In Search of a Home! 
FROM THE MUTINY TO PITCAIRN ISLAND (1789-1790) 
By H. E. Mauve 
Senior Fellow in Pacific History 
The Australian National University 
[With 1 plate] 
So mucw Fact and fiction have been written about the mutiny on 
His Majesty’s armed vessel Bounty, and the vicissitudes of the Anglo- 
Polynesian settlement on Pitcairn Island which resulted from it, that 
it might well seem that everything that can be said on the subject 
must have been long since placed on record. 
This would not be true, however, of any time in Pitcairn’s history, 
for the main chroniclers? were either primarily concerned with the 
Bligh versus Christian controversy or in painting an edifying pic- 
ture of moral regeneration: for these purposes they were content to 
use, as their source material, virtually nothing except the reports or 
published narratives of a few naval officers, in one or two instances 
adding traditional information obtained from the islanders of the 
second generation. 
This generalization has particular application to the months im- 
mediately succeeding the mutiny itself, concerning which the naval 
officers tell us little, and that recorded from one informant only [John 
Adams] long after the events themselves. 
Despite its importance to any accurate understanding of subsequent 
Pitcairn history, this period is invariably dismissed in a few para- 
graphs, in which the dearth of fact may be disguised by pious observa- 
tions on such themes as the alleged deterioration in Fletcher 
Christian’s character, 
Yet these months were actually packed with incidents: the first five 
witnessing the establishment of the settlement on Tubuai, its subse- 
1Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 67, No. 2, 
June 1958. 
?The three classics on Pitcairn history are by Barrow (1831), Murray (1853), and 
Lady Belcher (1870). Other standard books by Brodie (1851), Young (1894), and 
Shapiro (1936) add nothing fresh on the presettlement period. The only modern historian 
to make any significant use of new source material is Mackaness (1931), but his account 
of postmutiny events is naturally only incidental to his main theme. 
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