The story of the Pitcairn Bible is a testimony both to the providence of God and to the value of the Bible in saving society from chaos. Ginny Hastings has written of it, "with no law to guide them, the mutineers of the Bounty turned an island paradise into a living hell of sexual abuse, drunkenness and murder. Their society was on the brink of collapse when one of the men discovered an ancient book from the Bounty."1
The story begins with the events described in the well-known book, Mutiny on the Bounty. Fletcher Christian, acting 2nd Lieutenant, irritated at the arbitrary conduct of Lieut. Bligh, began constructing a raft in order to leave the ship by night. Another sailor suggested to him that he may as well take the ship and turn the Captain adrift, since they were all dissatisfied. He followed this suggestion, and the next day, April 28, 1789, more than half the ship's company joined in the mutiny. The Captain and his party were sent adrift, and after much suffering, reached Timor.
Fletcher Christian took the Bounty and the rest of the crew to Tahiti, where they had been previously. In September of the same year, he and eight other men from the Bounty, six Tahitian men, eleven Tahitian women and one child, sailed away from the others, leaving them there at their request. At the beginning of the following year, they landed on an uninhabited island, Pitcairn's, and burned the ship in order to escape detection.
At first, the island seemed a paradise. But then the Englishmen mistreated the Tahitians and stole one of their wives, causing a rebellion. Within four years, all of the Tahitian men and all but four of the Englishmen had been murdered. The only survivors were Alexander Smith, Edward Young, Matthew Quintall, William McCoy, ten women and some children.
McCoy learned how to distill liquor from the roots of the ti plant, and eventually the men were drunk almost all the time, living in a continual orgy with some of the women. Fearing for their lives, the women and children fled to another part of the island and build a fort for protection.
McCoy threw himself over the cliffs while drunk. Matthew Quintal became drunk and insane, threatening the lives of everyone else. Smith and Young had to axe him to death for the safety of the others on the island.
Smith finally destroyed the still and all the liquor on the island, and went through several months of withdrawal from alcohol. Young was taken in by the women because he was dying of consumption. While he was living alone for months, Smith discovered the Bible and a Book of Common Prayer from the remains of the Bounty, but he was illiterate.
Eventually, Young and the women returned to the village where Smith was, where he taught Smith to read using the Bible, and died in 1801. Alexander Smith continued to read to Bible in its entirety, and grew to understand it over a period of several years. Seeing the importance of teaching it to others, he began teaching the children how to read, and eventually some of the mothers learned as well. Using the Bible, he taught everyone about the Christian faith and instituted a daily prayer time, grace before meals, and Sunday worship. One of his prayers was as follows:
Suffer me not O Lord to waste this day in Sin or folly. But Let me Worship thee with much Delight. Teach me to know more of thee and to serve thee better than ever I have done before, that I may be fitter to dwell in heaven, where thy worship and service are everlasting. Amen.2In 1808, Pitcairn's Island was discovered by captain Mayhew Folger of an American ship. The members of the crew were shocked to find that the island was inhabited by thirty-five English- speaking people of Polynesian blood who were practicing the Christian faith. The outside world was fascinated with the news that Fletcher Christian's community had been discovered. The English instructed every captain sailing to the south Pacific to search for any mutineers so that they could be arrested and deported to England to be punished for their crimes. Later, when two British ships did visit Pitcairn's Island, they found such an orderly colony that they decided to disobey orders and not report their find of the Bounty survivors to London, although they did annex the Island as a British colony.
King George of England later sent Captain Waldgrave to visit Pitcairn's. Waldgrave wrote:
It was with great gratification that we observed the Christian simplicity of the natives. They appeared to have no guile. Their cottages were open to all and all were welcome to their food.3A Church and a school were later built on the island. Alexander Smith felt a personal responsibility for the Christian nurture and care of the many children on the island. After 1808, as a precaution against the possibility of deportation on charges of mutiny and murder, he changed his name to John Adams in honor of the second president of the United States.
Smith (a.k.a. Adams) died in 1829 at the age of seventy, but by 1840, Pitcairn's Island was still a thriving Christian colony.
A visitor at that time wrote as follows:
I then walked round and questioned several of the people on the texts, and some of the chief Scripture facts and doctrines, and most of them gave ready and suitable answers. . . .The islanders have prayers twice on the Sabbath; after which Mr. Nobbs reads sermons from Burder, Watts, Blair, or Whitefield. There is also a Sabbath-school, a Bible-class is held on the Wednesday, and a day-school every morning and afternoon.4
Before his death, Smith (a.k.a. Adams), whose eyesight was failing, gave the Pitcairn Bible to Levi Hayden in exchange for a Bible in larger print. In 1840, it was passed on to Rev. Daniel Miner Lord, pastor of the Mariners' church in Boston, where it became the subject of hundreds of addresses to Sunday Schools, churches, and various religious meetings.5 It was later placed in the Lenox Library collection of old and unusual Bibles at the New York Public Library.
1 Ginny Hastings, "Ship of Fools: Mutiny on the Bounty," Issues & Answers, Vol. 5, No. 8 (November, 1982), p. 1.
2 Ibid., quoting Thomas B. Murray, Pitcairn: The Island, The People and The Pastor (London: SPCK, 1877), p. 338.
3 Ibid., quoting Harry L. Shapiro, The Heritage of the Bounty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), p. 83.
4 Thomas Heath, "The Pitcairn Islanders," The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 19 (New Series) (October, 1841): 520- 522.
5 New York Public Library, The Pitcairn Bible (New York: The New York Public Library, 1934), p. 12.
