Pitcairn Island: Life and Death in Eden [Hardcover]

Trevor Lummis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859284310 | ISBN-13: 978-1859284315 | Publication Date: September 1997

This is an ethnological account of the history of the "Bounty" mutineers after they settled on Pitcairn Island. Within a few years of landing on the island nearly all the mutineers died violent deaths, yet the survivors emerged from this vicious civil war to build a productive society.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 173 pages
• Publisher: Scolar Pr (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859284310
• ISBN-13: 978-1859284315
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,440,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After the movies finish, September 6, 2001

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pitcairn Island: Life and Death in Eden (Hardcover)

Funnily enough the really interesting story of the Bounty begins after most movies have 'faded into the sunset' and the credits start to roll. This is what Lummis has picked up - and this book "Pitcairn Island, Life and Death in Eden" is the story of just that. What happened to the Bounty mutineers. It is an awful lot more interesting, bloodthirsty and downright fascinating than the story of the Bounty mutiny itself.

Lummis seems to have done his research too. He has tracked down all the accounts available, and compared them with one another. He clearly points out the strengths and weaknesses in each account and how he has reached his own conclusions about the actual story. In this way he makes his deductions, and the story far more transparent for us - and makes it all the more believable.

As most people know the mutiny on the bounty as about the uprising of a group of sailors led by acting Lieutenant, Fletcher Christian against their captain, Bligh. Lummis discusses the mutiny and the events which lead up to it, putting it perspective of the times and the problems which Bligh had had to deal with before hand (especially through the incompetency of the admiralty in delaying his sailing to Tahiti in the first place.) There is also a brief history of the English encounters in Tahiti prior to the arrival of the Bounty.

The most interesting part is really what happened to the Bounty muntineers once they sailed away from the Bligh. Some went reluctantly and stayed in Tahiti when the Bounty returned there. However Christian and a few others knew that they would never be safe unless they stayed out of range of the long arm of the British Navy. They therefore found the most remote island possible - Pitcairn - and settled there.

Then followed almost 20 years in which there was no contact with the outside world, just a handful of bounty mutineers, 6 tahitian men and a handful of Tahitian women. At the end of those 20 years just one of the men was left, John Adams. His story of what happened to the other men was at first straightforward. However as more people visited the Island his story started to become more complicated and even contradicted itself. It seemed that there must have been at least one catastrophic massacre of some sort. Yet they were all living in this peaceful and ideal society.

Lummis gleans the truth of the fate of the men of Pitcairn through the various accounts Adam's gave, as well as accounts given by one of the women, Jenny, and one of the eldest sons after Adam's died. In fact it seemed that Adam's himself had triggered the entire debacle. This I found the most fascinating part of the book - the careful unravelling of various stories by comparing them with others, and with logical progression.

Lummis completes the book with the fate of the islanders up until recent years. The gradual deterioration of the island, the move to Norfolk and the return of some of them to Pitcairn.

This book is well worth reading if you enjoy the story of the mutineers. It is also an interesting insight into pre-European Pacific culture, and it proves to be a darn good mystery as well....

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lord of the Flies" in bloody reality., November 26, 2000

By 

Tim Johnson (Fremantle, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pitcairn Island: Life and Death in Eden (Hardcover)

Most readers would have a reasonably good knowledge of the events that took place on HMS Bounty in 1789 and they might even know the details of why the Bounty sailed and what happened to Bligh after he and those of the crew that didn't mutiny were set adrift in the Bounty's long boat. I would guess however that only a handful of people anywhere in the world would have an idea of what happened to the mutineers after they landed on Pitcairn and burnt their only means of escape-the Bounty herself. Trevor Lummis has done a tremendous job of research by stringing together all the odd bits of scattered information in order to present the whole bloody, sordid story of the events that ultimately left only one male alive on the island plus a number of Polynesian women who were part of the original group. What happened to the mutineers and the Polynesian men that went with them to Pitcairn is the subject of this book and what an extraordinary story it is! Hollywood missed it by building a movie around the mutiny-they should have filmed the story of the events after the mutiny. Anybody with even a miniscule curiosity about the incidents on Pitcairn owe it to themselves to savor this wonderfuly readable story.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pitcairn Island: Life and Death in Eden, July 24, 2000

By 

Barbara Ferguson (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pitcairn Island: Life and Death in Eden (Hardcover)

Excellent, exciting story of what happened AFTER the Mutiny on the Bounty. The author, using original source material, did extraordinary detective work to draw conclusions from limited sources about how the mutineers ended up slaughtering one another, as well as a few sympathetic natives who escaped with them to the miniscule island of Pitcairn--not even on the map at that time. Only one of the original white men survived (having killed or watched the killing of all the others).

It's a sordid story of swapping "wives," drunkenness on home brew, murder, rape and the survival of the fittest--here the most devious and cunning. That did not include the famous Mr. Christian who was among the first to go. Gripping story and a good read.