may spot the white houses of Adamstown, the only settlement named after mutineer John Adams - faint among the banana trees and coconut palms. The houses are constructed from hardboard with tin roofs to catch the rain. From the ocean, you cannot see that many of them are abandoned.
Today’s Pitcairn islanders, descendants of the mutineers and their Tahitian wives, are a bizarre hybrid race, some appearing thoroughly British, others Polynesian. They are huge, often obese, tall people with wide sprawled feet from walking barefoot. Overhearing a Pitcairn conversation is like listening to characters from the pages of Melville or Defoe. Guns are muskets, food is wekle (victuals) and to fall over is to capsize. It’s a stew of 18th century English, Polynesian, modern obscenities picked up from passing sailors, and seafaring terms like all hands for everyone, and deck for floor. Even though they’ve been a British possession since 1839, and Pitcairn remains Britain’s last overseas territory in the South Pacific, their tribal costume is T-Shirts and baseball caps sent by American wellwishers.
They spend their days fishing for nanwe (oily, bone-ridden flat fish) from the rocks or giant wahoo and shark from flat-bottomed wooden canoes, and farming. Orange, mango, plantain, grapefruit, avocado and banana trees flourish alongside the ubiquitous coconut. Fresh vegetables are grown in small family plots scattered all over the island. Tomatoes, cabbages, peas, sweet potatoes, cassava and beets can be planted year round. The earth is rampantly fertile - lettuce and beans sowed from seed are ready to eat within two months. There are annual harvests of arrowroot and sugar cane. Breadfruit – brought from the Bounty – are knocked from the trees with live bullets in their muskets.
Pitcairn’s death knell has been sounded several times since its discovery in 1808. Two attempts were made to abandon the island – one to Tahiti in 1831, and another to Norfolk Island in 1856. Both failed, and the Pitcairners, diminished in number, returned to their rock. At its height, in the 1930s, the population was more than 230. But babies are few, and Pitcairn marriages are not made in heaven. Now there are just nine families, sharing four surnames – Christian, Young, Warren and Brown. The choice of mates is limited – you will have known them all your lives. Romantic love is not only rare, but in some aspects illegal. Local Pitcairn law forbids expressions of affection in public places. When I was on the island, this yoke of conformity was felt keenly by the younger generation, who undertake their own mutiny by importing alcohol from the ships, smuggled ashore in plain brown bags. On Friday nights, the most sacred evening in the Adventist week, these rebels gathered to dance and drink. At the sound of the Tahitian song Waikiki Tamure, banished from the island for more than a century, they put down their cans of New Zealand beer and swing their hips to the seductive rhythm. It is as if a long-buried Polynesian cultural gene is rising.
Pitcairn lies on the Panama Canal to New Zealand shipping route, and vessels working that passage may pass within a few miles of the island. But there is no certainty when the next ship will call. There may be two in one month, then not another for four. When a ship is sighted offshore, the bell in the square rings five times and the whole island hurries down the unpaved Hill of Difficulty to the Landing. The men haul the longboat into Bounty Bay. The bay is no more than a dent in the iron-clad coastline, and provides no natural harbour. The 40-foot longboat is packed with people and goods for trade – fresh fruit, fish, baskets woven from pandanus, wooden carvings of the Bounty. (The islanders were taught to carve by an Austrian in 1920s and use a video of the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty movie as the guide for their models, even though it no more resembles the real boat than Clark Gable accurately portrayed Fletcher Christian.)
Ten years ago, on the last day of August 2004, this familiar scene unfolded. The longboats aligned themselves against the side of the ship and a rope ladder was thrown down from the deck. The men scrambled on board and began to lower the cargo over the side, taking care in the pitching open sea. But among the regular goods – sacks of flour, drums of cooking oil, boxes of basic medical supplies, barrels of fuel – was a large consignment of high wire fencing and massive steel gates. The wire fencing and steel gates were for a new development on this remote outcrop. Pitcairn was building a prison.
Seven Pitcairners – almost two-thirds of the men on the island – were on trial for sexual offences ranging from gross indecency and indecent assault to rape. The accused - Jay Warren, Dennis Christian, Len Brown, Terry Young, Dave Brown, Steve Christian and Randy Christian - faced 96 charges between them. All were against children. (Jay Warren was acquitted.) Some argued that it was their hybrid Polynesian heritage that allowed them to have underage sex, even though there is no evidence that this was the case. Since then, more Pitcairners have been charged and found guilty. Four police officers are now permanently posted on the island. Pitcairn has become the most heavily policed community in the world.
The guilty men have to be let out of their newly-built prison to man the longboats when a ship calls, and clamber up the rope ladder. There wouldn’t be enough capable men otherwise. As each ship raises their anchor for the world beyond, the islanders bid farewell from the longboat with a rousing sea shanty. Callers have reported hearing it for over a century. Strong voiced above the pounding swell, they sing the Goodbye Song. They wave to those high above on deck – ‘We part but hope to meet again – goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.’ At this last line, the ropes are cast off and the longboat turns towards Pitcairn, filled with a handful of fallible human beings, imprisoned by the ocean, bound by their past.
Dea Birkett is author of Serpent in Paradise, about her time on Pitcairn Island.
Out of Joint, Chichester Festival Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe present
PITCAIRN
a play by Richard Bean
Touring 2014
22 August – 20 September
Chichester Festival Theatre
22 September – 11 October
Shakespeare’s Globe
14 – 18 October
Plymouth Theatre Royal
21 – 24 October
Warwick Arts Centre
28 October – 1 November
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
4 – 8 November
Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne
11 – 15 November
Oxford Playhouse
18 – 22 November
Malvern Theatres
PRODUCTION CREDITS
| Lois Chimimba | Te Lahu |
| Samuel Edward-Cook | Quintal |
| Vanessa Emme | Fasto |
| Eben Figueiredo | Hiti |
| Siubhan Harrison | Mi Mitti |
| Saffron Hocking | Te’o |
| Ash Hunter | Ned Young |
| Naveed | Khan Menalee |
| Cassie Layton | Mata |
| Anna Leong Brophy | Walua |
| Tom Morley | Fletcher Christian |
| Adam Newington | John Adams |
| Henry Pettigrew | William McKoy |
| David Rubin | Oha |
| Jack Tarlton | William Brown |
Director
