Visits to Pitcairn Island

My great grandfather, David Alba Scribner, was a clipper ship captain that made many sea voyages in the second half of the 1800’s leaving the eastern seaboard or sometimes Liverpool, England and sailing around the dangers of Cape Horn to turn north sailing for either Honolulu or San Francisco.  These trips often took him into the area of Pitcairn Island. 

Pitcairn Island is a small southeastern Pacific island well known in history and also by the 1935 film, Mutiny on the Bounty starring Clark Gable.  The HMS Bounty was a British naval vessel that left England in 1789 heading for the West Indies to collect breadfruit plants.  The ship and crew spent several months ashore in Tahiti and were reluctant to leave when the captain, William Bligh, decided that it was time to continue their mission.  In the weeks ahead at sea, conflicts, abuse and harsh punishments escalated between the captain and the crew.  Within three weeks, several crewmen led by Fletcher Christian seized control of the ship and put Captain Bligh and many of the crewmen that were loyal to him adrift in the ship’s open launch. 

Captain Bligh would make it back to England, and in 1790 another ship was sent to capture and return the mutinous crewmembers for court martial.  However, a small group with Fletcher Christian remained undiscovered on Pitcairn Island until 1808.  After the mutiny, Fletcher returned to Tahiti on the Bounty.  And when the Bounty later left Tahiti, aboard were 9 mutineers, 12 women with 1 child and 6 men from Tahiti and neighboring islands.  It was this group that first arrived at Pitcairn Island where the ship was unloaded, stripped of anything useable, and then destroyed by fire.  By the mid-1800’s, less than a hundred descendants of these first inhabitants still lived on Pitcairn Island.  Ships began to occasionally stop at Pitcairn Island to drop off mail or to bring needed supplies, gifts and aid for the Islanders, as the island was no longer as fertile as it had once been.

 

   

In the book titled Mutiny on the Bounty and the Story of Pitcairn Island 1790-1894 written by Rosalind Amelia Young, a descendant of one of the mutineers, she wrote:

“… Captain D A Scribner, of the American ship St John which arrived at the island in March, 1876.  The captain was a very dear friend of the islanders, having made repeated calls to the island before.  He was entrusted with a large mail ... The organ was brought by Captain Scribner, directly on its being landed it was lifted on the shoulders of a few strong men and borne by them up the steep path, nor was the heavy but precious burden set down until they reached the little thatch-roofed church, where it was placed beside the reading table.  All the inhabitants, old and young, gathered around while Captain Scribner played, “Shall We Gather at the River”.

In the years ahead, Captain Scribner continued to visit Pitcairn Island whenever possible, with his wife and children who accompanied him on his voyages.  They always looked forward to those visits as the family had many close friendships among the Pitcairn Islanders.  Photos of Thursday October Christian Jr (grandson of Fletcher Christian) and Mary Warren, Thursday’s granddaughter, are included among photos of friends and family kept in Captain Scribner’s shipboard photo album.  And, as late as 1939, Mary, the youngest child of Captain Scribner, was still writing letters to Arthur H Young on Pitcairn Island.

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Key individuals:

    Capt David Alba Scribner  (1840 – 1911)

    Mary Islethera Scribner  (1882 – 1959)

 – Jane Scribner McCrary