Pitcairn Island - the early history

Revised Jun 12 2021

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The Island, the People, and the Pastor
Chapter IV

[Chapters I through III have been omitted, as they are a retelling of the Bounty mutiny story, several decades after the fact.]

CHAPTER IV.

CHRISTIAN AND HIS PARTY—PITCAIRN'S ISLAND-FOLGER’S ACCOUNT—LANDING OF NINE MUTINEERS AND OF OTAHEITANS AT PITCAIRN—DREADFUL DEATHS OF CHRISTIAN AND OTHERS—INTOLERABLE STATE OF SOCIETY AT PITCAIRN—INTEMPERANCE—John Adams'S DREAMS—HIS REPENTANCE AND REFORMATION—HIS SERVICES IN THE CAUSE OF RELIGION AND MORALITY IN THE ISLAND.

To return to the nine missing mutineers. Nothing more was heard of Fletcher Christian and his party, until twenty years had passed from the date of the mutiny when Sir Sidney Smith, then commander-in-chief on the Brazil station, informed the Admiralty, from Rio Janeiro, that Captain Folger, of the ship Topaz, of Boston, United States, on landing on Pitcairn's Island, in 1808, had found an Englishman, named Alexander Smith, the only person remaining of nine that had sailed in the Bounty. Smith, otherwise John Adams (he having, on first entering the service, assumed the name of Alexander Smith), related, that after putting Bligh into the boat, Christian, with the other mutineers, had gone to Otaheite, where all hands remained, but Christian, Smith, and seven others; that each had taken an Otaheitan wife, and then proceeded to Pitcairn, where they had made good a landing, and afterwards destroyed the Bounty.