Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 192 - The Bounty Mutiny and the Cursed History of the Pitcairn Islands

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

Once upon a time a Royal Navy mutiny created an island of sex crimes and incest. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-real-story-behind-infamous-mutiny-hms-bounty LOST PARADISE: FROM MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY TO A MODERN-DAY LEGACY OF SEXUAL MAYHEM, THE DARK SECRETS OF PITCAIRN ISLAND REVEALED

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow Love My Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is one third of the zoo crew. I guess I'm also considered part of the zoo. I have shocks with me today. Of the zoo crew. I guess I'm also considered part of the zoo. I have shocks with me today. If the whole zoo crew isn't here, does that technically make us a petting zoo podcast? Yeah, I mean, we're like one of those farm-to-table... Farm-to-table podcasts.

We're a farm-to-table podcast today. You know where everything's coming from. It's all natural ingredients. And we have a little lemon for scurvy. Does that mean I get to arbitrarily jack up the prices of all the Patreon costs if it's farm to table? Yes. Yeah. Sweet. And we're going to have to have like a long, protracted monologue about like where each ingredient in the podcast came from. I'm grass fed long pig from the Detroit farm.

That's also how I always describe you to people. Thankfully, we're not actually, surprisingly, I should say, we're not talking about cannibalism today. We're going to talk about something that we have bandied about for quite some time now, and I have honestly no idea if those episodes

have come out yet when we're recording this because I'm a bad podcaster. I work weeks at a time in case of emergencies. But we're talking about the bounty mutiny or the mutiny of the HMAV bounty and accidentally the entire history of the Pitcairn Islands. Which that's that's fun. The history of the Pitcairn Islands. Which, that's fun. I should warn everybody, this episode is subtitled The History of Rape Incest Island.

So, if that bothers you, maybe turn this one off. That's going to be your only warning. I'm going to take a nice sip of my non-alcoholic beverage to prepare myself for this. If you're feeling real sporty, you can listen to maybe the first half, but then it's gonna get real grim yeah yeah it's really towards the end that gets real bad we can't talk about the bounty mutiny unless we talk about the guy that's kind of in the center of all of it and that's a man named william bligh uh something of a accidental forest gump when it comes to british naval history in the pacific in the later decades of the 18th century, to include the current territory that I am sitting on. I think we've made the joke before, or at least me and somebody else made the joke before, that the only good part

about Valentine's Day is that's when Captain Cook was murdered on the big island here in Hawaii. And yeah, Bly was there for that as well. Now, Bly was born in Devon, England in 1754 to a harbormaster father and a mother who had been previously widowed and only married his dad at the age of 40. Probably because being a single woman in the mid 1700s was not a great lifestyle choice to have. Shocks, you can probably speak a little bit more to this. But like a lot of people of his age when you grew up near ports or harbors or whatever that's that's gonna be what you do yeah and like people in the devon area i guess during the 1700s almost as like a pipeline into the royal navy and various fishing boats you've talked before about how this is generally the same thing in the area where you grew up. Now, what age would you think that if you were, say, a fisherman or whatever, that ended up and won the boats going out of mass?

What age would you be generally? I mean, I don't know. It would really span the gamut. I can't even... I mean, I will say that the practice of going from being in a maritime community to making that your career was really a thing. Really up through World War II, even if you look at a lot of the folks who enlisted in the Navy or the Coast Guard around World War I or World War II, those were all people who had grown up a lot of times in maritime communities around here. In Gloucester, New Report, in Boston, like in Gloucester and new report in Boston,

new Bedford, like, you know, down the Cape, uh, you know, Plymouth. Um,

I mean, I would imagine that, you know, probably maybe eight, 10, you know, you'd probably start like going down the boats, uh,

you know, at least like doing like some basic like seamanship shit, even if you're not actually like going out, like as like the crew on like a merchant ship or something. But I mean, it would also just be like your entire life. Like everyone you fucking know would be, you know, even if you're not actually going out as the crew on a merchant ship or something. But I mean, it would also just be your entire life. Everyone you fucking know would be a fisherman or would be a merchant mariner or something, or involved in the industry in some way. If you weren't, you'd be building ships, your parents would work for the fucking store that stocked them up, something like that. Okay. So I'm glad that I can be shocked by all this simultaneously because i knew the history of the royal navy specifically

they had something called uh young gentlemen yeah which i'm i'm not shitting on the english any more than i need to i promise everybody did this in the west and also the east and pretty much everybody with an organized navy but so bligh ended up in the Navy at the tender age of seven, which is pretty complex. So for an American military comparison, the USS Constitution, for instance, during the War of 1812, had a full 34 children on board during combat. and a full 34 children on board during combat. Now, most of these were powder monkeys, which, I mean, maybe this is a topic for another episode.

Legitimately one of the most dangerous fucking jobs you could have. Like children scampering about handling explosives while under fire. It also sounds a lot like Nevada now, to be honest. Powder monkey just sounds like a cursed NFT now. I right clicked on this NFT to blew my fucking fingers off with a naval cannon. No, like the Powder Monkeys were generally like, if we were to end up on a boat, we would be the Powder Monkeys as children

because we're low class trash. But Bly kind of had connections. His dad was a customs officer. He wasn't anything to write home about or anything, but that gave him connections within the government and that got him into the young gentleman category, which is like you serve in various

rates within the Royal Navy until you have enough sea time under your tiny little belt to qualify for full commission as a naval officer. Yeah, you're kind of like a butter bard waiting, more or less. Yeah, you pretty much just get immersed in naval

culture. You don't really learn anything because, again, literal child. But if you were a young gentleman, you ate better, you slept better, and you were treated better than their listed counterparts to include the other children. Normally in the Royal Navy, this started at age 12, but it was not uncommon for people to just lie or glad hand behind the door deals, which again, is how people got promoted anyway.

It was favors and money, politicking, mostly just making clout work for you. Yeah. I mean, famously too i mean this was also the the system pretty much in every branch of the you know the royal forces like oh yeah yeah the crimean war was the one that uh really like sparked some change right yeah we talked about that during um our charger light brigade episode yeah that was finally the breaking point as far as like maybe these guys need to go to school or something. It turns out actually just letting a whole bunch of fancy lads lead us into a conflict is actually a recipe for success all the time.

Anyway, let's fast forward to 1914. Now, Bly was under the age of 12. Like I said, he was seven, but that wasn't super uncommon. But starting the Navy so young, this might be an unpopular opinion to maybe naval aficionados out there, which I have said time and time again, I am not. It turns these kids into bloodthirsty psychopaths, and I'll tell you why. This one easy trick. Yeah. Now, the reason for this is the concept of discipline within the army at the time was much easier

enforced mostly because you were never too far away from anything obviously physical violence was the name of the game in the army as well but also it was easier to keep in line in the the larger structural system of the army you were never going to be 10 000 miles away from the nearest command like a supervisor or whatever or or like you know like at the very end of the day like even if everything really went sideways you could always like run the fuck away and like you know try to like make a life for yourself wherever the fuck you ended up or something that wasn't such the case in the navy every ship was kept in line through rigid discipline and by rigid discipline i i mean abuse uh in a systematic level that borders on sadistic yeah that would that would probably like shock the

soviets and like that's really like saying a thing yeah i mean it's it's on par if i'm just much smaller scale uh each ship operating in a semi in a semi-independent city with internal hierarchies, justices, and responsibilities. And all of these things had to work as close as you could get to a well-oiled machine for the boat to function in its capacity. So if a sailor broke one of those laws, his punishment was swift, brutal, and sometimes fatal. And the main point was not to punish that man. It was to set an example for everybody else. So these are all done in front of audiences to include literal children. The simplest reprimands were often denying privileges, like having rations and stuff like that, which was normally the first thing they did.

The first thing they did was implement starvation. Yeah. And fun fact, that was implement starvation. Yeah. And fun fact, that was the thing that the Navy could do to you. And I think at least up until a few years ago was reduce you to bread and water. The US Navy is a completely alien thing to me. I never once worked with them while I was in the military. And every time I learned something new about them, like, oh, you guys are still like one foot solidly in the 1800s.

And I think this is also just like part of maritime just have like one foot solidly in the 1800s and i and i think this is also just like part of like maritime culture is like there's always kind of a a very firmly rooted uh i don't know i guess firmly rooted in history and sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse i mean yeah the the hearkening to tradition yeah they know and there's part of that just because like there's certain things you like you things you as a tank officer did, or not tank officer, as a tanker did. Don't put that fucking evil on me. You as a tanker did learn how to navigate a tank by riding a fucking horse. But meanwhile, cadets for the fucking Coast Guard still sail aboard the Eagle and learn how to navigate with a sextant and shit.

That's wild. You know what I mean? That's something where there is that kind of heavy force of tradition that does still carry down. And I'm sure there's people that are listening right now that were on the big fleet or whatever, whatever the fuck they call it in the Navy. But I had a friend of mine who said something.

He was on an aircraft carrier. They had separate stairways for officers and enlisted. Oh, yeah. That's fucking bizarre to me. Different mess rooms, everything. Separate ward rooms. Yeah. I mean, famously, too, one of the things, and this is a top tip for those out there if you're thinking about joining the Navy.

If your recruiter offers you a school that you don't think you can actually get through, don't take it because that's how you end up being the fucking bilge wipe on an aircraft carrier and seeing daylight maybe once every, I don't know, fucking month at a time. Yeah. Unless you're a topside rate or an officer involved with an aviation deck or something, you might get out to the smoke pick pick but that's about it that's why for all of the complaints i have with the army of which they are you know countless at least as stuck up as our officers could be they were never like navy officers because it's a completely different level of i don't even know what uh it's like a different fucking country even in the coast guard it's different because we don't really have as big of an officer corps and a lot of things are just held like smaller units are commanded by senior enlisted uh and whatever so like it varies even from the navy it's entirely separate creature that makes sense we started off with rash and having uh the next step up was caning which is exactly what it sounds like and it was normally

like that doesn't sound too bad and i'm sure sucks. Like, someone said it hurt for weeks at a time. And that was normally reserved for the young gentlemen or, like, the powder monkeys. Because next one after, that's flogging with a cat of nine tails, and that would just kill a child. Yeah. That just, like, takes all the skin off your back. And sometimes it also killed adults through infection and stuff because remember this is the 1700s uh if you get infected it's like oh well he's got too much ghost in his blood time for him to die yeah particularly because uh you know your surgeon is just also the cook on the ship and they just like lay you out of the fucking table in the mess hall

this is the barber surgeon or something actually we get to talk about a surgeon later who is uh quite fun he's not. He kills the guy. And then after that is just hanging you. Again, and it's not like a short drop or whatever. You just get slow strangulation, I think, from the masthead while everybody else watches. So all these are done in front of the crew, which, again, includes young children. All these are done in front of the crew, which again, includes young children. And many of these young children, the young gentlemen, were to be expected to implement these punishments later on in life. And this is even accounting for all the wanton violence and systemic rape that was just part of Navy life at the time. Or, you know, impressment or like other...

That was the other thing too, is this might not even be anything you signed up for in any way. They could just like snatch your ass. Yeah, you could get hammered at a bar and wake up on a boat getting fucking hit with a cane or whatever. So yeah, great place to have kids. I mean, for example, impressment wasn't taken out of the Royal Navy until right before the War of 1812, which is why we fought it. Even by the time we fought it, the problem was done. But we're America. We don't let like

not having a reason to do a war stop us from doing a war yeah listen but if we got a fucking pretext we're gonna use that fucking pretext blight's career would lead him to be a crewman on captain james cook's hms resolution uh where like i already pointed out he watched his captain get murdered on the beaches of the big Island in Hawaii in 1779. And the reason for this, and maybe one day I'll do an episode about Cook, is that he decided it would be a really good idea to kidnap a couple locals. And fun fact, that's unpopular. You don't do that. You die.

Now, about 10 years after that, in 1786, Bly was commanding his own ships as a merchant captain. commanding his own ships as a merchant captain. In August of 1787, he took command of the bounty, Her Majesty's Armed Ship Bounty. The first person he recruited to his ship was a man named Fletcher Christian, someone who will become important later on, as a master mate, which is kind of the guy in charge of all the minutiae on board. Now, the reason for this is because they'd actually worked together before on the HMS Britanniaia and they seem to be friends or at least know each other enough to want to continue working

together yeah and you know we're able to work together yeah especially from um a captain's perspective for and bligh is a fucking dickhead i don't talk about this during the rest of the episode this would not be the last time that bligh was the captain of a ship that would be mutinied or would be the victim of a mutiny or whatever. It happened two other times. So Bly is a dick. And despite the fact that the most well-known book written about the bounty mutiny is by him. So like there's two different stories where Bly is a vicious, maniacal asshole. And then there's the one that Bly wrote, which is,

all of my sailors hate me in every boat I've ever been on for no reason. So yeah, he's a dick. If only there was some common link here. Oh, well, that's fine. This is another one of those stories that there is no good guy in this story. And it does seem like Fletcher Christian was perfectly fine with blight being a violent asshole as long as it wasn't directed at him so they continued working together now the bounty was a 220 ton cutter with a crew of 46 blight was its only commissioned officer since it was a trade

mission into what was considered safe waters it traveled alone with no other ships furthermore it was not given the normal contingent of royal marines that most ships had these marines would be used for a lot of different reasons mostly for self-protection because the ships make a lot of stops on various ports to include some that are not ports just random islands for you know wood and water and food so marines would go aboard and make sure if um you know any any natives happen to be mad that some random white dudes on boats showed up and started stealing their shit that uh they're you know the ground crews wouldn't get killed another thing that they did was they were the ones that normally implemented the punishments yeah and they happen to be handy for shooting people who

wanted to mutiny so yeah and i mean and that's also too why a lot of these punishments are so brutal. I mean, you know, the common turn of phrase is there's nothing so much like a god on earth as a captain on a ship. Oh, right.

And the reason why all these punishments were brutal is because ultimately you would have, you know, particularly back then, you needed, you know, hundreds of dudes to run the rigging

and run the ship and haul the anchor and do whatever else. And they would be commanded by a comparative, like comparative handful of officers, as we'll come to find out. If you just, through sheer force of numbers, they couldn't kill you all. So if you just wanted to murder the shit out of your officers,

if there wasn't a lot of Royal Marines in the way, you had to really have the fear of God put into you, which is why they did what they did. Not to excuse it, it was still wicked fucked up, but that was the motivating ethos behind it. Yeah, I'm not going to say they were wrong in the mutiny. It's everything else that they did that was wrong.

Yeah. Their mission was to sail to the island of Tahiti to load up breadfruit saplings. Because now, if you remember the date that we're talking about here, that whole American colony thing was getting all revolutionary. It cut off the English supply

of cheap fish, which they would use to feed their slave population in the West Indies. So they had to find a replacement for fish. Entering a guy named Joseph Banks, who was a botanist

who discovered breadfruit for, I say discovered, but he went to an island that already had people on it and discovered it. So, and pointed out that this breadfruit is like nutritious enough to fill the gap of the lack of fish supply so like hey if we go to tahiti and load up on this shit we can feed our slaves with it i found some cheap food that's just enough to keep our slaves alive uh so here you go guys i'm sure there could be any possible nutritional deficiencies by feeding people a diet of fruit.

Uh, and only fruit. And like, once again, too, like, you know, really underscores that everyone involved in this is a fucking asshole.

I mean, from, from the get go, it starts off as a slave supply mission. Yeah. It's like, you know, like really like a really fucking gallant like all right guys we're

gonna go halfway across the world to like pick up some plants so we could like you know feed our slaves just enough that they don't immediately die when you start working them to death yeah we gotta get we gotta get a couple hours of labor out of them before they keel over yeah blind his crew assumed that the trip to tahiti would be easy or as easy as a mission in the Royal Navy could be. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Now, the normal route that the bounty would take in the situation when going to Tahiti would be leaving from its port in Spithead, England, which I'm sure is pronounced incorrectly because it's England. And also, I don't care.

And going around South America's Cape there to get into the Pacific Islands. It's Cape Horn, I believe. However, this area is also known for consistently terrible weather, and that prevented them from doing that. But that didn't stop Bly from trying. trying and he constantly pushed his men for a month to try to get through the bad weather which really only ended with the ship being damaged and his crew being very tired and angry at him this led blight to fire his sailing master a guy named john fryer and appointing fletcher christian also in that role uh now fryer doesn't support either side of this mutiny, and he does live to tell us he hates everybody

and says that this only happened because Christian was a yes-man to the captain, which due to their history together, I'm going to assume that's probably true. And it was decided that the only way to continue their mission would be to take the longest way around possible, and that

is around South Africa's Cape Angulas and cape of good hope which would require the crossing the entire width of the indian ocean in order to get to tahiti this is literally the longest way they could have taken without i don't know crossing of the arctic or something yeah i mean they would have taken the panama canal but actually the uh the hms ever given was stuck there at the time some states are stuck there to this day the indian ocean is not exactly the easiest place to sail through i guess uh it's constantly battered by more storms and apparently not as bad as they would have been off the coast of south america so they managed to make their way through but it did take them 10 months and 27,000 miles longer than it should have. Which in nautical terms is known as a real bitch.

I'm going to assume by the time they got there, the crew was not the happiest bunch. Not enthused. Not really stoked on having this take three times as long as it probably should have. Because they ran late,

like the crop isn't ready, they have to wait longer, you know, this, that, the other thing. During this slow, horrible journey, by accounts of virtually the entire crew, Bly took every little frustration out on everyone around him, except, you know, he never took any possible failure onto himself. It was always somebody else. So tensions were pretty high by the time they got to Tahiti. And this is according to the sailors. According

to Bly, he never had to punish anybody other than his surgeon, who was apparently an alcoholic. Perfect. This punishment was connected to during the trip, the surgeon accidentally killed a sailor during a bloodletting session for asthma treatment.

Oh, well, I hate when the ghosts don't go out your lungs. You know, you have to get them out through the blood. You know, I mean, it's just science, really. They tried to take his alcohol away from him. And the doctor apparently convinced him that if you took the alcohol away, he would die which honestly might be true this guy was an alcoholic by 1700s

navy standards yeah like everyone is already getting there like you know like flagging of grog a day and this dude is like you know like even more three sheets of the wind yeah I mean I use the term doctor loosely because it's the 1700s and they call him a surgeon on purpose.

Doctors in surgery is more of a vibe. So he's like, yep, kill the sailor because his asthma got blood in it or whatever. Throw him overboard, which is what they did. So that's what the punishment came from. So that's what the punishment came from. His medical opinion that if they took booze away from him, he'd probably die was probably his most correct medical opinion that he was probably going to have on this trip. 100%. Yeah. In October of 1788, of these stories that Tahiti was the land of milk and honey,

is paradise on earth, which I assume was a low bar when you've spent months trapped on the bounty, almost a year. Also, I've heard Tahiti is very nice. I mean, it's a Pacific island. I'm sure it's beautiful. And by all accounts, that's exactly what they found. And their lives suddenly were much easier than they had been during their entire time in the up until that point now because of their delay uh the breadfruit trees like their plan was to

get there in a couple of months because i mean still a sailboat it goes pretty slow at which point they would have to farm until the the breadfruit until they were big enough to be transported they thought this would only take a couple of months at most but because it took them 10 months to get there the season i guess it wasn't breadfruit season or whatever um because you know even though it's tropical island we do have seasons in tropical islands and grow seasons are very weird uh when you have to worry about tropical sun and humidity and shit i've killed so many plants here so it took them uh they realized they have to start and because of the time of the year it was gonna take them

it ended up taking them five months to grow the breadfruit all of the the sailors like their day jobs turned into like whatever little repairs they had to do around the boat because you know it's a sailboat it breaks just sitting there uh but they would spend most of their days going out to the field working on these little breadfruit trees of which there were several hundred that was it it only took them a few hours a day they had botanists on board whose whole job was to make sure they these idiot sailors didn't kill the trees um but they even like moved off the boat into the villages effectively assimilating into the community of tahiti uh who like them um like the locals in tahiti were very friendly with the British. They've had multiple contacts with them over the years before and including the French.

Like the white people were not new or hostile to them. That would change. So they would work during the day. And then at night, they just cut loose, just drink constantly. And when I say the locals are very friendly, I mean, they were down to fuck. And this is a boat full of sailors that we're talking about here and not only a boat full of sailors a boat full of sailors that have been only around each other for like 10 months yeah almost a year yeah now i do have to say that

there's a mix of relations in tahiti between the sailors and the local population one was the strictly exchange-based fucking, as you can imagine. Life on Tahiti may have been way more chill than being in the Royal Navy, but it's still a rough place to live. It's still the 1700s, so simple things were hard to come by.

So Tahitian women traded sexual favors for food, clothing, and even sometimes just a handful of nails to build with. But that wasn't always the case. Sometimes Tahitian women and the sailors built meaningful relationships and several people got married. So you get both sides here.

And because sailors being sailors, and not to mention this being, again, the 1700s, there wasn't anything resembling safe sex happening here so STDs just rip through the population of the ship now I say the ship and not the island because one of the things that the surgeon did

before allowing anybody off the ship is examine them for any evidence of STDs common STDs of the day right found none of them but Tahiti was a normal port of call for other navy ships from the british and the french so other british ships and french ships had spread stds to the tahitian population which then the crew of the bounty picked up they're uh they're just picking up what someone else laid down you know they're just uh they're just it's all about

free love and unfortunately also um about not being able to pee without it burning a little bit. Yeah. And so eventually a full 40% of the crew to catch one STD or another with no treatment. I don't think there's any real treatment of the day other than like, I guess, just drinking more rum and then finding someone else to fuck you for a handful of nails. The only treatment was to like you know slowly be driven insane from syphilis that was really all you got you know like that's there's no john f kennedy like getting a fucking uh injection in his ass while the bay of pigs goes on in the background yeah and i'm gonna assume that less obvious things like syphilis are much more common than 40 percent

yeah but this is like the obvious obvious ones you know the grossest kind that people google image search when they're in middle school or whatever yeah or the shit they show you you don't have to make sure that like uh you pay attention in uh in fucking health class in seventh yeah exactly uh and bligh by all accounts is horrified by his men's hedonism because he's a stuck-up prick and of course by his account he never partook and i don't believe that for a fucking second because they were there for they were there for five fucking months now there was some attempts by blight to beat his men back in the line while they're on the island because he realized that not only were his men slowly not becoming sailors they were stopping being english which is the best thing you can do another pro tip uh from uh lion's life by donkeys uh you know stop being best thing you can do. Another pro tip from Lionside by Donkeys,

you know, stop being English whenever you can. Floggings, which are rarely administered during the voyage by everybody's admission, were incredibly common, some points being one per day. Remember, this isn't a crew of hundreds. This is 40-some-odd dudes having... I actually now believe that uh blight never partook while he was there because it seems like this was just a kink thing for him

yeah maybe he the floggings were the goal for him yeah like he was just like a sadomasochist like that was i thought that was just a baseline for naval officers i mean there's also that but i mean you know my dude was definitely like getting his rocks off and like getting a dude flogged every day and remember this And remember, this is a communal violence. The goal is to do it in front of everybody. But now that crowd that you're flogging people in front of includes other people's literal wives and children. So this is not popular. Well, not children yet.

There will be children involved at some point. Many Tahitian women are now pregnant, though. involved at some point. Many Tahitian women are now pregnant, though. But remember, the population of this local population of Tahitians, it was an exchange-based relationship. Also, they're very, very close. A lot of them are friends. So it's like,

why is this guy beating my friends? And also the embarrassment of being beaten in front of your friends who are not sailors. And also, you're living in what is otherwise... who are not sailors. And also, you're living in what is otherwise... You're not bashing your head against the wall against a bunch of storm clouds off Cape Horn

or something. You're on a literal tropical island in a comparative paradise and still getting your fucking ass kicked. It seemed other than Bly and a few others because there's a core group of Bly loyalists that looks at the other sailors like they're disgusting. The vast majority of men

like rapidly assimilated to Tahitian life because it was much nicer than what they were used to. Even before the Navy, life on the fucking harbor in 1700 England had to be fucking miserable. I've never been to Devon, England, but I can only

imagine it's probably not as nice as Tahiti. Yeah, I feel comfortable saying that. Yeah. If you are from Devon, England, please do write in. We won't read it, but please do write in. I mean, I can say from someone that's from, I assume, the Devon version of the US, which is like shitty Rust Belt Midwest region, that Hawaii is much nicer. shitty rust belt Midwest region that Hawaii is much nicer. I spent two years on a boat out of Gloucester and I got to say, Tahiti, probably nicer than Gloucester.

Yeah. I feel like that's not a hot take. Yeah. No Duncans on Tahiti though, unfortunately. I now have a calling. I know my retirement plan is going to be. Now, this did lead to the crew pretty much saying, fuck this, or at least one part of it. On the 5th of January, 1789, three members of the crew, Charles Churchill, William Moose Brett, and John Mill were deserted.

They took a small boat, some weapons and ammo, and went to try to escape into one of the other neighboring islands. And they were captured three weeks later, had the shit beat out of them and whipped and put back on the ship's crew. And normally they'd get hung for this, but I guess they realized like we only have 46 people. We're going to need all of them to get back. And the doctor's definitely going to kill another couple of guys on the way home. So, you know, you got to have some spares.

Now, like I said, a lot of the men got married. This included mastermate Christian. A lot of guys got tattoos, which were new to them. And drugs were very prevalent. I don't know what drugs they used because the name's never given. I assume they're smoking something, doing some hallucinogen. Whatever it was, they're doing a fuckload of it which I I support enthusiastically

get tattoos do drugs however the time in paradise had come to an end in April of 1789 when they'd unload all of their trees which were now like hundreds and hundreds of trees and finally leave as they shoved off Bly had apparently lost his motherfucking mind now before he was an asshole

but he wasn't outside the baseline of a normal royal marine asshole or royal navy asshole rather yeah he was a slave asshole too but he just wasn't one of them that turned from just being a dick in charge to being a paranoid lunatic during the last five months the brutal discipline of the Navy had worn off. No matter how much he had tried, at the end of the day, they're all going to go back to their sweet fucking huts, do drugs, get tattoos, and fuck locals.

They didn't have to worry about Bly whatsoever. So by the time they got back on the ship, they wanted none of his bullshit. Nobody seemingly wanted to leave. And everybody was pretty bummed out about having to go back uh or having to finish their delivery rather yeah i mean like it'd be bad enough like you know like already bad getting on the ship and then like going back to like fucking england from tahiti and it seemed like rather than just trying to go back to a level

of normal that existed beforehand he cranked the the discipline up to a level that nobody had ever seen before in order to try to shock them back in the line. Yeah. Now, most of this constantly trickled down to Mastermate Christian, who, remember, was kind of his friend at first. And he started being accused of things without evidence uh leading to various punishments all of these in front of his men remember he's supposed to be in trees he's one of the shift leaders he's a night shift leader yeah so like this is happening in front of his sailors oh so so he was like the dwo like the like the deck officer for like night i guess now um the way it was explained was bly had shifted the bounty shift into three.

Okay. Which allowed them to have more. It was three or four, either way. It allowed them to have more sleep. Nowadays, standing a four-hour watch is more standard. Yeah. I mean, to Bly's credit, he did try to get men as much sleep as they could. Yeah.

But this also led to incredibly isolated shifts. So the shift leaders were in charge of them with no captain oversight whatsoever, which makes them very easy to whip up a mutiny. What I imagine you wouldn't even necessarily see your captain for a week at a time or something.

You know that motherfucker's not working night shift. Now, according to someone who's considered an expert on the bounty and author named Sven Woolrose, the captain was, quote, fault finding, insulting, petty and condescending. And he seemed to relish in humiliating all of his officers. Bly seems like I said, he seemed to have fallen into some kind of crazed paranoia. With every small problem launching him screaming at people, throwing things, attacking people, accusing others of broad plots against him or the ship. And then

once he burned himself out, he just tried to return to a normal conversation with the person he was just yelling at like nothing happened, which is not great. That's not how you build confidence. Not super comforting, if we're honest. And another incident happened on 22nd of April, 1789.

The bounty arrived in one of the islands of Tonga called Namuka. They use these stops to pick up wood for repairs, fresh water, meat for supplies, whatever. Now, Bly had visited the island with Captain Cook way back in the day and knew that the Tongan population was not the biggest fan of outsiders. And there might be a possibility that we might get in a shooting match because we want water and wood or whatever. So he put Christian in charge of the watering party to go aboard, find some fresh water, and equip them with muskets. But at the same time, ordered that the arms be left in the boat instead of being carried ashore because he was worried that carrying the weapons would make them look hostile, despite the fact he knew that the Tongans really would not be fans of them being there in the first place.

Now, like clockwork, Christian's party landed and immediately got harassed and continually threatened while on the island, but were unable to defend themselves because he had followed orders like he should have and left the guns behind on the boat on the beach yeah now the tongans chased them away and he returned to the ship with his task incomplete and was cursed by blight as quote a damned cowardly rascal now there's further fault that fell on him because in the rush to get the fuck away from the Tongans before you know they got murdered they left behind an anchor and an

ads a what an ads it looks kind of like a hoe used to like take layers of wood off of trees oh all right yeah and yeah this is considered like he fucked up and that got those things got stolen so technically in that mindset

you stole from the ship which is a very stupid way of thinking yeah yeah you left gear adrift and so now it's your fault and we did it i'm sure like at this point they probably even like charge motherfuckers for it uh i i can't imagine being paid all that my i assume they just hit him with a fucking cat on entails a couple of times and at the last straw seemed to be when Bly accused him of stealing coconuts from the captain's private supply with no evidence, no idea if he actually did that or not, but it seems not that serious.

Even if he did now, well, I punished the entire crew for this alleged theft, stopping the rum ration and reducing their food supply by half, which seems to be a step-by-step guide on how to start a mutiny. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, oh, they're-step guide on how to start a mutiny. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're going to take the booze away and your food.

Anyway, enjoy the next 6,000 miles journey. Yeah. Everybody cold, sober, and starving. Now, this eventually led Christian, who would be in charge of the night shift on the boat, to break into the arms room, steal virtually every musket on board, and hand it off to people that he knew that he could trust. After 27 days at sea, Christian and around 14 other sailors, armed with the only guns on the ship,

kicked in the captain's door and took him captive, with Christian apparently telling him, quote, sir, your abuse is so bad, I cannot do my duty with any pleasure. I've been through hell for weeks with you. So, but other people said that like christian was emotionally uh like it was very emotional when he did this because he was close to blind like he was almost crying but another person said that uh he carried a uh what's it called a uh the thing that you drop overboard to measure the depth or like a depth sounder

yeah he carried it around his neck uh so like his plot failed, he could just jump overboard and kill himself. Yeah, because they usually... Oh, fuck. I forget what it's called right now. But yeah, it's like a lead line. I think is what it's called. Yeah, he had one of those tied around his neck so he could rapidly kill himself should his plot fail. Just fucking yeet himself overboard.

Which is dedication. Now, chaos ensued as the ship's crew split into two factions, one loyal to Bly and the other determined to desert. However, one's loyal to Bly decided not to put up much of a fight on account of, you know, the other guy having all the guns. So several of the mutineers just wanted to shoot

the loyalists and have it be done with, but Christian decided on another route. Mastermate, now turned surprise captain, put the captain 18 other men on a boat gave them some rations and a sextant to help them navigate and set the boat adrift um the boat's also been described as dangerously overweight so you know a lot of people read this as um being a death sentence with extra steps um but he gave them like hundreds of pounds of food and water not to mention blight may have been an

asshole he was also a very good captain um because if he wanted to kill him he'd still give him any supplies or a sextant for that matter it's like a james bond ass like fucking plot you know like you know christian over there like oh i bet you want to know where we're headed next don't you apply it's like no i don't really care it's like well i'm gonna tell you now and like you know just like going into like his intricate plot of like where they're gonna go and what they're gonna do like i just want to make sure you have all this information because i'm sure that you're gonna be dead in like 10 minutes how do you do you expect me to find land with the sexton no captain i expect you to die but obviously this didn't work because we

have blight book uh blly male have been an insane paranoid asshole but he was a very good captain first he piloted the small boat towards tonga to a different island where he'd all he'd previously met the ruler again with cook now these locals immediately tried to murder them succeeding in stoning to death their quartermaster before the rest of the crew was able to escape they eventually made their way to restoration island then a further 1100 nautical miles to the british controlled port of kupang in timor uh there which this is a british territory so he's like hey i'm the captain of the motherfucking bounty and that shit got stolen from me he then made a list of everybody on board that was responsible, starting with quote, Captain Fletcher, age

24 years, 5'9 high, dark, swarthy complexion. Now back with the mutiny, things were not going great. They knew that there was a chance the mutiny would be found out. The chance that Bly

would survive in some way being pretty high oh and another small side note here when they finally did get to coupang or coupang in timor like half of the people that made the trip died immediately from like disease the humidity like man how'd you escape through all of that and drop dead when you were safe oh man that fucking sucks. Yeah. And not to mention,

the mission was pretty open with like, hey, our last port of call is Tahiti. The first place they look is going to be Tahiti. We cannot fucking stay here. They will find us. So they went to a nearby island of Tubai, around 400 miles south of Tahiti. And now the islanders of Tubai responded to boat, boat full of white people with immediate war,

as you should generally do sending out war canoes to chase them off. However, Christian had all the guns and fired on them with a cannon, driving them away for some reason through Christians. I don't know. Thinking process. He decided that despite that, these people clearly not wanting them there, this is the perfect place to colonize as a boat full of English people would think.

Now, there's a small problem with all of this, though. There's only 46 of them or there's only like 18 of them. Now, we don't have enough people to start a colony. So they needed help. They went back to Tahiti and told the king that he, Bly, and Captain Cook, who has been dead for decades at this point, who the king knew personally, were all starting a colony on the island of

Udataki. And the king knew from experience that dealing with Cook and Bly meant that he would be handsomely rewarded, which Bly did. I mean, him and Cook did a lot of fucked up things, specifically Cook. That's why he got fucking speared to death. But kings that did work with him before they were alienated by him kidnapping people were generally just had shit lavished upon them to buy their friendship. So the king and Tahiti was like, yeah, word.

You take as many people as you want. Women, men, we don't care. I'll get the bag at some point and whatever. I'll probably get rid of some people I don't like anyway. So fuck it. Yeah, exactly. So labor, laborers, women, supplies all got loaded back onto the bounty. It ended up being around 30 men and women.

And for the next two months, Christian and his forces struggled to establish themselves on Dubai. And for the next two months, Christian and his forces struggled to establish themselves on Tubai. They began to construct a moat enclosure and called it Fort George after the King of Britain, ironically enough, and secured a fortress. I mean, using that term loosely, but I can't imagine like thinking that a moat, like if someone's going to track you down over thousands of fucking miles, like over the ocean ocean you think like a fucking moat's gonna stop them we took a boat all the way we took a boat all the way to Utatake Island and this hand built moat is gonna stop us

yeah like just like getting to like this like you know like probably like four foot deep fucking six foot wide moat ah fuck like well I guess we're gonna go back home now never mind shake your fist at em Earl as you can imagine Like, well, I guess we're going to go back home now. Never mind. Shake your fist at him, Earl. As you can imagine, plopping down this island full of people that already hated them.

And, you know, he made things worse by firing a cannon at them and reportedly killing dozens of them. This just meant constant unrelenting war to include a pitched battle that killed 60 islanders. So things weren't going great on this island. Eventually, this made Christian unpopular in his own crew. And since he had taken power in a mutiny, he probably knew where this is going, and it was not going to end well for him. So he organized a meeting to discuss the future plans and offered the conclusion to come down to a vote. Eight remained loyal to Christian, that being hardcore active mutiners, probably knowing like if we get caught, we're definitely swinging from a rope. But 16 voted to return to Tahiti and take their chances there.

Small problem, though, by the time they got back to Tahiti, it became pretty obvious that the king of these fucking assholes had lied to his goddamn face. goddamn face. A good reason for that being that like other British and French boats come by from time to time and a British boat came by while they were gone and like the king is like, hey, did you hear about this settlement that Captain Cook is starting over on Udataki Island?

The British guy's like, that motherfucker's been dead for years. What are you talking about? So it did not make him very popular and Christian knew he had to get back, like kind of in the good graces of Tahiti, especially the King, but also he still could not stay there. Now of the 16 who voted to go back to Tahiti,

he allowed 15 to go with that one held back being the ship's armor, who he decided, I kind of need you. Yeah. One last parting gift to boost everybody up and to be friends with the king again. Christian hosted a party

aboard the bounty, inviting the entire island to come aboard to drink and do whatever the hell people in the 1700s do for fucking fun. I assume fucking a lot. And of course, most of the people who showed up were women because they realized it. I mean, that's what their relationship was.

Exchanged base for sex and goods. Yeah, they hosted a frat party. Yeah, pretty much. And this ended up being around 20 people, 14 of whom were women. Two of those women being senior citizens. This part will become important in a little bit. Now, once everybody was on board and the

people who decided they were going to stay in Tahiti were off, Christian cut the mooring lines and they slowly floated away from Tahiti, kidnapping everybody. Did this also include like the original, like however many other like islanders do? Like, are they also still on board? No, those guys seem to have gotten back off because they kind of realize, hey, man, fuck these guys. seem to have gotten back off because they kind of realize, hey man, fuck these guys. And this also included the armorer realizing

what was going on, immediately jumped overboard and swam to shore. So he lost his armor and gained 20 kidnapping victims. Though he did stop by another nearby island and drop off the two senior citizens, almost assuredly to their own deaths

because they were all alone. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, Christian, good guy all around. Yeah. Now the mutineers who remained on Tahiti would eventually be captured by the British when they came back around, I believe it was aboard the Pandora.

When the Pandora showed up, almost all of them had totally assimilated to island life. That didn't stop the English from arresting them all with the Pandora taking a slight detour to run into the Great Northern Reef and drown three of them. All these guys are so fucking good at

being on the ocean. Part of the thing that is wonderful about the British Empire is it just is like such an incredible comedy of errors. It's like the fucking Mr. Burns thing in The Simpsons where all the viruses are trying to get through the one door, but they can't, so they're all stuck. That's like all these

fucking dipshits trying to take over all these countries around the world. It's kind of like never managing to fuck up quite enough that they lose everything, but just constant comedy of errors. Yeah. A lot of it is experience through attrition. Well well if you made it this far

you must know what you're doing or you'd be dead now uh in september of 1792 the 10 men who had been brought back to england to face court remember three of them are dead and i think another one of them died on tahiti before they got there from like i don't know shitting his brains out from some foodborne illness probably. They were brought back to England for courts martial. Under English law, any man who remained on a ship during a mutiny regardless whether or not he actually participated

in it was guilty of mutiny. So a lot of these guys who were on the boat didn't necessarily take part. They're just like, well, I'm going to stay out of this one. Those guys have guns and I live on this boat. But four were acquitted. That's mostly because Bly vouched for them and said like, you know, they had nothing to do with it.

Six were sentenced to death by hanging. Of those six, three were pardoned. And the other three, Thomas Burkett, John Millward, and Thomas Ellison were all executed on October 29th, 1794. So staying on Tahiti, bad idea. So let's go back to the bounty and see where they had ended up. Back with the bounty, the total crew now made up of eight original sailors

and 20 kidnapping victims. While Christian decided their ultimate destination would be Pitcairn Island. Just like a very early example of getting ratioed. Now, Pitcairn is a weird destination because it was an idea more than a place that people actually knew about. And that's why it was perfect for what he was looking for. Now, the island had been first reported in 1767, but nobody was 100% sure of its location. The reason for that is discovered,

you know, a lot of places are quote-unquote discovered by European sailors or whatever by like landing there and being like, look, we're on an island. Let's name it after you, Steve. But that's not how Pitcairn got put on European maps for the first time. A boat had simply floated by it and a deckhand with the last name Pit Karen

be like, look, land. And then they named it after him and kept going. Once again, comedy of errors. Yeah. Why is it called Steve Island? Well, you see, Steve was the only guy who was like, you know, he was out on the back deck masturbating one day and we just happened to see the island go by and he said,

hey, look, and now it's called Steve Island. Yeah, and because of that, nobody was 100% sure where the fuck the island was and they put it on the map anyway and so they went on the map, looked up where Pitcairn Island

was thought to be and couldn't find it because it was never actually located by anybody before. It took the crew a couple months of sailing around in circles to finally run into it. And when they did, they found it was 216 miles east of the position thought to be on the map.

Oh my losses be lessons. Despite this being kind of funny, and it is, this actually made their hideout even better because if somebody looked on the map, they wouldn't be able to fucking find them. We can't even find where we are.

Fuck. Now, the Pit Cairns were uninhabited at the time. There was some Polynesian settlers there who had ended up there at one point in time, attempted to colonize it, either died off or realized this place sucked and left. But when they showed up, nobody lived there. There was volcanic soil that made farming okay. And it was surrounded by ocean so you could fish constantly.

And it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. So you'd freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted. So with nothing else left to lose and nowhere to go, they stripped the bounty of anything useful and then sank that bitch in the bay, which is where the bay gets its name today. It's now Bounty Bay. It's still under there. Over the years, I think people have kind of like dived down there and ported it out to try to sell it because...

Oh, I'm sure. Because this is also before modern rules about that sort of shit. Yeah. And even the original people who like settled on the island too like i'm sure that they probably had points where they're like i don't know man we need some like some fucking wood or you know some fittings or something like let's dive on that bitch and see what we got not to mention selling enough for just money as well yeah now however the chill life the sailors and tahitian shared on tahiti was rapidly going to

change now without having to appease a tahitian king that they kind of sort of worked for, the English did what they did best and got racist as fuck. No. Is that the British Empire's entry music? Now, the Tahitian men were expected to work for the white men, and the women were expected to be passed around to use sexual property on demand. I am shocked, shocked to hear about this sort of events. This was not at all how things had been on Tahiti.

So the Tahitian men in particular were like, wait, what the fuck? Now, according to one of the men named Alexander, Alexander goes by a couple of names. He's actually mostly known as John Adams. And Alexander is one of the men named Alexander, Alexander goes by a couple names. He's actually mostly known as John Adams. And Alexander is one of the two names that he had. He ends up being the last original member of the Bounty to survive. And he said, quote, women were passed around from one husband to another. Now, if you're asking what the fuck does that mean?

With the white men all declaring themselves the collective husband of all of the Tahitian women. Oh, weird how that works out. Yeah. And no, in case you're wondering, it did not work the other way around. Tahitian men did not have the same freedom. Weird. You know, there's nothing positive to say here about the existence

of the women here on this island except fuck. And the women were also expected to work. The only people really not expected to work were white men. Now, specifically one Tahitian man named who was uh singled out for constant violent abuse uh and nobody's really sure why uh other than he didn't fight back and this only got worse and when the white man named mccoy figured out how to make

brandy from some island roots jesus fucking christ which is the last thing the situation needed this is like a speed run of everything that's bad about fucking European colonialism. Even absent an actual system of outside imperialism. Like, oh, cool. This is just what you guys default to, huh? What if Lord of the Flies had a profit

margin? It was like full-grown fucking adults who should have had some level of ethics to not do this sort of shit. Yeah. And not to mention, remember, these guys all lived peacefully together on Tahiti. Now, I use the term peaceful relatively. Yeah.

I mean, there was obviously a power dynamic and whatever. Right. And if they tried this shit, they would have the shit flogged out of them by their captain because they'd piss off the Tahitian king, which may have made their work impossible. I mean, they weren't just nice. They were kept in line with violence. And now that violence is gone, they're going to be sailors. And more specifically, they're going to be English sailors. Yeah.

And there also seemed to be a fuckload of these roots on the island because McCoy seemed to have a constant, unlimited supply of brandy until he died. Now, at one point... And he would get blind drunk and just get violent as shit. At one point, a woman was sent off to go fishing, which was specifically McCoy's job, which he refused to do and made women to go do it instead. And when she didn't catch enough fish,

he bit her ear off. Ah, the Mike Tyson. Yeah. Now, McCoy decided to put a vote as very weird apartheid level democracy is rapidly forming on the island. He exploited women that he enslaved, created some sort of three-fifths voting system. I mean, really all he fucked up doing is he didn't write a constitution, and he could be revered as a founding father to this very day. Yeah. Unfortunately, one of these men is, John Adams specifically, the only town in Petcarn Islands known as Adams Town to this very day. Ah, good. Perfect. Yeah.

Now, they held a vote. They voted that all land would be divided among the seamen, that being the original sailors, not the Polynesians that come with them. And that's all heritable land would be given to white men specifically. Polynesians would have nothing. Now, Fletcher Christian, for all of his various flaws, strongly objected and voted against this, pointed out that where we all came from, that being Tahiti, not England, mind you, that in Tahiti, a landless man is deemed an outcast and had no place in society. And that was clearly not how we wanted to run our island he voted against it and every other white man voted for it meaning it passed now this

might surprise you shocks uh the the tahitian men did not take this very well oh really i can't imagine why uh just watching a bunch of white dudes go uh it's fine, though. We all got land, and we'll make sure that you live here, maybe. Yeah, you work for us. We have the guns. Right. Now, this led to what is now known as Massacre Day. I mean, it's my favorite day out of the calendar. Yeah.

You have Monday. You have Tuesday. Those are okay. Wednesday, you got to get over hump day right in a massacre day. This is the worst fucking Morrissey song I ever heard in my entire life. Now, the four remaining Tahitian men stole some muskets and decided amongst themselves they would kill every fucking Englishman on the island, or at least everybody they can get their hands on.

Within hours, they beheaded Martin and Mills, shot Williams and Brown, and Christian was ambushed while working in his field and hacked to death with axes while reportedly shouting, oh, dear. What a fucking embarrassing way to die. I think we've made it abundantly clear these Englishmen fucking sucked. However, the Tahitian women in their lives, like they were all married, loved them, and they did not like the idea of their husbands being murdered. So then the Tahitian wives of the murdered men killed the Tahitian men back,

leaving only a group of Tahitian women and a few Englishmen. Now, the leadership position, which Christian previously held, you know, with him dead, fell into two men, one named John Adams, sometimes known as Alexander, and a guy named Ned Young, who were apparently the only two semi-decent men left in the entire crew of the bounty.

And I use the term decent very loosely. Right. The two not obviously like psychopathic and homicidal. Right. Well, hold on to the homicidal part. Now, one problem was solved because McCoy was still alive, and McCoy was the biggest dickhead in the entire group. This problem was solved by him committing suicide by jumping off a nearby cliff. I was going to say, would you say, but then it gets worse? Not yet.

McCoy killed himself by jumping off a cliff. Though some people say he was kicked off like his Sparta or whatever. He just got mid-summered off a cliff. Though some people say he was kicked off like his Sparta or whatever. He's got midsummer off that bitch. And then Matthew Quintal, who was rapidly going insane. Most people blame the fact that he was drinking more of the root brandy than water at this point. Also,

once again, probably had like, you know, like 15 kinds of syphilis and 18 kinds of clap. Yeah, exactly. I assume almost everybody in this island has syphilis at 18 kinds of clap. Yeah, exactly. I assume almost everybody in this island has syphilis at this point. Yeah.

Now, Quintal was just threatening people, going off the wall, doing crazy shit. So he's eventually invited over to the home of Ned Young and John Adams, where they probably murdered him with an axe in 1798.

Did he like Huey Lewis in the news? Hey, Paul. And then two years after that, Young died of an asthma attack. This led, because he had the surgeon around to bleed him to death. What a fucking embarrassing way to die. Like, you know, just like you go through all that shit and all that fucking bloodletting, and then you just like die of a fucking asthma attack.

After all of this time, yeah, a mutiny, a small island-based race just like dive a fucking asthma attack after all of this time yeah a mutiny a small island based race war to have an asthma attack this meant in 1808 when an American whaling ship was drawn to the island by a cooking fire smoke column they were kind of shocked to see

it was a small group of nine women and 19 children all led by one lone white guy, Adams, uh, who had decided to start educating them all using a single Bible that had survived from the bounty, teaching them all literacy and the word of God while knocking up all of them

twice. Nobody's sure how many of these kids are his, but probably all of them. Uh, once again, this is just, this is a fucking English Empire speed run like we're just like

now we're on the Bible and like missionary section like just like doing the whole thing just in the course of like five years I did kind of speak incorrectly Adams most of those kids are Adams a lot of them are Christians as well but there seems to be really at most

only three different possible fathers uh that being christian adams and ned young i mean it's fine i called the morrissey song or kira song of morrissey song earlier so we all now word got back to england sometime around 1810 that like you know we just found this fucking island full of people out here and they all said they were from the bounty or at least one guy was from the bounty. But it wasn't until 1814 that some British ships actually made it out that way and discover that now

the population was 46. Remember, all of these people have to be inbred at this point other than the couple like original women. One of the people who greeted them was Thursday October Christian the first it was Fletcher Christian's

son now you're probably wondering that's a fucking Portland ass name right that's also just like all the words that he still knew Fletcher Christian's son was given that name because Fletcher Christian reportedly said quote I don't want to name my son after anything that would remind me of England, which, again, I can support. Now, over the years, a few more people would show up at the island because, you know, the word got out about this weird collection of a strange inbred Puritan cult on an island in the middle of pacific ocean

when you go to the middle of nowhere in the pacific islands you want to see the freak show i mean you know it's like when you go to utah people showed up at most in like onesies and twosies uh nothing that would make hitting a population of nearly 50 impossible without some serious cousin fucking at minimum probably Probably more closely related than that. Yeah, probably not at minimum, probably a maximum. Yeah, this led to a problem of overcrowding in 1831, and the islanders asked the British government to resettle some of them on Tahiti to lower the population. They did.

And these islanders, who had never left the island before, quickly died of disease when they reached Tahiti, because they had no immune system, which to speak of, and also all the inbreeding probably killed it. Now, the ones that didn't die were revolted at life in Tahiti because remember, their entire society was built around a single Bible and a whole lot of incest. And the only real education they received was in Bible literacy.

So they were virtually Puritans and like they dubbed Tahiti, quote, all of the immorality saloons, vile dancing, gambling, and scarlet women. And they immediately returned to Pitcairn Island. I'm taking my three cousin wives

and I'm leaving. This place disgusts me. Now, at one point in 1832, a guy named Joshua Hill showed up claiming to be an agent of the British government and made himself leader. He banned booze and ordered people in prison for the slightest infraction. Now, this is a problem because they didn't have a jail or really even written laws. So really, no crime had ever occurred there because nothing was illegal. Now, they didn't say to write any laws down until 1838, which happened to be the same

year that they kicked Hill off the island. Now, the island officially became a British colony in 1838. And somehow people still live there to this day with the population hovering around the mid 50s, all of whom are related. During like the World War II era, this population peaked in the hundreds and they had to like get rid of some of them because there's not enough land for them all. And when I say get rid of them, there wasn't some kind of mass calling. Most of them moved back to other parts of England.

And to be clear, too, there was no mass calling, comma, again. Again, yeah. That already happened once. Now, this jumps us to the modern day, kind of. Pitcairn Island is, what can I say? I'll say this the most, the nicest way I can think of. It's a weird place. Now, for one, until 2001 on the, anyway, the island had one cop.

He was British. They would have a temporary, like, loaned cop it was like a like a very like restricted tour of duty yeah they had to volunteer for it it was considered like a quirky thing to do for i think it was a year at a time yeah that has now increased to two and they're on loan from new zealand as of 2008 so you know how we said earlier it's gonna get worse at the end this is the part where it gets worse yeah it gets much worse real quick. In 2004, one third of the entire island population

was arrested for sexual assault. It's like the Boston Archdiocese in the 90s. Now, this happened because cops were always outsiders.

Like, they're like Brits on assignment, now Kiwis. But this happened when the British cops were rotating through. I believe they have some local assistants. They call them constables or whatever.

Yeah. Like a citizen on patrol or some bullshit. Yeah, but the British cop was the cop, the customs agent, immigration. They were literally everything. This is an island of 50 people. You don't exactly need that many people to do this job. So there was probably a lot of very easy way to keep things out of their eye. Maybe some wanton ignorance because you're trapped on a remote island with a population of people who are all related.

So if you try to arrest somebody for something, you're going to get murdered. You're just going to disappear. Nobody will ever know about it. it so one cop named gail cox who's a british cop from kent discovered that over the years widespread sexual crimes involving children were just kind of accepted within the island's population not only accepted but like instituted institutionalized yes other cops either somehow didn't notice or simply did not bother to report it. A study of island records confirmed anecdotal evidence that most girls bore their first child between the ages of 12 and 15. Quote, I think the girls were conditioned to accept that this was a man's world. And once they turned 12, they were eligible, said a guy named Neville Tosin, who was a pastor at the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is the only church on the island.

And he was there for a couple of years at a time. Yeah. Quote, mothers and grandmothers resigned to the situation, telling him that their own childhood experience had been the same. They regarded it as just a part of life on Pitcairn. One grandmother wondered what all the fuss was about. So when Gail Cox actually investigated a 15-year-old girl who filed a rape charge in

2000, I think it was 1999 or something, she decided to investigate it. And she rapidly learned that every single level of Cairn Island society and almost every person there was somehow connected in one way or another to this crime or others just like it.

This includes the island's mayor, Steve Christian. Yes, related to that, Christian. Not to mention, all of these rapes are also incest because they're all related. Yeah, I mean, this is essentially like one large grooming gang. Yeah. And not in the pejorative

racist sense, but an actual fucking grooming gang. That's what this entire thing was. It was just institutionalized, pedophilic incest. It was if Jeffrey Epstein built a society. Yeah. Yeah. It was Little St. Pitcairn Island. No. Now, people were so worried about this trial that islanders were ordered to turn over their guns. And in case you're wondering, there's 25 guns on the island, meaning there was half as many guns as people. Those are fucking rookie numbers, let's be honest.

There's also another problem. Pitcairn Island, very, very small, 50 people, no administrative support. Their administrative building is in New Zealand. So there's no criminal justice capacity on this island, right? So the British Crown had to pass the Pitcairn amendment of 2002 which had to be signed in law by the uk to allow a british criminal trial to

be held in new zealand since it's closer than bringing a third of the island's population all the way back to the uk of the seven men charged six were found guilty making this the largest population per capita to ever be tried and found guilty of a crime now of those uh the numbers end up being a full 10 percent of the island's population were sentenced to some form of prison uh length most of this negligible like two three years and some of these crimes are disgusting i'm leaving out the details um most of it is is real gross uh and most people got uh like community service restitution a lot of it is real gross. And most people got community service, restitution. A lot of it, the decision was made, we literally can't imprison the island.

It will die. We have to let some people back into the island because the way the island works is on a Corvée system for maintaining the roads and running the boats. And everything in the island has to be run compulsory. There's no real economy to speak of. running the boats and everything in the island has to be run kind of compulsory. There's no real economy to speak of.

It's almost completely dependent on UK subsidies. And at one point in its history, most of its economy is based on selling its domain name, like.PN or whatever, PI. I mean, that's what they really should have done. They should have just started up a sports betting server farm or something and just fucking saw it. I'm surprised they haven't. Do what Nauru did and just do a giant bank fraud. Yeah. Well, I mean, to be fair, they're not an independent nation, so they're part of the UK, so they don't have that much freedom. So they do have to kind of skirt UK laws, I suppose, which apparently weren't strict enough to not do any

of the things we're talking about but you know when the full 10 of the island's population was sentenced to a jail term and they didn't have a jail uh and they probably like hey we can't imprison them in new zealand we're not going to bring them all the way back to the uk they need to be imprisoned on the island so they had to build a prison and then because they had no corrections officers new zealand had to give them those two who then served on the island until all of the sentences were done. And then the prison was closed again. And there's now a provision in local law that says if for some reason this ever happens again, they can just make any house a prison. and the cops now from New Zealand who are also the cops, the customs enforcement

and immigration, all that, are also now corrections officers. So that's cool. What the fuck? I'm depressing. Everything about that, once again, just depressing. Now, in case you're wondering if this trial did anything to shake the foundations of rape, incest, island, you'd be wrong.

Sean Christian, yes, also related, who was convicted during that trial along with every other member of his family apparently was an elected mayor after serving two years in prison he was unreelected in 2016 so yeah now the one bright spot here is this society will die uh rape incest island is not long for this world. There's zero net immigration because it's one, again, there's no real economy to speak of. It's incredibly hard to move there even if you want to because there's 50 people living on the middle Pacific Ocean and a crime's land. And almost everybody that is up there in age, very few children are there. Most people move from the island and never return. The population is generally given at 50.

There never really seems to be 50 people there at any given time. Yeah, I think I remember reading about it. It's like 50 people, but usually there's at least maybe a half dozen in New Zealand or Australia or something. Yeah. Nobody really wants to live there. You have to be, at best, a semi-social hermit. Yeah. If not just a weird hermetic sex pest.

You have to look at the film Lighthouse and go, I don't know. I think that works for me. I mean, there's very little internet. There's no infrastructure. You get supplies once every three months, which includes your mail. It's not even like it's a self-sustaining island either.

No, it's absolutely not. They would die. Yeah, if it wasn't the continued support of the British state, they would not still be there in this day and age. The Pythianese Islanders, which I think is what they call themselves, their diaspora did a study and said that

at this rate, the island will probably die out by 2045. Which means probably is the British government will subsidize moving everybody to somewhere else. Ironically to Diego Garcia. But that is the accidental history of the Pitcairn Islands. Now, we've gone over an hour here, but so we'll make our question from the Legion here quick. Now, this is actually hilariously prescient for you. What is your worst travel story?

So, Joe's saying that because I was one of the dumb shits just caught up in... I don't know when you're listening to this. However, there's currently thousands of flights being delayed and canceled throughout the United States because of a combination of weather and COVID. And so I ended up having to throw myself on the ultimately on the good graces of a gate agent in order to get back to Boston from Seattle last week. Always a good sign.

That's actually probably not my worst travel story. My worst is probably one of the two times I've broken down going cross country. One of which was a flat tire in Evanston, Wyoming. And the other was a blown water pump in Fillmore, Utah. If you ever do break down in Fillmore, Utah, my best advice is to walk. They served me the smallest gin and tonic I've ever seen in my entire life. There's one pizza place in the entire town that's shit. And you can only buy 3.2% beer at the gas station. I'm not sure what my worst travel story is, honestly. I think I'd have to say my first deployment to Afghanistan because whoever planned the flight route is just

a madman. So we started off in Fort Hood, Texas. Now, this is normally a straightforward flight. You fly out of Texas or anywhere else in the United States, really, and you go to Germany. Yeah. You might make a stop somewhere in the United States before then. And then from Germany, you fly to, at the time, it was Kyrgyzstan. Yep.

And a tiny place called Manas. Another flight, go to Afghanistan. So we start off at Fort Hood. We flew to bumfuck Egypt somewhere in Canada. No idea why. We were not allowed to get off the plane. So as soon as like a Canadian Air Force base or something. From there, we flew to Maine.

From Maine, which I think is backwards. Well, you might have flown to the airport where infamously everyone got put down on 9-11 or something. I know that they handle a lot of the transatlantic flights. As in Bangor. And then from Bangor, Maine, we went to Germany. From Germany, we went to Romania. And one of the weirdest airport experiences of my life. So we landed on a tarmac, did not taxi up to the airport uh we were just

spat out into the tarmac to wander around confused um airport was locked there's nobody there and then a guy in a track suit and a black mercedes which i am aware describes about 65 percent of all eastern european men drives up with two very scantily clad women in it speaks very broken english is like are you trying to get into airport like and we're all in uniform we don't have any weapons your weapons are on the plane we have no ammunition and just a guy like a hundred or so american soldiers the middle of a romanian airport and uh he's like i will let you in he unlocks the door of this full airport with gift shops and a bar. And he starts insisting on giving us alcohol, which we're not allowed to have.

Gives us cigarettes and stuff. And then we're there for like three fucking hours. We get loaded up back into our plane. From there, we fly to Kyrgyzstan, into Manas. And then from Manas, we flew into Afghanistan. And it was the most roundabout, bizarre fucking trip I've ever made in my life. On the way home, we just went from Afghanistan, Manas, Germany, Banger, Texas. Well, at least you knew when the guy with the tracks and the blacked out Mercedes showed up.

At least you knew you were talking to the boss at that point. This is my airport. Also, I am the only one who works here. I'm pretty sure he was a mafia boss and a pimp. I mean, I'd be fucking surprised if he wasn't. Yeah, I respect a brother who has a diversified portfolio.

But, Shox, thank you so much for joining me on this darkly hilarious episode of the Lens of the Donkeys podcast. Everybody, thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show. of the donkeys podcast. Uh, everybody, thank you for listening. You thank you for supporting the show. If you don't support the show,

try looking into our Patreon, getting some bonus stuff. It's, it's all right. Uh, and if you don't, I will hold it against you. I'm disappointed.

I will, because that's, uh, that's mostly where you'll hear my bloatiest voice. So yeah, that's right. If you don't subscribe to the Patreon, just know that I hate you personally.

And if you ever come to Boston, I'll probably, I don't know, like jeer something in your general direction. Yeah, that's where you hear the zoo crew say weird things about Hitler's nephew. Anyway, thank you again, everybody everybody we'll talk to you next time and until next time don't go to Pitcairn Islands

yeah just don't