Pitcairn Island 218 Years Later: Been There, Done That, Bought a T-Shirt

Sunday, 19 October – Pitcairn Island

 

Today’s stop at Pitcairn Island was the highest highlight of the cruise. We lingered at Bounty Bay (Yes, named for HMS Bounty and all that. The ship’s remains is right below the surface of a nearby cove. Somebody said something happened with that ship some time ago, something about Charles Laughton and Clarke Gable. You might have seen the movie). We lingered for a few hours controlling the position with the bow thrusters since the sea was too rough for anchoring but long enough for 27 of the 41 residents of this volcanic rock very far from EVERYWHERE to come onboard in an oversized powered rowboat with a gonzo tiller. They brought T-shirts, handy crafts that they make in case a ship comes by, honey, and a lovely bunch of coconuts and other local produce and set up a set of tables in a hallway on Silver Shadow. The well behaved friendly guests (NOT!) onboard immediately stormed the tables making a scene I haven’t observed since Klein’s basement closed. But the local’s visit in this most isolated and remarkable spot was one of the very best port visits ever in my almost two years of shipboard traveling to 120 countries! (Ed. Note: would have been 121 by now if I could go to the bathroom in Easter Island and Pitcairn on this trip, but I don’t feel cheated on these ports in any other way.)

 

Here’s some isolated observations from our 4 hour visit here:

 

• The local group included a uniformed policeman. I asked what a cop does on an island of 41 related people (very related, this is a gene puddle. Everyone has the surnames Christian or Warren), all decedents of Fletcher Christian and 8 of his coconspirators to left Tahiti on the lam and scuttled HMS Bounty here. The answer from a delightful mom who brought her kids onboard—more on them below—was that since everyone was related and had dinner together, the cop’s job was to resolved personal disputes. I imagined that this referred to a radio being too loud or the four or five kids on the island playing on someone’s lawn, although some worse problems were in the news a few years ago. It is a very small and isolated place where everyone shares, perhaps a bit too much. Look it up.
• Regarding law enforcement, I saw our ship’s Security Officer on deck. He stopped by where I was standing and said to me, “Let’s go ashore and steal some stuff since the whole island is on this ship, and no one would suspect the ship’s security officer.” No fooling. He’s a fun guy, but don’t do anything hinkey.
• About half of the island’s kids were huddled under one of the craft tables. I asked the boy if he was bored. He said, “Very!”. So I went to our Cruise Director and asked if she could do something about this. She immediately sent one of her staff to take the kids on a tour of our ship—which has 10 times the total population of this island—and they sat at the bar having Cokes and then played shuffleboard for a while. It was my good deed of the day. I asked the boy if he know the girl and if she was ok. She said that she was his sister, and she immediately said, “I’m very ok”. They let me take my picture with them.
• Chatted quite a bit with Sheila Christian (who sold me a T-shirt), a New Zealander who married “this weird guy who said he lives in a small town, but I didn’t know the half of it until he took me back home to HERE”. She’s been on Pitcairn a couple of years and says she doesn’t want to leave ever. Pitcairn has electricity for 4 hours twice each day. They get CNN International (unlike Silver Shadow which seems to be locked on FOX Noise Channel) and have a good Internet connection. The kids told me that they hate newspapers since the Internet is much better. Go figure.
• Speaking of communications, I met the current local ham and had a nice conversation. (He had an ICOM microphone on his lapel. He told me he was the “communications guy for the island.”) He gave me his VP6 call letters but said he doesn’t go on the air much since “the Internet is a lot more fun.” Tom Christian, VP6TC, the famous ham I and every other ham of the early 1960s talked as our first “DX” contact in the Pacific, is still an active ham but is in New Zealand getting a pacemaker at the moment.
• We took on a passenger, a local woman who is going to a crafts fair in Tahiti. She will be catching another cruise ship back to Pitcairn in November.
• At noon, the local folks climbed down the pilot’s rope ladder into their very large tiller boat and putted away after loading on cases of Coke, some wine, and an assortment of pillow chocolates and other goodies, and we took a 290 degree heading and speeded up to 17.2 knots for the two day 1600 mile journey to Moorea, French Polynesia where we will arrive at 10 am on the 22^nd.

 

The interactions with the locals—most of all there are—was infinitely more satisfying that actually setting foot on this rock, of course. Pitcairn is now under the administrative control of New Zealand rather than the UK (the reason for the change of amateur call letter prefix changing from VR6 to VP6 it appears). So the locals have always spoken England as well as a Polynesian dialect and despite the crude joking onboard this ship, they seemed genuinely friendly and happy to meet us. Perhaps they are too accepting in this regard, I’m afraid to say, since the crowd on this cruise segment seems to me to be—with a few very notable exceptions—to be the most spoiled grumpy bunch I’ve every traveled with. I don’t have to hang out with every one of the 249 of so guests of course, but it was a dark spot in an otherwise brilliant morning when a 70ish guest came from our Pitcairn “mall” set up by the Paranormal, uh, Panorama Lounge hallway and said to me, “This is all show business. These folks are milking us for all we’re worth, selling us overpriced T-shirts and poorly made handicrafts. They really have dozens of ships visiting every month, and they are all putting on an act by saying they are all alone here.” (MB note: The Captain said that there are about a dozen ships of any kind that stop here a year and many can not even board the locals, much less set guests on shore.) Even though I’ve never talked to this guy before, I responded that I thought the experience of meeting the locals and seeing what they had to sell was fantastic and that even if what he said might be true (it isn’t off course), that is part of what this kind of cruise is all about. He snarled at me and said, “You must be a better person than I am.” Instead of just shaking my head and walking away, I felt the need to say, “I agree with you completely.”

 

It’s 79 degrees. I just had a nice lunch of bowtie pasta in a custom made mushroom sauce and Nasi Goring (sambal on the side) with a dry California Chenin Blanc as Pitcairn disappeared off the stern. Time to enjoy the last two sea days before Moorea on Wednesday, Bora Bora on Thursday Thursday, and then off the ship (boo) on Friday for the overnight trip home. The cruise has gone much too quickly. Champagne Room tonight for dinner despite the $30 over charge. Oh well. Someone has to do it.