By Charles Nordhoff & James Normal Hall

The tale of mutineers taking control of the Bounty and Captain’s Bligh’s open boat voyage in 1789 are told in the first two books of the Bounty Trilogy. Pitcairn’s Island tells about the men taking HMS Bounty to this small island. After five years the story becomes a short revelation of a matriarchal society (about 50 pages) which survived the killings – men killing men and women protecting themselves and their children.

Pitcairn’s Island had no natural harbors and shallow beaches. Twelve (12) Tahitian women, six (6) Tahitian men and (9) nine mutineers came ashore. They took everything possible off the Bounty. For three years everyone got along with mild disagreements. 

Many of the sailors missed grog (booze). McCoy, a Scottish sailor learned distilling in his homeland and secretly began making a liquorish substance in limited quantities from a South Sea root, ti. He planted an area, which a Tahitian found and began harvesting. McCoy and about half the white men believed the island should be split up amongst whites only. The Tahitians would receive no land.

Upon hearing of the white plan in a day of racial cleansing the Tahitian men attacked and killed as many of the white men as they could. They missed two of the instigators. For the killings of their husbands, the Tahitian women killed many Tahitian men. The surviving men were cared for and returned to health; the Tahitian men were hunted and killed. 

For three years the still remained productive. The white men liked getting drunk, among themselves. The women turned the men out of the settlements and finally attacked the houses where the men lived. Two of the men survived. 

Stories from Pitcairn Island are adaptable into film or TV. The women have to sort thought racial hatreds, spousal abuse, murders, child birth and rearing, health care, substance (liquor) abuse, deaths of loved ones and finally taking command – long before women were ever considered capable of structuring a society and making it run. By the year of its rediscovery (1808) by Americans and later visits by the British, the island settlers were at peace and happy.