Pitcairn, the deserted island of the heirs of the “Bounty”

In 1789, the most famous mutiny in history was led by the second of the Bounty, Fletcher Christian, in the South Pacific: he abandons Captain Bligh and the sailors who have remained faithful to him in a rowboat. To escape the punishment of the British navy, nine mutineers, but also twelve women and six Polynesian men, seek refuge for several months.

It will be Pitcairn, where some of their descendants still live. Portrayed in the cinema by Errol Flynn (1933), Clark Gable (1935), Marlon Brando (1962) and Mel Gibson (1984), Fletcher Christian has become an emblematic figure of resistance and freedom. Nearly two and a half centuries later, the forty-six inhabitants of this islet lost in the middle of the ocean Pacific are facing a disaster: the planned closure (probably at the end of November) of their school.

An exile without return

Today, the large classroom only accommodates three teenage girls aged 12 to 15, because it has been twelve years since there has been a single birth in Adamstown, the island’s capital village. . But the young girls are getting ready, along with their mothers and their teacher, to leave for New Zealand. A departure scheduled for December 18.

“The school will close and it will be very sad, because it means that there are no more children on the island. But it can reopen later. hopes Cushana Warren-Peu, 13, one of the schoolgirls. She wants to become a mechanic. “After my studies, I would like to come back home, or maybe stay in New Zealand, I don’t know. »

This indecision is Pitcairn’s anguish. The young people who leave rarely return: the comfort of modern life or the meeting of a companion discourage the return of most of them. For the mayor of the island, the future therefore depends on immigration. “We must open up to others, accept their installation on Pitcairn, if we want to continue to exist”, alarmed Charlene Warren. Because half of the population is over 60 years old.

The island produces honey, claimed to be some of the purest (and most expensive) in the world.

The dean of men, Steve Christian, 71, says he is pessimistic. “We’re going to be fewer and fewer and that’s what we’re trying to avoid, because we can’t leave this place and go somewhere else in the world, where there’s nothing for us: c this is our home, where we grew up”, he worries.

This aging threatens the survival of the island in the very short term. Ships cannot dock at Pitcairn. Freight and visitors have to go by boat… when the ocean permits. When the island has no more men able to handle it in the turbulent waters of Bounty Bay, where Bligh’s ship was burned and then immersed, Pitcairn will be cut off from the world. It is therefore necessary to bring new blood to the four families of the island, two of which, the Christians and the Youngs, still bear the names of the mutineers who had defied their captain.

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