The Untold Tragedy of the Bounty Mutineers: A Place of Memory and History in Tubuai

Tubuai, November 9, 2023 – Far from the clichés and the image conveyed by Hollywood of the famous Bounty mutineers, a family from Tubuai has inaugurated a place of memory and history which recounts an aborted attempt to colonize the island in Eighteenth century.

“The fort is open!” On the northern shore of the island of Tubuai, in the Austral archipelago, the Tetauru family is proud to tell the story of a battle won by the Polynesian people. “The story of the Bounty mutineers is known throughout the world but we only keep in mind a romantic adventure and the tragic dimension has been completely avoided!”is moved by Stéphanie Caire-Tetauru, professor of literature in Tahiti and member of the Bounty Fort George Tubuai association.
On their family land, at the precise location where Christian Fletcher’s mutinous sailors attempted to take possession of Tubuai in 1789, the Tetauru have created a place of memory and history. Visitors today have access to a modest but well-documented reconstruction of the fortified bastion that English sailors built during their war against the Polynesians.

“For us, it is important that the local population remembers an event that marked this island”, continues Stéphanie Caire-Tetauru. “There is talk of an armed conflict which caused the death of dozens of people from the island. The bay is still called today Bloody Bay. It is a seminal episode because without their failure at Tubuai, the sailors of the Bounty would not have gone to Pitcairn, a desert island.”

A tragedy far from the Hollywood version

While in the fenua archipelagos, the image of the sailor in revolt against an unjust power is authoritative, it was urgent to provide a counter-narrative to the figure of Marlon Brando living, on screen, a love story passionate with a woman. The approach is recent: Fort George opened its doors to the public this year. The Tetauru family worked a lot, carried out historiographical research in Papeete, Paris, London and was mainly inspired by the logbook of one of the mutineers, James Morrison.

In his reference work on the subject, The Bounty, passions, power, theater: story of a mutinyAustralian historian Greg Dening also tells a tragedy far removed from the Hollywood version. “Christian (the leader of the mutineers, Editor’s note) never doubted that he would have to find a hiding place to hole up for the rest of his days,” he writes. “He would never allow himself to be taken back to England, to become the shame of his family. Tahiti was the last place they could go, because it was the first place the Navy would land.”

Breaking with his nation – mutiny was at the time a crime systematically punishable by death by hanging – Christian Fletcher therefore decided to go to Tubuai, an island almost unknown at the time because it had only been seen by the captain. Cook. “Being the first European foreigners to set foot on the soil of Tubuai, [les marins du Bounty] began to replay the scene of first contact throughout the Pacific – misinterpreted signs, mythical assumptions, killings,” continues the historian.

A grueling war

As they attempted to settle permanently on the island – and built Fort George, north of Tubuai – the sailors encountered resistance from the Polynesians. “Whatever they may have been to the natives when they landed at Tubuai – gods, mythical strangers fallen from the sky – these men were now an invading force,” concludes the historian Greg Dening. “Armed groups went in search of wives, burning houses, killing with a musket ball or bayoneting those who resisted.” In less than a year, despite their internal divisions – the island was then divided into three chiefdoms – the Polynesians repelled the invasion force. At the cost of an exhausting war of attrition around Fort George.

To recount this little-known attempt at colonization is to provide a counter-narrative to the countless tourist exploitations of the myth of the Bounty rebels. Today, in the place of memory built by the Tetauru family – without the support of public aid – you can discover very well-made information panels, copies of period objects and a real museum tour.

Anne Tetauru, Stéphanie Caire-Tetauru’s mother, remembers how the plot that houses the historic ruins was allocated to her after a complex legal dispute related to joint ownership. “There was a draw: Fort George was number 1. It was immediately for me. I told myself that the ancestors had decided. We have a duty to tell this story as it happened: it is always harmful to forget the dead.”