Pitcairn lives.

PITCAIRN LIVES

IN 1800, John Adams prepared to step down from the Presidency of the United States, having survived a mutiny against King George III. In 1800, another John Adams ascended to the unstructured Presidency of Pitcairn Island, as the last living survivor of a mutiny against William Bligh, captain of the Bounty, faithful, heroic, sadistic servant of George III. Pitcairn is regularly referred to as the remotest island in the world of insular notoriety. St. Helena, where Napoleon was sent off to rusticate, is a mere 1,200 miles from mainland Africa. Pitcairn is three thousand miles from Latin America to the east, three thousand miles from New Zealand to the west. South of Pitcairn is nothing--until you hit the Antarctic. John Adams arrived here in 1790, eight months after the mutiny headed by Fletcher Christian. They came from Tahiti: nine mutineers, six Tahitian men, 12 Tahitian women.

In those days, the King pursued insubordinate servants more vigorously than we pursue our traitors. Adams & Company came to Pitcairn because practically no one knew of its existence; because it was remote (25 degrees south latitude, 130 west longitude); deserted (no Polynesian was left); equable in temperature (think of northern Virginia); fertile (bananas, mangoes, pineapples); small (two square miles); and highly inaccessible except to friendly visitors (mounting an invasion of Bounty Bay might be compared to an amphibious operation up Niagara Falls). They came here and burned the Bounty to eliminate it from prying British eyes. Meanwhile, those of their companions who declined to leave Tahiti to go to Pitcairn were being brought back in irons for trial in London. Three were hanged, a half-dozen (including Franchot Tone), granted clemency because of ambiguous evidence. The point of those who went to Pitcairn was to get safely away until it all blew over.

Twenty-five years after the mutiny it did blow over, and the little colony at Pitcairn was told more or less officially that all was forgiven. At that point, after all, only John Adams was alive, his fellow mutineers having been, for the most part, murdered, during one of Pitcairn's unruly spells. But Mutiny-on-the-Bounty watchers were astonished when Pitcairners simply declined to evaporate. In 1831, the whole colony moved to Tahiti, thinking this a reasonable thing to do; but lo, in a matter of months, suffering from homesickness, they mostly returned. And then again in 1856, resolving that 158 Islanders threatened a population explosion that would overwhelm the resources of the little island, the entire colony packed off to Norfolk Island, north of New Zealand; but the same thing happened. After a couple of years, one-quarter of the Islanders returned. Their descendants populate Pitcairn today.

Whereas, during the heavy whaling days, boats stopped by every week or so at that southerly latitude, visitors are infrequent now. Supply boats come every three months or so; a half-dozen times a year, random passenger boats stop by. Barnaby Conrad, the writer and artist, wanted all his life to visit Pitcairn, but managed to coordinate passage only a year or two ago, spending a rapt couple of days here. On bidding an Islander who had befriended him good-bye, he said: "Maybe I'll see you next year."

"No," the Islander replied, sadly but fatefully. "People only come to Pitcairn once. Good-bye."

IN THE PAST few years, the primitive-lifers at Pitcairn have got themselves a dozen mountain-climbing motor scooters, greatly relieving the exchequer, because up until then there was only the single tax on firearms, and these are practically gone. And they have a generator which operates about six hours a day, and allows the Islanders to see the thirty-odd movies in the inventory stashed in the church (it is said that children know all the lines by heart). The average income is estimated at $70 per month, money got mostly from trading with passing boats, to which curios are sold (I own a vicious-looking wooden shark, which cost $7).

The Islanders are Seventh-Day Adventists, which means among other things that none of them will take a drink, except the ones to whom you offer a drink. The pastor, on two-year duty from New Zealand, says that attendance at religious services tends to diminish these days--"But isn't it so everywhere?" He is resigned today, Saturday, Pitcairn's Sabbath: services are delayed because too many of the Islanders, exercising a little self-indulgence, are plying their modest wares, so modestly priced, aboard the visiting Sea Cloud, before returning to the island for church services.

At high-tea time they are all back on board, four generations of Islanders. They spend three happy hours, communicating their cheer. And, after sunset, they board their longboat--80 per cent of Pitcairn's population--and sing out their happy/melancholy farewell songs.

"In the sweet by and by/In the beautiful land beyond the sky . . ./We shall part never more, when we meet/On the be-yoo-tee-fool shore . . ."