{"id":33139,"date":"2013-08-24T23:02:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T23:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33139"},"modified":"2017-07-24T00:06:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T00:06:11","slug":"tom-christian-descendant-of-bounty-mutineer-dies-at-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33139","title":{"rendered":"Tom Christian, Descendant of Bounty Mutineer, Dies at 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Christian, Descendant of Bounty Mutineer, Dies at 77<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2013-08-23<\/p>\n

Margalit Fox<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tom Christian, known as the Voice of Pitcairn<\/a> for his half-century-long role in keeping his tiny South Pacific island, famed as the refuge of the Bounty mutineers<\/a>, connected to the world, died at his home there on July 7. Mr. Christian, Pitcairn\u2019s chief radio officer and a great-great-great-grandson of Fletcher Christian<\/a>, the mutiny\u2019s leader, was 77.<\/p>\n

With his death, Pitcairn\u2019s permanent population stands at 51.<\/p>\n

The cause was complications of a recent stroke, his daughter Jacqueline Christian said.<\/p>\n

Though Mr. Christian was the world\u2019s best-known contemporary Pitcairner, word of his death \u2014 reported in the July issue of The Pitcairn Miscellany<\/a><\/em>, the island\u2019s monthly newsletter \u2014 reached a broad audience only this week, when it appeared in newspapers in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes awhile for news to get out,\u201d Ms. Christian said by telephone from Pitcairn on Thursday…<\/p>\n

…Britain\u2019s only remaining territory in the Pacific, the Pitcairn archipelago<\/a> lies roughly equidistant between Peru and New Zealand, about 3,300 miles from each. It comprises four small islands: Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno. Only Pitcairn Island, named for the sailor who sighted it from a British ship in 1767, is inhabited.<\/p>\n

Pitcairn, settled by the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts in 1790, is a rocky speck of about two square miles. (Manhattan, by comparison, is about 24 square miles.) Most of its inhabitants are descended from the mutineers and the Tahitian women they brought with them<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

…Though Pitcairn today has some trappings of 21st-century technology \u2014 electricity 14 hours a day and a country code, .pn<\/em>, on the Internet \u2014 it still maintains a striking degree of isolation. The island has no airstrip: it can be reached by flying to Tahiti<\/a> and taking a once-a-week plane from there to Mangareva Island<\/a>, in the Gambier Islands<\/a>, followed by a two- to three-day sea voyage.<\/p>\n

There are no automobiles on Pitcairn, and the island\u2019s rocks and cliffs bear names redolent of long-ago tragedies: \u201cWhere Dan Fall,\u201d \u201cWhere Minnie Off,\u201d \u201cOh Dear.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Christian, known as the Voice of Pitcairn for his half-century-long role in keeping his tiny South Pacific island, famed as the refuge of the Bounty mutineers, connected to the world, died at his home there on July 7. Mr. Christian, Pitcairn\u2019s chief radio officer and a great-great-great-grandson of Fletcher Christian, the mutiny\u2019s leader, was 77.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,4405],"tags":[12464,2640,15545,2327,15544],"class_list":["post-33139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-oceania","tag-margalit-fox","tag-new-york-times","tag-pitcairn-islands","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-tom-christian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54630,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33139\/revisions\/54630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}