Lost in the surf of the South Pacific is a speck of volcanic rock called Pitcairn. This tiny island is home to just 36 half-Tahitian, half-British men and women whose race, culture and country arose from an historical hiccup - the 1789 mutiny on "HMS Bounty". In that celebrated event of 200 years ago, Master's Mate Fletcher Christian led 25 British seamen against their captain, the notorious Captain Bligh. After nine months spent dodging about the South Pacific as fugitives from British justice, the mutineers came across Pitcairn, which had been mischarted by 200 miles, and set up a community with 12 Tahitian women they had taken as wives. Ever since, the romantic tale of mariners marooned with grass-skirted girls in the South Seas has stirred the armchair dreamer, and each year the Foreign Office in London receives many requests from paradise-seekers to live on that bizarre outpost of the British Empire. They are all refused, for Pitcairn today is anything but a tropical haven.
Dea Birkett, author of "Jella: A Woman at Sea" and "Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers", spent a summer on Pitcairn, aiming to disentangle the Pitcairn myth from the reality and to experience first-hand the Pitcairners' extraordinary way of life. This is her account of that experience.
- ISBN10 0575051426
- ISBN13 9780575051423
- Publish Date 6 May 1993
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 18 October 2003
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Gollancz
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English