Fletcher Christian
Mutiny Leader and Founder of the Pitcairn Settlement · 1764–circa 1793
Who is Fletcher Christian?
Fletcher Christian was born on 25 September 1764 at Moorland Close in Cumberland, England, into a family of Manx gentry that fell into financial difficulty after his father's death. He joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, rose to master's mate, and later served under William Bligh on merchant voyages before Bligh recruited him as master's mate, and eventually acting lieutenant, aboard HMAV Bounty for its 1787 breadfruit-collecting expedition to Tahiti. On 28 April 1789, after months in Tahiti and rising tension with Bligh during the return voyage, Christian led the crew in seizing the ship and setting Bligh and eighteen loyal men adrift in an open boat. After failed attempts to settle at Tubuai and further conflict at Tahiti, Christian sailed the Bounty with eight fellow mutineers, six Tahitian men, and eleven Tahitian women to the remote, mischarted Pitcairn Island, landing in January 1790 and burning the ship to avoid discovery. He married a Tahitian woman, Mauatua, and fathered children, including Thursday October Christian I, the first child born on the island. Christian died amid the settlement's violent internal conflicts of the early 1790s; the exact date and circumstances remain disputed, since John Adams, the last survivor, gave differing accounts over the years. Christian is the direct ancestor of a large share of today's Pitcairn and Norfolk Island populations.
Sources: William Bligh, A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty (1790) · John Barrow, The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty (1831) · Wikipedia, "Fletcher Christian"