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After the Mutiny Onboard the Hms Bounty Was F. Christian Ever Heard From Again?

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Mutineer on HMS Bounty (1764–1793)

Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian2.jpg
Born (1764-09-25)25 September 1764

Moorland Close, Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England, Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland
Died Uncertain, probably 20 September 1793

Uncertain, probably Pitcairn Isle
Occupation Principal'due south Mate
Spouse(s) Mauatua 'Isabella' Christian
Children Thursday October Christian I
Charles Christian
Mary Ann Christian
Parent(southward) Charles Christian
Ann Dixon
Relatives Edward Christian (brother)

Edmund Law (uncle)
The 1st Businesswoman Ellenborough (cousin)
George Henry Law (cousin)
Thomas Law (cousin)

Elizabeth Parke Custis Police (cousin-in-law)

Fletcher Christian (25 September 1764 – 20 September 1793) was master's mate on lath HMS Bounty during Lieutenant William Bligh'southward voyage to Tahiti during 1787–1789 for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the Bounty, Christian seized command of the send from Bligh on 28 Apr 1789.[ane] Some of the mutineers were left on Tahiti, while Christian, 8 other mutineers, 6 Tahitian men and 11 Tahitian women settled on isolated Pitcairn Island, and Compensation was burned. Later the settlement was discovered in 1808, the sole surviving mutineer gave alien accounts of how Christian died.

Early on life [edit]

Christian was born on 25 September 1764, at his family home of Moorland Close, Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, England. Fletcher's begetter's side had originated from the Isle of Human and most of his paternal neat-grandfathers were celebrated Deemsters, their original family surname McCrystyn.

Fletcher was the brother to Edward and Humphrey, being the three sons of Charles Christian of Moorland Close and of the big Ewanrigg Hall estate in Dearham, Cumberland, an attorney-at-constabulary descended from Manx gentry, and his wife Ann Dixon.[2]

Charles's marriage to Ann brought with information technology the minor belongings of Moorland Shut, "a quadrangle pile of buildings ... one-half castle, one-half farmstead." The holding can be seen to the north of the Cockermouth to Egremont A5086 road.[3] Charles died in 1768 when Fletcher was not yet four. Ann proved herself grossly irresponsible with coin. Past 1779, when Fletcher was fifteen, Ann had run up a debt of near £6,500 (equal to £893,116 today),[three] and faced the prospect of debtors' prison house. Moorland Close was lost and Ann and her three younger children were forced to abscond to the Isle of mann, to their relative's estate, where English creditors had no ability.

The 3 elder Christian sons managed to accommodate a £40 (equal to £5,496 today) per year annuity for their mother, assuasive the family to alive in genteel poverty. Christian spent 7 years at the Cockermouth Gratis School from the age of nine. One of his younger contemporaries at that place was Cockermouth native William Wordsworth. It is usually suggested that the 2 were "school friends"; in fact, Christian was half-dozen years older than Wordsworth. His mother Ann died on the Isle of Man in 1819.[4]

Fletcher Christian's house

Map showing Bounty's movements in the Pacific Bounding main, 1788–1790

 Voyage of Compensation to Tahiti and to the location of the mutiny, 28 April 1789

 Movements of Bounty after the mutiny, under Christian's command

 Course of Bligh'south open-boat journey to Coupang

Naval career [edit]

Run into here for a comparison of assignments to William Bligh

Fletcher Christian began his naval career at a late historic period, joining the Royal Navy every bit a motel boy when he was already seventeen years one-time (the average age for this position was between 12 to fifteen). He served for over a twelvemonth on a third-rate ship-of-the-line along with his future commander, William Bligh, who was posted as the ship's sixth lieutenant. Christian next became a midshipman on the sixth-rate post ship HMS Eurydice and was made Master's Mate six months after the ship put to sea. The muster rolls of HMSEurydice indicate Christian was signed on for a 21-month voyage to India. The ship'due south muster shows Christian'due south carry was more than than satisfactory because "some seven months out from England, he had been promoted from midshipman to master'southward mate".[5]

After Eurydice had returned from India, Christian was reverted to midshipman and paid off from the Royal Navy. Unable to notice another midshipman assignment, Christian decided to join the British merchant armada and applied for a berth on board William Bligh's ship Britannia. Bligh had himself been discharged from the Imperial Navy and was now a merchant helm. Bligh accustomed Christian on the send'south books as an able seaman, but granted him all the rights of a send'south officer including dining and berthing in the officer quarters. On a second voyage to Jamaica with Bligh, Christian was rated every bit the ship's Second Mate.

In 1787 Bligh approached Christian to serve on lath HMAV Compensation for a two-yr voyage to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the Westward Indies. Bligh originally had every intention of Christian serving every bit the send'southward Master, simply the Navy Lath turned downwards this request due to Christian's low seniority in service years and appointed John Fryer instead. Christian was retained as Master'southward Mate. The following twelvemonth, halfway through the Bounty's voyage, Bligh appointed Christian as acting lieutenant, thus making him senior to Fryer.

On 28 Apr 1789, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on board the Bounty and from this point forward was considered an outlaw. He was formally stripped of his naval rank in March 1790 and discharged after Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty Board.

Date Rank Ship (number of guns)
March 1782 Ship's boy HMS Cambridge (eighty)
25 April 1783 Midshipman HMS Eurydice (24)
24 May 1784 Principal's Mate
June 1785 Discharged and paid off from Purple Navy
1786 Able seaman Merchant Vessel Britannia
Second Mate
September 1787 Master's mate HM Armed Vessel Bounty
2 March 1788 Interim lieutenant
28 April 1789 Mutiny on the Bounty
March 1790 Stripped of Naval rank and discharged in absentia

Mutiny on the Bounty [edit]

A view of Pitcairn'south Island, South Seas, 1814, past J. Shillibeer

In 1787, Christian was appointed principal's mate on Compensation, on Bligh's recommendation, for the ship'due south breadfruit expedition to Tahiti. During the voyage out, Bligh appointed him acting lieutenant. Bounty arrived at Tahiti on 26 October 1788 and Christian spent the next five months in that location.

Compensation gear up sail with its cargo of breadfruit plantings on 4 April 1789. Some 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, near Tonga, wildcat broke out on 28 Apr 1789, led past Christian. According to accounts, the sailors were attracted to the "idyllic" life and sexual opportunities afforded on the Pacific isle of Tahiti. It has also been argued[ by whom? ] that they were motivated by Bligh's allegedly harsh treatment of them. 18 mutineers set up Bligh afloat in a small boat with eighteen of the xx-two crew loyal to him.

Post-obit the wildcat, Christian attempted to build a colony on Tubuai, merely at that place the mutineers came into conflict with natives. Abandoning the isle, he stopped briefly in Tahiti, where he married Maimiti, the daughter of one of the local chiefs, on 16 June 1789.[ citation needed ] While on Tahiti, he dropped off sixteen crewmen. These sixteen included four Bligh loyalists who had been left behind on Bounty and two who had neither participated in, nor resisted, the mutiny. The remaining nine mutineers, six Tahitian men and eleven Tahitian women, and so sailed east. In time, they landed on Pitcairn Island, where they stripped Bounty of all that could be floated aground before Matthew Quintal gear up it on burn, stranding them. The resulting sexual imbalance, combined with the effective enslavement of the Tahitian men by the mutineers, led to insurrection and the deaths of most of the men.[ commendation needed ]

Decease [edit]

The American seal-hunting ship Topaz visited Pitcairn in 1808 and constitute merely one mutineer, John Adams (who had used the alias Alexander Smith while on Bounty), however live forth with 9 Tahitian women. The mutineers who had perished had, withal, already had children with their Tahitian wives. Virtually of these children were nevertheless living. Adams and Maimiti claimed Christian had been murdered during the conflict between the Tahitian men and the mutineers. According to an account past a Pitcairn woman named Jenny who left the island in 1817, Christian was shot while working by a pond side by side to the home of his pregnant wife. Forth with Christian, 4 other mutineers and all six of the Tahitian men who had come to the island were killed in the conflict.[vi] William McCoy, 1 of the four surviving mutineers, fell off a cliff while intoxicated and was killed. Quintal was later killed by the remaining ii mutineers, Adams and Ned Immature, after he attacked them. Young became the new leader of Pitcairn.

John Adams gave conflicting accounts of Christian's death to visitors on ships that subsequently visited Pitcairn. He was variously said to have died of natural causes, committed suicide, become insane or been murdered.[vii]

Fletcher Christian's son Th October Christian in 1814 at the age of 24, by J. Shillibeer

Christian was survived by Maimiti and his son, Th October Christian (born 1790). Besides Thursday Oct, Fletcher Christian as well had a younger son named Charles Christian (built-in 1792) and a daughter Mary Ann Christian (born 1793). Th and Charles are the ancestors of almost everybody with the surname Christian on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, also equally the many descendants who have moved to Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Rumours have persisted for more than than ii hundred years that Christian'due south murder was faked, that he had left the island and that he made his way back to England.[8] Many scholars believe that the rumours of Christian returning to England helped to inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.[9]

There is no portrait or cartoon extant of Fletcher Christian that was drawn from life. Bligh described Christian as "5 ft. 9 in. high [175 cm]. blackish or very dark complexion. Hair – Blackish or very night chocolate-brown. Make – Strong. A star tatowed [sic] on his left chest, and tatowed [sic] on the backside. His knees stand a little out and he may exist chosen a fiddling bow legged. He is subject area to fierce perspiration, particularly in his manus, then that he soils anything he handles".[10]

Manuscript sources [edit]

  • Papers concerning the discovery of Pitcairn Isle and the mutineers of HMS Bounty, 1808–1809, 1813–1815, [1845], document i in this series was part of an accession of Banks papers purchased for the Mitchell Library from Sotheby's, London, in May 1929, documents 2–ix purchased in 1884 from Lord Brabourne past Sir Saul Samuel, the Amanuensis-General for New South Wales and transferred to the Mitchell Library in 1910, Country Library of New South Wales B 667
  • Alphabetic character received by Banks from William Bligh, 16 September 1796, purchased in 1884 from Lord Brabourne by Sir Saul Samuel, the Agent-Full general for New S Wales and transferred to the Mitchell Library in 1910, Country Library of New South Wales digitised, SAFE/Banks Papers/Series 58.09
  • Diary at Pitcairn Island 12 July 1851–11 June 1853, come across entries for 1 October 1852 and 20 November 1851. Fletcher Christian's illness and death 24 March, 5 Apr 1852 are described, Information transferred from Manuscripts Leaf Catalogue No. i (6-63A), State Library of New South Wales B 667
  • Glynn Christian inquiry papers relating to Fragile Paradise, ca. 1790-1986, purchased from Glynn Christian, September 1999, State Library of New Southward Wales MLMSS 8794/Boxes 1–six, MLMSS 8794/Box 7X
  • Drafts of Peter Corris' historical novel, The Journal of Fletcher Christian 2005, purchased from Peter Corris, September 2008, Land Library of New South Wales Peter Corris further papers, 1978-2008 MLMSS 9156, MLOH 731

Portrayals in the arts [edit]

Appearances in literature [edit]

Christian's main literary appearances are in the treatments of Compensation story, including Wildcat on the Bounty (1932), Pitcairn'south Island (1934) and After the Compensation (an edited version of James Morrison'southward journal, 2009). He also appears in R. M. Ballantyne's The Lonely Island; or, The Refuge of the Mutineers (1880) and in Charles Dickens' The Long Voyage (1853).

In Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, Fletcher Christian's ghost appears, possessing a homo body, and helps ii not-possessed girls escape.[11] William Kinsolving'south 1996 novel Mister Christian and Val McDermid's 2006 thriller The Grave Tattoo are both based on Christian's rumoured return to the Lake District and the fact that he was at school with William Wordsworth. Dan Fifty. Thrapp'south 2002 novel Wildcat's Curse is based on a similar premise. In 1959 Louis MacNeice produced a BBC Radio play called I Call Me Adam, written by Laurie Lee, about the mutineers' lives on Pitcairn.[12]

Film portrayals [edit]

Christian was portrayed in films by:

  • Wilton Powers in The Mutiny of the Bounty (1916)
  • Errol Flynn in In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)
  • Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
  • Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
  • Mel Gibson in The Compensation (1984)

The 1935 and 1962 films are based on the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Compensation in which Christian is a major character and is generally portrayed positively. The authors of that novel, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, besides wrote 2 sequels, one of which, Pitcairn's Island, is the story of the tragic events later on the mutiny that apparently resulted in Christian's decease along with other tearing deaths on Pitcairn Island. (The other sequel, Men Against the Sea, is the story of Bligh'due south voyage later the wildcat.) This series of novels uses fictionalised versions of pocket-size coiffure members as narrators of the stories.

The Bounty, released in 1984, is less sympathetic to Christian than previous treatments were.

Musical portrayal [edit]

  • David Essex in Mutiny! (1985)
  • Mekons "(Sometimes I Feel Similar) Fletcher Christian" from So Adept It Hurts (Sin Record Company/Cooking Vinyl, Crude Trade Records Germany) (1988)
  • Rasputina "Cage in a Cave" from Oh Perilous World (Filthy Bonnet) (2007)
  • The Rolling Stones "(Dancing in the Light)"

See also [edit]

  • Garth Christian – a relative
  • Descendants of the Bounty mutineers – Thomas Colman Christian, who died seven July 2013.

References [edit]

Notes

  1. ^ "Wildcat on the HMS Compensation: Bligh, Christian, Pitcairn, Norfolk". Archived from the original on 5 Dec 2000. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  2. ^ Glynn Christian, Fragile Paradise: The discovery of Fletcher Christian, Bounty mutineer; 2nd ed. (Usa: Compensation Books, 2005), p. 11.
  3. ^ a b Anderson. The Bounty. p. threescore.
  4. ^ Hough. Helm Bligh and Mister Christian. p. 56.
  5. ^ Anderson. The Compensation. p. 57.
  6. ^ "A mutiny and a mystery". Australian National Maritime Museum . Retrieved 28 April 2021.
  7. ^ Alexander, C. (2003) pp. 359–360
  8. ^ The poet Robert Southey reported in correspondence a sighting of Christian in England in well-nigh 1803. Curry, Yard. (ed)(1965) New Letters of Robert Southey, vol. one, pp 519ff, cited in Alexander, C. (2003), p.405
  9. ^ Williams; Oakeshott. The Cambridge Journal. p. 190.
  10. ^ "Compensation's Crew Encyclopedia, Christian, Fletcher". Pitcairn Isle Study Center (PISC). The text on the PISC website is used with permission from Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas: A Companion to the Bounty Gamble by Sven Wahlroos.
  11. ^ Hamilton (1997). The Neutronium Alchemist . ISBN9780446605465.
  12. ^ Lee, Laurie; Mack, Jane (2003). "Introduction". 3 Plays. Cheltenham: The Cyder Press. pp. xii–xv. ISBN978-1861741370.

Bibliography

  • Hamilton (1997). The Neutronium Alchemist . ISBN9780446605465.
  • Alexander, Caroline (2003). The Compensation: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty . New York: Viking. ISBN978-0-670-03133-vii.
  • Hough, Richard (1973). Captain Bligh and Mister Christian: The Men and the Mutiny. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. ISBN978-0-525-07310-9.
  • Williams, T.F.D.; Oakeshott, M. (1954). The Cambridge Journal. London: Bowes and Bowes.

Further reading

  • Christian, Glynn (2005). Frail Paradise: the Discovery of Fletcher Christian, Bounty Mutineer. Classic Travel Books, Long Riders' Guild Press. ISBN978-1-59048-250-six.
  • Conway, Christiane (2005). Letters from the Isle of man – The Bounty – Correspondence of Nessy and Peter Heywood. The Manx Experience. ISBN 1-873120-77-X.

External links [edit]

Full general data

  • History of Pitcairn Island
  • Moorland Close
  • Fletcher Christian at Discover a Grave
  • Fletcher Christian at Find a Grave

Genealogical information The following genealogical data near Fletcher Christian and the other Bounty coiffure members comes from descendants of the Bounty crew, who may non be reliable and from historical athenaeum.

  • HMS Bounty Ancestors and Cousins
  • George Snell's HMS Bounty Descendants Page
  • Norfolk Isle Research and Genealogy Centre

Related information

  • Fletcher Christian'due south biography, PISC Crew Encyclopedia
  • Pitcairn Islands Report Centre (PISC)

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_Christian

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