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From Sydney to Pitcairn Island via the south sea islands, in 1897 written aboard HMS ROYALIST

AuthorAttributed to Ivor MacKenzie

DateAfter 1898

Object number00028610

NameManuscript

MediumInk on paper

DimensionsOverall: 328 x 203 mm, 0.05 kg

ClassificationsBooks and journals

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionThis hand written manuscript from 1897 is an account by a midshipman on board HMS ROYALIST, most likely Ivor Mackenzie, detailing a journey undertaken from Sydney to Pitcairn Island. The ship sailed to Fiji, Vava'u in Tonga and Raratonga in the Cook Islands. The purpose of the journey was to investigate and subsequentally charge Harry Albert Christian (great great grandson of Fletcher Christian) from Pitcairn for the murder of his wife and daughter. Once found guilty by Mr Hamilton Hunter, a Judicial Commissioner who had been appointed to adjudicate, Christian was then to be taken to Fiji for execution. In addition to detailing life on Pitcairn Island at that time for the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, Mackenzie gives an animated account of life on the islands in the Pacific visited prior to Pitcairn.HistoryHMS ROYALIST commenced service on the Australia Station in May 1888. Ships on the Australia Station were active in the Pacific in the management of islands that were part of the British protectorate. It was in this role that she and her crew were given the orders to take the Judicial Commissioner from Suva to Pitcairn Island and return them to Fiji after the trial was concluded. Pitcairn Island was settled in 1790 by Fletcher Christian, eight loyal followers from the HMT BOUNTY mutiny and a group of Tahitian men and women who had joined them on their final stop in Tahiti the year before. Over the next 100 years the small settlement experienced many hardships, shifts of power and attempts were made to relocate the population to Tahiti and later to Norfolk Island. By 1897 when the HMS ROYALIST arrived, there were 147 inhabitants on Pitcairn Island. Social and living conditions had improved since James McCoy assumed the role of Magistrate in 1870, yet passing reports of the naval officers who visited Pitcairn towards the end of the nineteenth century still continued to reveal how society had deteriorated since the return from Norfolk Island. One inhabitant at the time on Pitcairn Island was Harry Albert Christian, born in 1872 and the great, great grandson of Fletcher Christian. In 1895 he had a daughter, Elanor, with a woman on the island, Julia Warren. Sometime later Harry's attentions turned to another woman whom he wished to marry. The Magistrate ruled however that he could not marry while his daughter remained alive. As a result, Harry killed Julia and Elanor on 19 June 1897 and threw their bodies into the sea. Although the bodies were never found, the crime was discovered and Harry confessed. The Judicial Commissioner from Fiji found Harry guilty and sentenced him to be taken to Suva and hung on 8 October 1898. SignificanceThe mutiny on board HMT BOUNTY led by Fletcher Christian against Captain Bligh on 28 April 1789, ranks as one of the most publicly well known and notorious events in the history of the Royal Navy. This event, its consequences and the subsequent life of the mutineers and their descendants, generated worldwide interest and has very much become part of Australian folklore. Despite the inordinate amount of literature, film and media interest in the initial mutiny and subsequent tribulations of Pitcairn’s inhabitants, this handwritten account by Mackenzie is particularly revealing and poignant. Despite the significance of the case against Harry Christian and the notorious history of Pitcairn Island, neither overshadows the observations and impressions that Mackenzie records. As a result we are provided with a view of "a little kingdom of their own, almost entirely cut off from the outer world, and knowing little of its laws and customs".