Free Republic

Tom Christian, known as the Voice of Pitcairn for his half-century-long role in keeping his tiny South Pacific island, famed as the refuge of the Bounty mutineers, connected to the world, died at his home there on July 7. Mr. Christian, Pitcairn’s chief radio officer and a great-great-great-grandson of Fletcher Christian, the mutiny’s leader, was 77.

Pitcairn Island, the tiny Pacific outpost colonised by the mutineers of HMS Bounty in the 18th century, has announced its first birth in 17 years.Emily Rose Christian, weighing 8lb 4oz (3.8kg), takes to 48 the population of the British administered island, which lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Peru.Emily, born on Sunday, is a ninth generation descendant of Fletcher Christian, the English seaman who led the infamous mutiny against Captain Bligh in 1789 and then settled on the fertile two square mile lump of rock, establishing a puritanical community in which dancing and drinking...

'Sins of a few' trouble Pitcairn By Michael Brooke BBC Pitcairn was colonised by the Bounty mutineers A couple of months ago I was looking down into the blue waters of Bounty Bay. The leaves of the coconut palms rattled in the south-easterly breeze. Pure white tropicbirds rode the updrafts sweeping the cliffs, the better to show off their extravagant red tail plumes. A commemorative plaque, erected in 1990, recorded the arrival of the Bounty mutineers 200 years earlier. I was on Pitcairn, home to a distinct culture and language. Close community Idyllic? Scarcely, for I knew that a legal...