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Around the World in Books / Pitcairn Island
A Scary Memoir of Modern Life On The ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ Island
A young journalist hoped for paradise and found purgatory 3,000 miles from the nearest hospital, supermarket, and phone booth
This is the 19th post in the “Around the World in Books” series that is reviewing 30 books from 30 countries during the first 30 days of March. Tomorrow: Poland
There may be a few tropical islands you’d like to visit. Pitcairn is one you probably wouldn’t — and whose residents might not want you if you did.
Dea Birkett became enraptured with the idea of going to the storied island when, as a young writer living in London, she saw Mel Gibson in The Bounty. She knew it was nearly impossible to get permission to visit the remote settlement, a British overseas territory that had neither hotels nor an airstrip.
But Birkett persuaded the Royal Mail to sponsor her trip, booked passage on a chemical tanker, and arranged to stay with a family. In 1991 she lived for four months among the 38 residents Pitcairn Island. It was the place Fletcher Christian and other mutineers from the Bounty settled after casting Captain William Bligh adrift in 1789, an incident made…
