Fletcher Christian
Bounty Mutiny Leader (ancestral founder) · circa 1764–circa 1793
Who is Fletcher Christian?
Fletcher Christian was an English Royal Navy officer who led the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, setting Lieutenant William Bligh and eighteen loyal crew adrift in an open boat before sailing on to escape British justice. After brief, troubled stops in Tahiti, Christian and eight fellow mutineers, together with Tahitian men and women, settled the remote and then-uncharted Pitcairn Island in January 1790, burning the Bounty in the bay to avoid detection. Christian himself never set foot on Norfolk Island; historical accounts differ on the exact date and circumstances of his death on Pitcairn, with most placing it around 1793 amid violent conflict within the small settlement. His true significance to Norfolk Island is genealogical rather than personal: when the Pitcairn community outgrew its tiny island, the British government resettled the entire population, including many of Christian's own descendants, on Norfolk Island in June 1856. Christian remains one of only a handful of surnames still carried by Norfolk Islanders today, and the mutiny he led is the founding event of the community's entire history and identity.
Sources: William Bligh, A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty (1790) · Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (2003) · Norfolk Island National Park, Parks Australia, "History"