Fletcher Christian, Prince Andrew, and Jeffrey Epstein - Pitcairn Island Pivot point

When I was twelve years old, a shy, very tall, bookish girl, my family moved to New Jersey from Philadelphia and I found myself within walking distance of the FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY!! In Philadelphia, where I lived, it was too far to get to a library and I had learned early on, despite my still ocassional adventures meanderings, that the streets weren't safe for a child alone. But here, in New Jersey, I could walk the half hour trip safely from our house in the new development to Main Street and the library which was housed behind the police station at that time. I was a strange combination of fear and determination, so when I approached the circulation desk to ask for a library card, I was both terrified and determined to get that card and open up the vast world of knowledge that I KNEW was in those books!

The first book I borrowed was Nordhoff and Hall's trilogy: Mutiny On the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn Island. This began a long romance in my imagination with the South Pacific. I can still remember the royal blue cloth spine of the book with the letters embossed in gold and a gold embossed sailing ship under the title. Preceding that book had been a few Children's Classics provided by my supportive and innately intelligent mother. She was able to acquire many things for us through supermarket promotions like green stamps books: We had the Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia, Children's Classics like Little Women, Treasure Island, the Silver Skates and many others. I can remember all of their covers the vivid illustrations characteristic of that period which were almost a hybrid of comic book and classic illustration art, very active, almost lurid.

A half dozen years later came the tv show ADVENTURES IN PARADISE with the gorgeous Gardner McKay, which had been created by James Michener and ran from 1959 to 1962. In his sailing schooner Captain Adam Troy sailed from island to island in the South Pacific hauling tourists and shady characters with possibly criminal enterprises. Then came both the book and documentary movie KON TIKI which is still thrilling to me. First I read the book about Thor Heyerdahl risking life and limb to prove his theory that Pacific Islanders made it to the South American continent. He made a few attempts to replicate the voyage, rafts of balsa wood, some boats made of floatable bales of reeds. A documentary followed the book with an unforgettable scene of a WHALE SHARK floating serenly under the raft like a waterborne block of gray buildings until some fool on board throws a spear at it and tethers the raft to the startled and fleeing megafish!

Throughout those years, we subscribed, thanks again to my intellectually curious mother, the National Georgraphic as well as Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, House and Garden and a few other visiting periodicals. In the National Georgraphic, journeys were periodically made to Pitcairn Island to see how the survivors of the early mutineers were faring. There were things we know now that we didn't know then because everyone was invested in a myth of tropical paradise with peaceful villagers carving models of the HMS Bounty for tourists, and living in harmony with one another and with nature.

In case you aren't familiar with the story, which is shocking to me, but three people I have spoken with recently told me they never heard of Mutiny on the Bounty, the historical event went that brave sailors tired of being brutalized by their evil Captain Bligh (played in one film by Charles Laughton) rebelled under the heroic leadership of Fletcher Christian (played by Marlon Brando, and also once by Clark Gable) and he gathered a dozen men together to hijack the ship. Being merciful, they set the evil Captain adrift with those sailors loyal to him, and they returned to their idyll in Tahiti.

It goes without saying the rutineers expected the lifeboat sailors and the Capt. to die at sea, either capsized in a storm, or of thirst and starvation. But the intrepid Capt. a noteworthy navigator got his little boat and loyal sailors to safety via a ship and a port and back to London where an order for the arrest of the mutineers was issued.

Thus began the flight of the mutineers to find a place in the Pacific Ocean where the long arm of the British law wouldn't be able to find them. Mutiny was one of the most serious offences and they knew the British Empire wouldn't rest until they were found and brought to justice. Fletcher Christian had found an island that was known but not on any charts, Pitcairn Island. He dropped off some men at Tahiti and kidnapped some Polynesian men and 11 Poynesian women by luring them onto the ship then setting sail. (early stories didn't tell this part.)

What we know now is that first the English sailors murdered the Polynesian men because the English tried to make them be servants and also they tried to take possession of the Polynesian men's wives. After the Polynesian men were killed the English sailors set about killing each other over various disputes mainly, apparently, involving sexual partnering. Finally there was one man left, John Adams, with eleven women and several children who had already been fathered by the murdered men. This was the base of the population of Pitcairn Island. Once in awhile, a shipwrecked sailor would float ashore, or some boat would drop by, but mainly the people were isolated on their extinct-volcanoe island.

Eventually, some momentous events took place. Since the island was enclosed by steep cliffs, there was only one way on or off. Ships had to anchor in the ocean and 'long boats' would make the perilous trip through a narrow and treacherous channel to pick up supplies or visitors and to sell produce and souvenirs (carved models of the HMS Bounty, and woven baskets). This was the only way on or off the island for a hundred years and still is. However the ships visiting checked on the islanders and supplied them and a religious Missionary group called the Seventh Day Adventists decided to send a missionary pastor and build a church and supply the islanders with worship service and clothes as well as financial support. The Islanders became Adventists (at least in name.)

As I mentioned ocasionally visitors such as the National Georgraphic journalists and photographers would also drop in and this being, more or less a colony of Great Britain, school teachers would also be supplied from neighboring New Zealand or Austrailia, about 3,600 miles away. Sometimes, youngsters would be sent to New Zealand to Adventist schools for further education, and often, they did not return. Also, at one time, a British police officer named Brenda Cox, was sent to investigate an allegation by one of the escaped New Zealand female students of child molestation and rape That's when all hell broke loose.

For the full story, you can google NPR on Pitcairn Island or, I suggest, get the book from amazon or your library LOST PARADISE by Kathy Marks, a British and New Zealand journalist who covered the ensuing decade of investigaations, arrests and trials when the generations of child molestation and rape by nearly every adult male against every female child on the island were exposed. Telve seemed to be the age of greatest predation (the age I was when I got that library card.) But many girls much younger were raped and abused. The birth records showed girls as young as ten and eleven having children.

This brought up so many questions such as why didn't the parents protect the children, and why did't anyone ever intervene, such as the 7th Day Adventist ministers and their wives who were stationed there. Can people be held accountable for crimes that they don't view as crimes or that they come to believe are part of their cultural traditions? Also, anyone who has ever read Lord of the Flies, must also wonder about small groups of people left in isolated places without oversight or organized supervision, do they always descend into savagery?

When I worked for W. B. Saunders at the Riverside Plant in New Jersey, we were given an employee perk - once a month we could fill a box with any books of our choice for $1! Since they ran book clubs on areas such as Psychology, History, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Politics, I was in Heaven! Among the many many books on anthropology that I read, there was one that stuck with me, that, like Pitcairn Island, was a media favorite and often featured in magazine cover stories - it was about the discovery and interaction with a "Lost" Amazonian tribe called the Yanomami. An anthropoligist, Kenneth Good, who studied this isolated jungle tribe for many years eventually took a Yanomami wife whom he brought to the United States to live. They had three children but his wife, Yarima returned to her tribe. I wonder what happened to her. At one point after he had been there studying for some time, and before he married her, he returned to the US and left her there though she had lived with him. She was subjected to repeated rapes by the men of the tribe who stalked her and waylaid her at every opportunity. When Good returned and found out what had happened to her, he married her and took her away with him. She said it had happened because she had no man to protect her from the other men.

Well, I am almost finished the book and the author has done a marvelous job detailing the legal context, the cultural context of the Islanders' lives and relationships, and the psychology of many aspects of the experience of the people, both the defendants, the accusers, the families of both (all of whom are interrelated) and she has asked and tried to find answers to some of the questions I mentioned above.

Also, I wonder about the good luck or bad luck in what sort of leader emerges in any given group and how that determines the social contracts of the group as well as their health and survival. Also, I wonder about innate conscience and sense of right and wrong. Surely all humankind have a sense that it is wrong to hurt others who are weaker and more vulnerable?

Now, I think I may search amazon prime video and see if I can catch one of those old movies, perhaps the Marlon Brando one, of Mutiny on the Bounty. By the way, the connection with Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epsteinn is the conscienceless exploitation of young teenage girls by power mad and wealthy men. You wonder about the psychology behind this and the lack of empathy or sense of right and wrong.

Oh by the way, in real life, Captain Bligh was not a tyrant but was known for being fair and just and the quarrel between him and his former best mate was that Bligh had a bad temper and insulted Christian which caused a seething resentment and ended in the Mutiny and Pitcairn Island. And half of dozen of the accused pedophiles on Pitcairn went to prison in the building they built themseves on the island and which, after their sentences are fulfilled will be turned into tourist accommodation. Some story, eh? Truth is stranger than fiction!