Sometimes memory only remembers what it likes. Travelling between the Gambiers archipelago and Chile, we had the incredible chance to stop for two days on the rock of the Bounty's revolts
On this islet, one and a half miles long and one mile wide, live the descendants of "Fletcher Christian" and the other sailors who took refuge there to escape the gallows of the English crown, accompanied by Tahitian women who had embarked some time earlier. They burned the ship to leave no trace and founded a colony. Today the island is a British dependency governed by New Zealand. Its docking remains delicate and impossible in strong winds. Taking advantage of a flat calm, we were able to anchor at the south-eastern tip of the island which the swell skirts around without encountering any obstacles. The island is almost oval, with no headland or bay deep enough where the sailor can find real shelter.
Welcomed and transported by quad bike by the island's policewoman, Brenda Christian, then by her brother Steeve Christian, mayor of Pitcairn, we shared a weekend of festivities with the 43 inhabitants of this inaccessible rock. We played cricket and volleyball in the middle of this mixed troop, barefoot in a grass cut to the ground, an unlikely mix of very British culture and Polynesian traditions.
Lost in the middle of the South Pacific, this cliffy islet, covered with tropical vegetation and criss-crossed by red dirt tracks, is a feast for the imagination. Brenda showed us the Pitcairn prison where a single prisoner was languishing awaiting trial. The judges dispatched from New Zealand were expected with the biannual supplies brought by a single cargo ship. Three years later, the Island would be the scene of a resounding trial, with the international media holding a case worthy of William Golding's book, His Majesty of the Flies. No murders, however, but rather matters of morality that will involve, three years after our visit, the mayor who welcomed us and a third of the men on the island.
I never found any press coverage of our prisoner's trial. My memory maintained that it was an assassination, but I don't believe me anymore. When the swell returned, we left the anchorage, which had become untenable, without being able to greet our guests. With the lazarette full of fresh vegetables offered by our hosts, we had time to cross to Valdivia (Chile) to ask ourselves about the underside of island life on Pitcairn. But already the novels of Francisco Coloane were erasing these considerations, preparing us for the discovery of the Caleuche, this ghost ship that seems to haunt the canals of Patagonia.
