THE REMOTEST GARDEN

Published August 28, 2019 | By Dr. Jack Wheeler

Pitcairn Island. It’s a small volcanic rock, two miles long and one mile wide, that emerged from the depths of the Pacific Ocean a million years ago.

1,000 years ago, seafaring Polynesians found it covered with wind and sea borne plant life, like pandanus trees with leaves to make thatch huts, miro and other trees for timber, palm trees with coconuts to eat and drink, and flowers galore, all in wild abundance – and most valuably, volcanic obsidian glass and basalt rock to make tools, items you couldn’t make on the coral atolls inhabited by other Polynesians far to the west.

They settled in, planting taro, breadfruit, and bananas. Trade with the distant atolls flourished – but by 600 years ago, internecine warfare among the atolls caused the trade to collapse, and the island was abandoned.

In 1767, a British frigate, HMS Swallow chanced upon it, spotted by a lookout with the last name of Pitcairn. They sailed past not finding a landing for the island was surrounded by towering cliffs, Captain Phillip Carteret named the island for the lookout, then proceeded to mischart Pitcairn Island’s location by a longitude error of over 200 miles.

In 1777, famed Captain James Cook tried to find it and failed, confiding to his first mate, William Bligh, it must have been mischarted. Eleven years later in 1788, Bligh was captain of his own ship, the HMS Bounty, tasked with sailing from England to Tahiti to acquire a shipload of breadfruit seedlings to be taken to British colonies in the Caribbean such as Jamaica as a cheap source of food for black slaves on the sugar cane plantations.

Reaching Tahiti in June 1789, the Bounty spent five months there, with the crew spending as little time gathering breadfruit seedlings, and as much time with gorgeous, half-naked, and agreeable Tahitian ladies as they could. They had no desire to leave when Bligh said they had to in November, and return to their captain’s abusive rule.

As the Bounty sailed off, the crew quickly learned Bligh cared more for the seedlings than them, having them go thirsty to save water for the plants and starving them on half or quarter food rations if they complained. Floggings and whippings became more frequent. Finally, Bligh’s second in command Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian had enough, and led history’s most famous mutiny, The Mutiny on the Bounty against Bligh.

The Bounty’s crew numbered 43, 25 of whom were mutineers led by Christian, 18 of whom elected to stay with Bligh and put on the ship’s launch with him. Captained now by Christian, the Bounty sailed back to Tahiti, where 16 mutineers decided to stay and take their chances, hiding in the mountains from the British who were sure to come looking for them in revenge once they learned of the mutiny. Sure enough, most were eventually caught.

Christian was taking no such chance. He remembered Bligh telling him Cook’s story about Pitcairn’s mischarting, so he and eight fellow mutineers together with twelve Tahitian women and (big mistake) six Tahitian men, sailed the Bounty off in search of it, crisscrossing the line of latitude (the 25^th Parallel, easy to chart) to get the right longitude (hard to chart with no reliable ship’s clock in those days) – until, on January 15, 1790, there it was.

The Nine Pitcairn Mutineers ©2019 Jack Wheeler

Uninhabited for hundreds of years, Pitcairn was a Garden of Eden, coconuts, bananas, taro and breadfruit the ancient Polynesians planted in abundance.

They were awed by the island’s lush beauty, with huge banyan trees rising above them like giant cathedrals.

Any tropical fruit they brought with them – mangoes, guavas, pineapples, passion fruit – plus their yams and sweet potatoes easily grew in the rich volcanic soil. Ever practical, however, Fletcher Christian still was taking no chances with revenge-seeking Brits finding their hidden paradise. So after dismantling the Bounty with every usable item taken onshore, in the waters of aptly named Bounty Bay, he had the ship set afire and burned until it sank beneath the waves.

He had any sign of their habitation hidden in the trees above the bay. He would climb to a large cave in the towering nearby cliff to watch for an approaching ship – to this day known as Christian’s Cave.

Later that year on a Thursday in October, Fletcher’s Tahitian wife Maimiti bore him a son, whom they promptly named Thursday October Christian – the first of the mutineer’s many descendants.

For three years, the founding community of Pitcairners flourished – but like any Garden of Eden story, it ended in Cain and Abel disaster. William McCoy, who once worked in a distillery, learned how to make a poisonous alcoholic brew from leaves of the Ti plant. His Tahitian wife and the other ladies warned him not to, as they knew how it could drive one mad, but he ignored them.

Soon he and several other men were drunkards and began picking fights with the Tahitian men. Try as he might, Fletcher Christian tried to stop them to no avail. The Tahitian men decided to murder all the mutineers, including Fletcher himself. The attack came on a dark day in 1793, killing William Brown, Isaac Martin, John Mills, and John Williams. The Tahitians found Fletcher Christian resting under a tree while tending his garden and murdered him too.

McCoy escaped, tried to go on the wagon and mend his ways, only to make one last batch of his “grog,” and blind drunk went to his death falling off a cliff in 1799. Matthew Quintal was found dead in the same year, while Ned Young died of asthma the next, in 1800. Only John Adams of the original nine Pitcairn mutineers was left.

In solace, thankfulness, and grief, he began reading William Bligh’s Bible which had been retrieved from the Bounty. It was his and what was left of the Pitcairn community’s salvation. The Bounty Bible is on display today in the Pitcairn Museum.

Thanks to John Adams, the community, English and Tahitian, became devoted to the Christian principles of neighborly love and forgiveness. It flourished once more.

Meanwhile, what had happened to them was a mystery to the world for twenty-five years. When British Navy frigates H.M.S. Briton and Tagus stumbled upon Pitcairn on September 17, 1814, the officers and sailors were stunned when a canoe rowed out to them piloted by Thursday October Christian, who announced to them in perfect King’s English that he was the son of Fletcher Christian and invited them to dinner on the island.

Soon the whole English-speaking world and beyond was enthralled with the mutineers’ story, first of freedom over tyranny, then of Christian triumph over murder and adversity. John Adams, the Pitcairners’ patriarch became revered as a Christian saint, caring for his flock until his death in 1829. His gravesite, where his Tahitian wife Teio and their daughter Hannah lie next to him, is sacred to Pitcairners to this day.

Pitcairn became a Crown Colony of the British Empire. The community flourished so well that by 1856 the island couldn’t sustain the growing population, so Queen Victoria awarded them Norfolk Island between New Zealand and Australia, commanding Pitcairn’s evacuation to Norfolk, 6,000 kilometers away.

Norfolk is charmingly beautiful, larger and more livable than Pitcairn (to which I can attest, having spent time there in 2015), so it’s little wonder that many Pitcairners decided to stay.

But many others pined for their Pitcairn home, so the Queen relented and let them move back in the 1860s. They’ve been there ever since. Since everything grows on Pitcairn, they brought citrus fruit trees, lemon, orange, and grapefruit, along with every kind of garden vegetable. And stately Norfolk pines. Yet it still remains the world’s remotest garden.

You can’t fly here. Once you get to Papeete, Tahiti, you must fly several hours to the easternmost island in French Polynesia, Mangareva, then board a cargo supply ship with a few cabins for passengers (who each pay thousands of dollars) that takes two days to sail here. Repeat to get back to Tahiti and thence home. Here’s the signpost on Highest Point.

Note the 4WD quad bike – there are no cars on Pitcairn, everyone gets around this way on the island’s dirt tracks.

You arrive at dawn with your first sight of Pitcairn in the light of sunrise…

But there’s no harbor for the ship to dock. A longboat must come out and take you to the miniscule wharf, but only if the ocean swell isn’t too big.

There are remoter inhabited islands, like Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, but none that can compete in fertile or ethereal lushness…

Or in spectacular beauty, such as St. Paul’s Natural Pool…

Or the amazing blue of the ocean (note St. Paul’s Pool in the center)…

If you want to risk climbing the sheer cliff to Christian’s Cave, you’ll get a great view of Adamstown (named after John Adams), Pitcairn’s only community.

Here you’ll find the Bounty Anchor and Bounty Cannon on display…

But it’s not scenery and artifacts that you go to all this trouble getting to Pitcairn – it’s the people who live here, whose home this is, the descendants of the most legendary mutiny in history. Here I am with Dennis Christian, the direct great-great-great-great grandson of Fletcher Christian, a nicer more likeable guy you’ll never meet.

And with lovable “Pirate Pawl,” direct descendant of Ned Young.

There are no hotels on Pitcairn – you always stay in a Pitcairn family’s home. Here are our hosts, Carol Christian-Warren, the direct descendant of Fletcher (far right) with her daughter Charlene, grandson Jayden, husband Jay, grandson Kimura, and granddaughter Cushana. What a wonderful family.

Like all Pitcairners, they are a joy to be with. They are beyond gracious and hospitable, I’ve never met more cheerful people anywhere on earth, so happy to be with each other, so full of laughter and happiness in simply being alive.

I frankly wasn’t prepared for this. I was intensely curious to see what people with such an extraordinary historical legacy living in one of the world’s remotest places were like – especially as they have recently endured an extraordinarily intense legal assault upon them by British courts that could easily have torn them completely apart.

Instead, they used their Christian faith and principles of neighborly love and forgiveness to overcome their tribulation and become a better community than before.

Soon I must leave this fabled isle and I know it will be a tearful goodbye. Here in the world’s remotest garden live a very, very special people. It has been such a privilege to be among them, and to be able to say they have become my friends.