm imagining that this world that is created on Pitcairn, this unique world that you've been talking about, that caused so much interest in the 19th century. And then again, in the 20th century, with people discovering different parts of Rex. I'd be really interested to know what the legacy of that is today. If there is one, I'm presuming there is only because you mentioned those dives in the 90s. I'm assuming that there is more to learn here that's a bit more contemporary. Today, many of the islanders are still direct descendants of the original mutineers, although

depopulation is an increasing issue. Many inhabitants have moved away to Australia, New Zealand and other Pacific islands. In 2004, a child sex scandal broke out, leading to the arrest of seven of the island's able-bodied men. This was a significant portion of the population and proved a controversial and divisive moment in the island's history. Economically, Pitcairn faces numerous challenges too. It receives aid packages and a 2019 Telegraph article recorded its receipt of around £3 million annually from Britain's Department for International Development, along with further contributions from the EU's European Development Fund amounting to more than 7 million euros. Brexit has likely left the island even poorer.

It feels particularly poignant that this community is, in some ways, still reliant on the very same motherland its founders had hoped to break from. But it's a complicated legacy, taken from Britain via Tahiti, forged variously in rebellion, hope, hatred, violence and peace. hope, hatred, violence and peace. It's one that can still be read across the island. It's there in the names of beaches and cliffs, in the family names of mutineer descendants and in the relics from the bounty laid out for handfuls of tourists who arrive each year by boat. It's even in the words spoken. The same Telegraph article reported in 2019 that islanders speak English to visitors, but among themselves use Pitcairn, a mash-up of Tahitian and 18th century English.

For tomorrow, for example, they say on the morrow, while a gun is still called a musket. But despite the difficulties its community has faced in the centuries since the revolt against Lieutenant Bly played out on the deck of the bounty, and the long shadow it has cast since, Cairn is far from frozen in time. It's a real living place, one still grappling with its own, often dark, history. In the minds of the world beyond, the island represents something romantic, the exotic culmination of a ripping adventure set on the high seas. But the reality is something else altogether. Perhaps it is the conflicting narratives, the flawed characters,

and the endless complications that keep us returning to its beats, retracing the voyages of those who made it to the island, as well as those who searched in vain. For Fletcher Christian and his followers, Pitcairn represented a safe harbour and a fresh start. For the British, it went from unplotted island, to the hideout of rebels, to a model of Christian imperialism. For us, it can perhaps serve as evidence of the tangibility of the past, and reminds us of the complexities and far-reaching impacts of colonialism still ongoing today. Thank you for joining us today on After Dark. If you have enjoyed this episode, please head to wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review.

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