Флетчер Кристиан: «Баунти» бунтының басшысы және Питкэрн аралындағы өмірі

English sailor (1764–1793)

Fletcher Christian (25 September 1764 – 20 September 1793) was an English sailor who led the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, during which he seized command of the Royal Navy vessel from Lieutenant William Bligh. In 1787, Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, tasked with transporting breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. Bligh subsequently named him acting Lieutenant during the voyage. After a five month layover in Tahiti, relations between Bligh and his crew deteriorated and in April 1789, Christian led a mutiny and forced Bligh from the ship. Some of the mutineers were left on Tahiti, while Christian, eight other mutineers, six Tahitian men and eleven Tahitian women settled on isolated Pitcairn Island, where they stripped and burned the vessel. Christian died on Pitcairn, possibly killed in a conflict with Tahitians. His group were not found until 1808 and the sole surviving mutineer, John Adams, gave conflicting accounts of Christian's death.

Christian was born on 25 September 1764, at his family home of Moorland Close, Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, England. Fletcher's father's side had originated from the Isle of Man and most of his paternal great grandfathers were historic Deemsters, their original family surname McCrystyn. Fletcher was the brother to Edward and Humphrey, being the three sons of Charles Christian of Moorland Close and of the large Ewanrigg Hall estate on the outskirts of Maryport, Cumberland, an attorney at law descended from Manx gentry, and his wife Ann Dixon. Charles's marriage to Ann brought with it the small property of Moorland Close, "a quadrangle pile of buildings half castle, half farmstead." The property can be seen to the north of the Cockermouth to Egremont A5086 road. Charles died in 1768 when Fletcher was not yet four. Ann proved herself grossly irresponsible with money. By 1779, when Fletcher was fifteen, Ann had run up a debt of nearly £6,500 (equal to £ today),

In 1787, Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, on Bligh's recommendation, for the ship's breadfruit expedition to Tahiti. During the voyage out, Bligh appointed him acting lieutenant. Bounty arrived at Tahiti on 26 October 1788 and Christian spent the next five months there. Bounty set sail with its cargo of breadfruit plantings on 4 April 1789. Some 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, near Tonga, mutiny broke out on 28 April 1789, led by Christian. According to accounts, the sailors were attracted to the "idyllic" life and sexual opportunities afforded on the Pacific island of Tahiti. Following the court martial of captured mutineers, Edward Christian argued that they were motivated by Bligh's allegedly harsh treatment of them. Eighteen mutineers set Bligh afloat in a small boat with eighteen of the twenty two crew loyal to him. Following the mutiny, Christian first travelled to Tahiti, where he married Maimiti, the daughter of one of the local chiefs. He then attempted to build a colony on Tubuai, but there the mutineers came into conflict with natives. Abandoning the island, he stopped briefly in Tahiti again, and dropped off sixteen crewmen. These sixteen included four Bligh loyalists who had been left behind on Bounty and two who had neither participated in, nor resisted, the mutiny. The remaining nine mutineers, six Tahitian men and eleven Tahitian women, then sailed eastward. In time, they landed on Pitcairn Island, where they stripped Bounty of all that could be floated ashore before Matthew Quintal set it on fire, stranding them. The resulting sexual imbalance, combined with the effective enslavement of the Tahitian men by the mutineers, led to insurrection and the deaths of most of the men.

The American seal hunting ship Topaz visited Pitcairn in 1808 and found only one mutineer, John Adams (who had used the alias Alexander Smith while on Bounty), still alive along with nine Tahitian women. The mutineers who had perished had, however, already had children with their Tahitian wives. Most of these children were still living. Adams and Maimiti claimed Christian had been murdered during the conflict between the Tahitian men and the mutineers. According to an account by a Pitcairn woman named Jenny who left the island in 1817, Christian was shot while working by a pond next to the home of his pregnant wife. Along with Christian, four other mutineers and all six of the Tahitian men who had come to the island were killed in the conflict. William McCoy, one of the four surviving mutineers, fell off a cliff while intoxicated and was killed. Quintal was later killed by the remaining two mutineers, Adams and Ned Young, after he attacked them. Young became the new leader of Pitcairn. John Adams gave conflicting accounts of Christian's death to visitors on ships that subsequently visited Pitcairn. He was variously said to have died of natural causes, committed suicide, become insane or been murdered. Christian was survived by Maimiti and his son, Thursday October Christian (born 1790). Besides Thursday October, Fletcher Christian also had a younger son named Charles Christian (born 1792) and a daughter Mary Ann Christian (born 1793). Thursday and Charles are the ancestors of almost everybody with the surname Christian on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, as well as the many descendants who have moved to Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Rumours have persisted for more than two hundred years that Christian's murder was faked, that he had left the island and that he made his way back to England. Many scholars believe that the rumours of Christian returning to England helped to inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There is no portrait or drawing extant of Fletcher Christian that was drawn from life. Bligh described Christian as "5 ft. 9 in. high [175 cm]. blackish or very dark complexion. Hair – Blackish or very dark brown. Make – Strong. A star tatowed on his left breast, and tatowed on the backside. His knees stand a little out and he may be called a little bow legged. He is subject to violent perspiration, particularly in his hand, so that he soils anything he handles".

Christian's principal literary appearances are in the treatments of Bounty story, including Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Pitcairn's Island (1934) and After the Bounty (an edited version of James Morrison's journal, 2009). He also appears in R. M. Ballantyne's The Lonely Island; or, The Refuge of the Mutineers (1880) and in Charles Dickens' The Long Voyage (1853). In Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, Fletcher Christian's ghost appears, possessing a human body, and helps two non possessed girls escape. William Kinsolving's 1996 novel Mister Christian and Val McDermid's 2006 thriller The Grave Tattoo are both based on Christian's rumoured return to the Lake District and the fact that he was at school with William Wordsworth. Dan L. Thrapp's 2002 novel Mutiny's Curse is based on a similar premise. In 1959 Louis MacNeice produced a BBC Radio play called I Call Me Adam, written by Laurie Lee, about the mutineers' lives on Pitcairn.