It was never going to be easy. When the building materials for the
museum were loaded from the dock at Auckland, they were expected on Pitcairn ten days later.
But as the cargo ship approached the tiny South Pacific island, the sea was so rough that the ship had to sail on to Antwerp without stopping.
On the return voyage another storm brewed. Again the ship couldn't stop, and the materials arrived back in Auckland.
It wasn't until the third attempt that they were successfully offloaded into the island longboat. As the longboat made its way towards the rocky shore, it ran aground and some materials were lost - the display cabinets sank to the bottom of Bounty Bay. But at least the construction of the museum could begin.
The Pitcairn Island Museum must be the most remote collection in the world. More than 3,000 miles from the nearest landmass, the island is just 2 sq km by 3 sq km, and home to 48 people, most of whom are descendants of the mutineers from HMAV Bounty.
But although the museum is at the uttermost end of the earth, it hopes to house artefacts gathered from around the world related to the 1789 mutiny, when First Mate Fletcher Christian seized the ship, forced Captain William Bligh and his loyal followers over the side into a lifeboat, and sailed off to found Pitcairn.
The hurdles of constructing a mu-seum on Pitcairn, Britain's last overseas territory in the South Pacific, are huge. The island has no airstrip and no natural harbour, which is why goods have to be offloaded into the island's longboat from a ship briefly stopping offshore. Often the weather is too turbulent.
Even before the foundations were laid, Pitcairn Island Museum had earned the nickname 'the most travelled museum in the world'.
A museum has long been the subject of discussion among the islanders as they sit along the long bench that lines one side of the Square in the centre of Adamstown, the island's only settlement.
As long ago as 1967, the island's monthly newsletter, the Pitcairn Miscellany, optimistically reported the Pitcairn Island Museum was 'near completion'. When I was on the island 25 years later, yet another meeting to discuss the proposed museum was held.
Ironically, it was last year's convictions of half of Pitcairn's men for
sexual abuse of children that led to it finally going ahead. Determined to counter those who said these convictions were a backdoor attempt by the colonial masters to close down this far-flung, awkward and expensive outpost, the British administration has been pouring money into the project.
Last December, £81,000 was secured from the Department of International Development for a mu-seum. (The administration says the immediate catalyst was the need for a controlled environment to stop further deterioration of the Bounty anchor and the Bounty Bible, although deterioration had not been a concern before.)
With financial backing, the Island Council voted for the museum to go ahead, although far from unanimously. Some dissenters saw it is a scheme to get them to give up items that rightfully belong to them.
Tom Christian, sixth generation descendent of mutineer Fletcher Christian, and his wife Betty, supported the scheme and donated a plot for the museum near the Square.
Everything on Pitcairn has to be imported, including the expertise, so, following consultation with the Whangarei Museum in New Zealand on display, and New Zealand architects who'd worked on similar small museums in local communities, builder Keith 'Smiley' Keogh was brought in from Auckland to supervise construction.
The design is colonial, with a veranda, and there is one air-conditioned room with a strengthened floor to house a Bounty cannon, which it is hoped will be returned from Australia.
The lost display cabinets will be replaced. But it will be difficult to gather the artefacts to fill them. There are only 11 objects available on the island, temporarily stored at the back of the community hall.
These include stone tools made by Polynesians who visited the island before the mutineers and a traditional wooden Pitcairn wheelbarrow, which the islanders used to transport huge bunches of bananas across the island's mud paths before the arrival of all-terrain motorcycles.
A few other items are scattered over the island. The Bounty Bible is in a glass case in the Seventh Day Adventist church. The anchor stands on a plinth in the Square.
Many items from the Bounty wreck, which lies in shallow water off Bounty Bay, have been sold: in the 1950s, the island postmaster made postcards with splinters from the rudder; the nails were used in carved models of the ship sold to passengers on passing ships.
Although it has been illegal to remove any part of the wreck since 1966, much has been plundered. Because of the fabulous legend of the mutiny, Bounty relics fetch high prices. At a recent Christie's auction, a coconut shell used by Bligh as a cup and bowl during the 41 days he and his loyalists were cast adrift, inscribed with the words, 'The cup I eat my miserable allowance out of', fetched £71,700.
Outsiders have been stripping Pitcairn of its material heritage for decades. The Bounty's vice and anvil were removed in 1937 by Captain Irvine Johnson of the yacht Yankee on his round-the-world expedition, and are now in the Mariners Museum in Newport, Virginia, along with bits of ballast, rudder and bolts.
The museum says because 'the story of the Bounty is fascinating to the general public', the items are frequently displayed and attract great interest. And as they have no rarity value, it has no plans to release them.
Ownership of Bounty relics is hotly disputed. While most Pitcairners believe that they should be returned to the island, many descendants of those on board HMAV Bounty who remained loyal to Bligh say that items should be returned to them, as the ship was illegally seized.
David Townsend, fourth generation nephew of the Bounty's surgeon, Thomas Ledward, argues that the descendants of Bligh's loyal crew should be involved in decisions concerning Bounty artefacts and the Pitcairn Island Museum.
The Pitcairners should turn over all personal artefacts to the Bounty's crew's descendants, he says. For example, the medical vials and instruments from the Bounty wreck should be returned to him, as they obviously belonged to Ledward.
This medical equipment was found in January 1999, when an archaeological survey of the wreck was undertaken by the James Cook University of Townsville, Queensland, Australia, and the anchor raised. The intention was to stop the pilfering and preserve those items that remained.
The cannon and other recovered artefacts were shipped to the James Cook University, where they are still undergoing conservation. The agreement was that the Museum of Queensland would act as a temporary custodian and, following stabilisation, the items would be displayed for a year before being returned to Pitcairn.
It was hoped that this would take place within five years. But six years later, many of the objects are still extremely fragile and a return date has not yet been set.
Without such objects, there will be little available to the museum. For if reclaiming relics is difficult, gathering other material is even more so. For despite the outside world's obsession with descendancy from the Bounty and the mutineers, genealogies of the Pitcairners have always been problematic.
The island is nominally Seventh Day Adventist, and very socially conservative. Nevertheless, many women have children young, and by more than one partner. Parentage is often uncertain or denied, but there is a reluctance to admit this, so family trees are met with much resistance.
Attempts to gather oral histories face similar barriers. It is hoped that some of the schoolchildren, numbering less than a dozen, will interview members of their own family and record their stories. But for the foreseeable future, the museum will rely heavily on artefacts to interpret the islanders' history.
The museum is also designed for visitors. A passing cruise ship can bring up to 400 tourists to the tiny island for a few hours, instantly increasing the population tenfold. Much of the islanders' income comes from selling carvings and curios to these sporadic visitors. At present, there is little for them to see.
There is only one known grave of a mutineer, John Adams, and the original gravestone has long been removed. The islanders hope a museum might tempt more passengers to make a brief visit ashore.
This April, the building was completed. Lea Brown, the wife of Dave Brown, one of the Pitcairners convicted of sexual offences against children, was appointed museum manager. In August, the island governor will sail from New Zealand to conduct the official opening ceremony. The Pitcairn Miscellany will be able to report that the Pitcairn Island Museum is finally and fully open. Fingers crossed. mj
Dea Birkett is the founder of the Kids in Museums Campaign and author of Serpent in Paradise, a book about her time on Pitcairn Island.
www.deabirkett.com
museum were loaded from the dock at Auckland, they were expected on Pitcairn ten days later.
But as the cargo ship approached the tiny South Pacific island, the sea was so rough that the ship had to sail on to Antwerp without stopping.
On the return voyage another storm brewed. Again the ship couldn't stop, and the materials arrived back in Auckland.
It wasn't until the third attempt that they were successfully offloaded into the island longboat. As the longboat made its way towards the rocky shore, it ran aground and some materials were lost - the display cabinets sank to the bottom of Bounty Bay. But at least the construction of the museum could begin.
The Pitcairn Island Museum must be the most remote collection in the world. More than 3,000 miles from the nearest landmass, the island is just 2 sq km by 3 sq km, and home to 48 people, most of whom are descendants of the mutineers from HMAV Bounty.
But although the museum is at the uttermost end of the earth, it hopes to house artefacts gathered from around the world related to the 1789 mutiny, when First Mate Fletcher Christian seized the ship, forced Captain William Bligh and his loyal followers over the side into a lifeboat, and sailed off to found Pitcairn.
The hurdles of constructing a mu-seum on Pitcairn, Britain's last overseas territory in the South Pacific, are huge. The island has no airstrip and no natural harbour, which is why goods have to be offloaded into the island's longboat from a ship briefly stopping offshore. Often the weather is too turbulent.
Even before the foundations were laid, Pitcairn Island Museum had earned the nickname 'the most travelled museum in the world'.
A museum has long been the subject of discussion among the islanders as they sit along the long bench that lines one side of the Square in the centre of Adamstown, the island's only settlement.
As long ago as 1967, the island's monthly newsletter, the Pitcairn Miscellany, optimistically reported the Pitcairn Island Museum was 'near completion'. When I was on the island 25 years later, yet another meeting to discuss the proposed museum was held.
Ironically, it was last year's convictions of half of Pitcairn's men for
sexual abuse of children that led to it finally going ahead. Determined to counter those who said these convictions were a backdoor attempt by the colonial masters to close down this far-flung, awkward and expensive outpost, the British administration has been pouring money into the project.
Last December, £81,000 was secured from the Department of International Development for a mu-seum. (The administration says the immediate catalyst was the need for a controlled environment to stop further deterioration of the Bounty anchor and the Bounty Bible, although deterioration had not been a concern before.)
With financial backing, the Island Council voted for the museum to go ahead, although far from unanimously. Some dissenters saw it is a scheme to get them to give up items that rightfully belong to them.
Tom Christian, sixth generation descendent of mutineer Fletcher Christian, and his wife Betty, supported the scheme and donated a plot for the museum near the Square.
Everything on Pitcairn has to be imported, including the expertise, so, following consultation with the Whangarei Museum in New Zealand on display, and New Zealand architects who'd worked on similar small museums in local communities, builder Keith 'Smiley' Keogh was brought in from Auckland to supervise construction.
The design is colonial, with a veranda, and there is one air-conditioned room with a strengthened floor to house a Bounty cannon, which it is hoped will be returned from Australia.
The lost display cabinets will be replaced. But it will be difficult to gather the artefacts to fill them. There are only 11 objects available on the island, temporarily stored at the back of the community hall.
These include stone tools made by Polynesians who visited the island before the mutineers and a traditional wooden Pitcairn wheelbarrow, which the islanders used to transport huge bunches of bananas across the island's mud paths before the arrival of all-terrain motorcycles.
A few other items are scattered over the island. The Bounty Bible is in a glass case in the Seventh Day Adventist church. The anchor stands on a plinth in the Square.
Many items from the Bounty wreck, which lies in shallow water off Bounty Bay, have been sold: in the 1950s, the island postmaster made postcards with splinters from the rudder; the nails were used in carved models of the ship sold to passengers on passing ships.
Although it has been illegal to remove any part of the wreck since 1966, much has been plundered. Because of the fabulous legend of the mutiny, Bounty relics fetch high prices. At a recent Christie's auction, a coconut shell used by Bligh as a cup and bowl during the 41 days he and his loyalists were cast adrift, inscribed with the words, 'The cup I eat my miserable allowance out of', fetched £71,700.
Outsiders have been stripping Pitcairn of its material heritage for decades. The Bounty's vice and anvil were removed in 1937 by Captain Irvine Johnson of the yacht Yankee on his round-the-world expedition, and are now in the Mariners Museum in Newport, Virginia, along with bits of ballast, rudder and bolts.
The museum says because 'the story of the Bounty is fascinating to the general public', the items are frequently displayed and attract great interest. And as they have no rarity value, it has no plans to release them.
Ownership of Bounty relics is hotly disputed. While most Pitcairners believe that they should be returned to the island, many descendants of those on board HMAV Bounty who remained loyal to Bligh say that items should be returned to them, as the ship was illegally seized.
David Townsend, fourth generation nephew of the Bounty's surgeon, Thomas Ledward, argues that the descendants of Bligh's loyal crew should be involved in decisions concerning Bounty artefacts and the Pitcairn Island Museum.
The Pitcairners should turn over all personal artefacts to the Bounty's crew's descendants, he says. For example, the medical vials and instruments from the Bounty wreck should be returned to him, as they obviously belonged to Ledward.
This medical equipment was found in January 1999, when an archaeological survey of the wreck was undertaken by the James Cook University of Townsville, Queensland, Australia, and the anchor raised. The intention was to stop the pilfering and preserve those items that remained.
The cannon and other recovered artefacts were shipped to the James Cook University, where they are still undergoing conservation. The agreement was that the Museum of Queensland would act as a temporary custodian and, following stabilisation, the items would be displayed for a year before being returned to Pitcairn.
It was hoped that this would take place within five years. But six years later, many of the objects are still extremely fragile and a return date has not yet been set.
Without such objects, there will be little available to the museum. For if reclaiming relics is difficult, gathering other material is even more so. For despite the outside world's obsession with descendancy from the Bounty and the mutineers, genealogies of the Pitcairners have always been problematic.
The island is nominally Seventh Day Adventist, and very socially conservative. Nevertheless, many women have children young, and by more than one partner. Parentage is often uncertain or denied, but there is a reluctance to admit this, so family trees are met with much resistance.
Attempts to gather oral histories face similar barriers. It is hoped that some of the schoolchildren, numbering less than a dozen, will interview members of their own family and record their stories. But for the foreseeable future, the museum will rely heavily on artefacts to interpret the islanders' history.
The museum is also designed for visitors. A passing cruise ship can bring up to 400 tourists to the tiny island for a few hours, instantly increasing the population tenfold. Much of the islanders' income comes from selling carvings and curios to these sporadic visitors. At present, there is little for them to see.
There is only one known grave of a mutineer, John Adams, and the original gravestone has long been removed. The islanders hope a museum might tempt more passengers to make a brief visit ashore.
This April, the building was completed. Lea Brown, the wife of Dave Brown, one of the Pitcairners convicted of sexual offences against children, was appointed museum manager. In August, the island governor will sail from New Zealand to conduct the official opening ceremony. The Pitcairn Miscellany will be able to report that the Pitcairn Island Museum is finally and fully open. Fingers crossed. mj
Dea Birkett is the founder of the Kids in Museums Campaign and author of Serpent in Paradise, a book about her time on Pitcairn Island.
www.deabirkett.com
