The History of Pitcairn Island

right before daybreak splashed across the horizon like candlelight from under a closed door and the full scope of the island's body suddenly came into view a long inhospitable rock face without a welcoming arm of land reaching down toward the waves mr christian young yelled up to their leader napping in the crow's nest his booming cry awoke the others who wondered if they were still dreaming as they glimpsed the lonely aisle christian stared at the land mass rising in front of him reciting carteret log entry by heart a great rock rising out of the sea not more than five miles in circumference covered with trees with a small stream running down its side and surrounded by unimaginable stretches of water it's pit care this is pitcairn's island he paused stunned into breathlessness then you are my tie the good land they cheered as others wept with happiness they had found a sanctuary a new home [Music] [Applause] we do not know who first settled this small volcanic island which is about ten by four kilometers early visitors from europe found many relics of polynesian civilization probably from mangariva some 490 kilometers to the northwest there were rough-hewn stone gods still guarding sacred sites and carved in the cliffs were representations of animals and men there were burial sites with human skeletons there were earth ovens stone axes and other artifacts of polynesian origin there has never been done an excavation on the island so there could of course be more artifacts buried there the island was uninhabited when it was discovered by european and portuguese explorer pedro fernandez de quiros in 1606. the british captain carteret of hms swallow rediscovered the island in 1767 and it having been discovered by the sun to major pitcairn he called it pitcairn's island captain carteret plotted the position in on a map and although the latitude was reasonably accurate his recorded longitude was incorrect by about three degrees or 330 kilometers west of the island if you aren't too familiar with the mutiny on the bounty i would recommend that you watch my presentation on that before you continue with this because i'm not going to cover the mutiny itself in this video [Music] after an unsuccessful attempt to settle at tibuy the mutineers of the bounty returned to tahiti here 16 of the crew voted to remain in tahiti eight of the mutineers decided to stay with christian and continue the search for an uninhabited island hidden from the outside world this was to be a journey that would take almost four months having found captain carteret's account of an island called pitcairn christian suggested that they settled there the island had been reported in 1767 but its exact location was never verified captain cook had tried to find it on two separate occasions but failed so it would be the perfect hiding place for the mutineers they sailed eastward in search of the island but when reaching the spot where the island supposedly was there was nothing but water assuming that carteret had marked the longitude wrong christian zigzagged along the line of the island's latitude and pitcairn was spotted on the evening of january 15 1790. the violent waves made it impossible to make a safe landing and they had to wait three days for the weather conditions to change enough for them to land christian brown williams mccoy and three tahitians rode ashore the island was lonely inaccessible uninhabited fertile and warm and it exceeded the mutineer's highest hopes the nine mutineers six polynesian men and twelve tahitian women as well as a tahitian baby girl named sally daughter of one of the women who would become a respected person in the community later offloaded everything they could from the bounty the mutineers then ran the bounty aground in what is today called bounty bay and on january 23rd 1790 the ship burned and sank in an article published in 1819 tihiri nu noah jenny wifett of isaac martin says that fletcher christian wanted to preserve the ship but matthew quinnell said no we shall be discovered so they burned her for a time the mutineers and tahitians existed peacefully and christian's son thursday october christian was the first child born on the island and more children soon followed the nine mutineers that settled on pitcairn island were fletcher christian ned young john adams matthew quintal william mccoy william brown isaac martin john mills and john williams they soon erected tents with the sails living chiefly on the ship's provisions complemented with seabirds and fish which there were a lot of the place of encampment was near the landing place and was called ship landing now called bounty bay shortly after the landing the wife of williams died and he wanted a new wife to prevent quarrels among the mutineers they all agreed to kill talalo the husband of one of the women called nancy a fight erupted that ended with nancy beating her husband with a stick until he died she then became the wife of williams the place where he was killed is called talalo's ridge then another one of the women died in an accident this exacerbated the problem when the mutineer now claimed another woman from the tahitian men this was the seed that would later start a civil war on the island they erected a hut on the top of one of the mountains as a lookout house which was occupied by a man and his wife who were relieved weekly so that they might not be taken by surprise having brought vegetables with them they cleared land for cultivation and they had also brought chickens and pigs this however became a problem because some of the pigs reportedly adam's pigs ran wild and destroyed some of the things they had planted angered by this christian told adams that if he caught his pigs coming through his fence he would shoot them adams replied then i will shoot you christian and others seized and tied him up and sentenced him to be set adrift on a plank in the ocean but at the last minute christian changed his mind and atoms would live another thing was that when the land was divided between the mutineers and their families the polynesian men were not given any property at all and worked as servants for the mutineers quintal and mccoy were very cruel to them quintal in particular sometimes if they did not please him he would flog them the tahitian men tired of being oppressed and flogged now plotted their revenge [Music] on september 20th 1793 four of the polynesian men that were left stole muskets and set out to kill all of the englishmen christian was the first one attacked and was killed while working in his fields first shot and then butchered with an axe his last words were reported to be oh dear mills was the next one killed shot twice by the polynesian men mccoy was fired at while inside his house but the shot missed and mccoy knocked one of the attackers down while making his escape one of the women who saw what was happening told adams who tried to hide but the polynesian man found him and shot him through his shoulder making the bullet leave through his neck adams fell down and they aimed a blow at his head with the butt end of the musket which he was able to ward off with his hand breaking his finger adams was able to escape before the polynesians continued their killing spree next they beheaded martin with an axe and shot williams and brown dead according to buffett's a narrative of 20 years residents on pitcairn's island john buffett says the following adams has told me that he believed young was aware of the massacre as the tahitians told him when he came back that they had forgot that young told them not to hurt adams indicating that young was aware of what was going to happen that day mccoy and quintal escaped the massacre by hiding themselves in the woods but the polynesian men soon began fighting among themselves and one of them was killed and another was killed by one of the women in an act of revenge for him killing her husband the two last of the polynesian plotters were also killed one by quintel and mccoy and the final man was killed by young the only people now left alive were young adams mccoy quintel two tahitian men seven women and some children the mutineers scared of the two remaining tahitian men decided to eliminate them both while one of them was sleeping a tahitian woman struck him with an axe and killed him at the same time young shot the last tahitian man dead these murders of nearly half of the island's population dramatically changed the community with many of the mutineers having children with their wives women and children now began to outnumber the men christian's death caused a leadership vacuum on the island two of the four surviving mutineers ned young and john adams assumed leadership and some peace followed until william mccoy created a still and began brewing an alcoholic beverage from a native plant the mutineers began drinking excessively and making life miserable for the women william mccoy drank much of the ti rum and one day while very intoxicated he committed suicide in 1799 matthew quintal again threatened to kill the remaining mutineers on the island and their children young and adams decided to kill him for their own safety and the next time he became drunk and once again threatened them they butchered him with an axe they continued to distill alcohol for some time and one night adams had a dream or a hallucination where he saw a person coming to thrust him through with a dart a scared adams exclaimed ah i know who you are michael the archangel the dream or hallucination made a strong impression on him and adams underwent a transformation becoming fervently religious vowing that he would never drink again after that young taught adams how to read using the bounty's bible as the children grew up adams taught them to read and they again taught it to the others he led sunday services and to ensure the community's well-being taught the young people how to cultivate the land and care for the animals the women played an important role in ensuring the survival of the island and even more so after the massacre they knew how to tend gardens catch fish and make traditional tools and canoes they would also have had almost sole influence on the upbringing of the children edward young succumbed in 1800 to asthma and is the first man to die of natural causes of the mutineers when it comes to the real identity of john adams the sources are divided some sources say his real name was alexander smith and that he changed it in order not to be identified but according to john buffett his real name was john adams saying i shall hear inform the reader that john adams was the proper name of the patriarch not alexander smith as i have read letters from his brother in england who was a water man in london named jonathan adams however we must keep in mind that john buffett where most of the information we have comes from only settled on pitcairn in 1823 30 years after the massacre and by this time only a few of the people living on the island had been alive when it happened there were about 19 children when buffett arrived on the island only two or three of whom recollected some of the circumstances of the massacre but most of them were too young to remember any of it the rest we know about the massacre and the history of the island in this period comes from john adams who has said different and sometimes conflicting things about what happened several ships had sailed past the island during the 1790s and one even landed to pick coconuts but these ships did not encounter the community and sailed off without knowing the island was inhabited the community's first contact with a foreign ship came in 1808 when an american ship the topaz commanded by mayhew folger landed on the island the captain and crew were impressed by the community they updated adams and the growing population of women and children on the events in the world of the past twenty years and promised to tell the world about what had happened to them by this time adams had set up a school for the island's children in which the teaching of christianity was an important part he was known as father by all members of the community two british ships britain and tagus rediscovered the island and its community in 1814 both captain thomas stains and captain pipan was charmed by the simplicity of the islander's life and impressed by john adams and the example he set they both agreed that it would be an act of cruelty and inhumanity to arrest him as he grew old john adams was finding it difficult to care for his wife teo who was now blind and to cope with educating the increasing number of children on the island in december 1823 the british whaler cyrus arrived at pitcairn john buffett a shipwright from bristol took pity on adams and requested permission from captain john hall to remain on the island buffett was given permission to stay however his friend john evans was not but evans jumped ship and hid until cyrus departed both men were accepted into the community and extended the island's genetic pool through being the first non-bounty non-polynesian settlers buffett married dolly young soon after arriving on the island and john evans married john adams daughter rachel as well as teaching the children and conducting church services buffett taught the islanders woodworking skills which later became the basis for one of pitcairn's industries a third man named george knobs also settled on the island and married not long after that following adams's death in 1829 a power vacuum emerged knobs was a strong character and soon ousted buffett from the role of school teacher and pastor in 1831 the pitcairners tried to move back to tahiti from pitcairn and they were given a generous and warm-hearted welcome by the tahitians but it soon became clear that the pitcairners had become on the one hand too european in their ways and on the other stricter and moral due to their christian conversion particularly in sexual behavior than their hosts who still practice polynesian sexual norms but they also got sick when infectious diseases to which they had little or no immunity against began to kill them the first to die was fletcher christian's son thursday october christian now the oldest member of the community his death was followed by lucy quintel and during the next two months there were ten more people who died several efforts were made to arrange for their return to pitcairn but all attempts failed until captain william captain of a whalership offered to take the remaining 65 back to their island home for five hundred dollars which is the equivalent of sixteen thousand dollars in today's money captain driver sailed them back and reached pitcairn on september third after their return there was a period of anarchy and drunkenness among the islanders again but in october 1832 a puritanical busybody by the name of joshua hill landed on the island and claimed to have been sent by the british government he was welcomed and soon took advantage of the instability in the community was able to be elected president of the island and he quickly replaced knobs as pastor and teacher he'll abolish the distilling of liquor and introduced arbitrary imprisonment and other severe punishments for the smallest misdeeds his rule became increasingly tyrannical and he ordered the expulsion of knobs and the other lousy foreigners buffett and evans who were exiled in order to leave the island on the next ship that passed or punishment and imprisonment would be the consequence however their departure caused a reaction and hill's power gradually declined until his fraudulent claim to represent the british government was exposed he was deposed and driven off the island in 1838 upon receiving a message requesting he returned home knobs returned from exile and was by a general vote reinstated as pastor and teacher and the same year a british ship captain helped the islanders draw up a law code the islanders set up a system whereby they would elect a chief magistrate every year as the leader of the island under this law code pitcairn became the first british colony in the pacific and also the second country in the world after corsica under pasquale pali in 1755 to give women the right to vote not only was this the first time female suffrage was written into a british constitution but it also incorporated compulsory schooling for the first time in any british legislation inevitably the islanders numbered 156 and were increasing rapidly and it was feared that land would soon become insufficient and also the fish had deserted the coastal waters after a landslide that had been caused by a great storm in 1845 the majority of the community decided to move with british government aid to norfolk island it was larger than pitcairn and now uninhabited but 60 earlier years of convict labor had left hundreds of acres under cultivation and all the 194 islanders settled there in 1858 while pitcairn was uninhabited survivors of the shipwreck of the clipper wild wave spent several months there until rescued by uss vandalia these visitors had dismantled some of the houses for wood and nails and vandalized john adams's grave but before long some of the islanders got home sick wanted to return to pitcairn and soon 16 of the islanders returned back in 1864 a further four more families from norfolk island decided to return led by simon young as the community's new leader george knobs and john buffett who had been ousted chose to stay on norfolk island along with the returning pit care nurse was a man named samuel warren who had married agnes christian the small community resettled the island and actually helped some shipwrecks who came to the island however some new settlers arrived and settled the island too [Music] in 1882 when one of the newcomers fell in love with a girl who was unfortunately already engaged to a christian strong passions were aroused and the commander of the visiting hms sappho was induced to approve a law forbidding strangers to settle on pitcairn the law was later amended but only to permit settlement by those whose presence was considered of benefit to the island [Music] in 1886 the seventh-day adventist layman john tay visited pitcairn and persuaded the islanders to convert from the church of england to his faith seventh-day adventists is a strict interpretation of christianity which forbids things like dancing something that created an awkward situation in the 2000s when norfolk islanders came and visited pitcairn when the norfolk inhabitants started dancing out of joy the pitcairners watched them in almost disbelief missionaries from the seventh-day adventist church arrived on the island a few years later and the conversion of an entire community became a great propaganda boost for the religion and was used for all it was worth to promote the church but the reports of the naval officers who visited pitcairn towards the end of the 19th century still continued to reveal how society had deteriorated since the return from norfolk island there was a lack of unity and purpose families competing for power and even a murder that the community did not degenerate further has been credited to the influence of james russell mccoy a great grandson of the mutineer the population of pitcairn peaked at 233 in 1937. it has since decreased due to emigration primarily to australia and new zealand the pitcher nurse are schooled on the island until secondary school when they leave for australia and new zealand few of those who leave come back though and those who have left shows little interest in returning in 1940 the british government sent henry evans maude and his wife honor maude to the island to modernize the government and to establish a post office and issue stamps in order to generate some revenue for the islanders the stance from pitcairn is a collector's wet dream but due to the digitalization of the world stamp collecting is a hobby and trade for fewer and fewer people the pitcairn honey is considered to be one of the best in the world said to be a favorite of the british royal family the windsors they also sell handmade woodwork souvenirs fruit and vegetables and many memorabilias from the wreck of the bounty up through the years in 1970 the british high commissioners of new zealand became the governors of pitcairn and in 1999 the position of chief magistrate was replaced by the position of mayor most of the chief magistrates have been from the christian and young families who are the dominant families on the island along with the warrens another change for the community is the decline of the adventist church where there are now only a few regular worshipers the first vcrs came to the island in the 90s introducing the islanders to hollywood's view of the world which was something very new and fascinating to the islanders car chase scenes were their favorites and from visiting sailors they could also collect hardcore porn videos internet came to the island in 1997 but it's slow and only available at certain times during the day of the three bounty movies the pit care nurse all preferred the gable version with fletcher christian as a dashing hero overthrowing the tyrannical bligh the two later versions not so much because it put captain bligh in a different light complicating their founder and ancestor fletcher christian in 2004 seven male residents of pitcairn about one-third of the male population and six others living abroad were tried on 55 sex related offenses this included rape indecent assault and child abuse on october 25th 2004 six men were convicted including steve christian the island's mayor at the time but a seventh the island's former magistrate jay warren was acquitted the british government set up a prison on the island and the men began serving their sentences in late 2006. by 2010 all had served their sentences or been granted home detention status in 2016 mayor mike warren was found guilty of downloading more than one thousand images and videos of child sexual abuse during the time he downloaded the images he was working abroad in child protection brandon presser says that there were two families who basically controlled the island the christians and the warrens and that these families did not seem to care too much for each other he also described how it was impossible to be alone on the island there were always someone nearby watching him no matter where on the island he was he also relates how the islanders admit that they put up a show for the visitors and that they are relieved when they leave the island is dependent upon the small revenue they can get from visitors and by selling merchandise but they don't really like outsiders when asked if presser would visit the island again he said no because he wasn't sure if he would be welcomed again because of the book he wrote even today the descendants of the pitcairners share only a few family names adams christian mccoy quintel and young are the bounty names buffett evans and knobs are the pit care names and blucher badly robinson snell rossiter and bailey are among the norfolk names [Music] i hope you found this presentation interesting and if you did please give it a thumbs up and subscribe and if you like what you see on this channel and can afford it please consider supporting me on patreon or buy me a coffee it would really help me making higher quality videos there are links to both in the description below and i hope to see you in the next one

Channel: History with Magnus. What Really Happened?

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Id: t-63CY0SXmQ

Length: 26min 55sec (1615 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022