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Christian's cave, Pitcairn Island, South Pacific
Oil on Canvas - (57cm x 63cm)
Several versions of the painting exist, both in private collections and in public venues, including the Museum on Pitcairn Island (governed by the British Consulate in Auckland, New Zealand.) The version shown here is owned by the City of Lancaster Museum.
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click here to return to the main index" It is so high that we saw it at a distance of more than fifteen leagues and it having been discovered by a young gentleman, son to the Major Pitcairn of the marines, we called it Pitcairn’s Island”
These few words recorded the first sight and naming of Pitcairn by a European. That was July 1767 and the words are those of Captain Philip Carteret of HMS Swallow who was however unable to land because of the surf, “Which at this season broke upon it with great violence” No one except the determined Captain Cook was interested in the report and his later search for the island was deflected by an outbreak of scurvy. So Pitcairn might have become the home for ex - sailors with their Polynesian families and like other islands in these latitudes a casual stopover for whalers looking for land and fresh food. But its destiny was to be quite different. The tale of the mutiny on his majesty’s armed ship Bounty, which led to the founding of the Pitcairn community, is well known. All that needs to be told here is that on 28th April 1789 when the Bounty was in the Tonga group on her way home from Tahiti with a cargo of breadfruit trees for planting in the Caribbean, the masters - mate Fletcher Christian, and others of the crew mutinied. Casting a-drift commander Lieutenant William Bligh and eighteen loyal officers in the ship's boat, the mutineers sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti. Spurred by the fear of discovery and arrest eight of the mutineers set sail with Christian in search of an uninhabited island secure from the outside world. To help them the men took with them six Tahitian men and to look after them and be their consort’s twelve Tahitian women. For months the Bounty combed the Austral group, the Cooks, Tonga and the eastern Islands of Fiji for a home. It was almost in desperation that Christian, recalling or stumbling across Carteret’s account sailed eastwards for Pitcairn which was reached on 15 January 1790. "With a joyful expression such as we had not seen on him for a long time past“. Christian returned from the shore to report that the people who had once planted (Polynesians 400 years previously) Pitcairn with coconut palms and breadfruit had either died of left it. The island was lonely, and inaccessible, uninhabited, fertile and warm, it exceeded his highest hopes. The Bounty was anchored in what is now called Bounty - Bay and stripped of all her contents, including pigs, chickens, yams and sweet potatoes which were all laboriously hauled up the aptly named Hill Of Difficulty to the Edge, a small grassy platform overlooking the bay. Then fearing that if any European vessel sighted the ship retribution would inevitably follow, the mutineers ran the Bounty ashore and set her on fire so that no trace of her, or clue to her whereabouts would remain visible from the sea. Fletcher Christian the man who had led the mutineers to this remote island was the son of the coroner of Cumberland and of Manx descent on his father’s side. He had been to school with William Wordsworth, was well educated and in the words of friend “mild generous and sincere”. Certainly his energy and cheerfulness drew both respect and affection from his fellows and although he died a few years after landing on Pitcairn he is still remembered as the founder and first leader of the settlement.
Courtesy a Guide to Pitcairn 5th Edition: Published by the Government of the Islands of Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno - (1990)