THE FAR LAND

A South Pacific tale of “tribalism, trauma, psychopathy, paranoia, and survival in the bleakest of conditions.”

After numerous books and films, the story of the 1789 mutiny on the British navy ship Bountyis fairly well known—the Hollywood version, at least. Fletcher Christian led a group to overthrow the tyrannical Capt. Bligh and then sail into the South Pacific sunset. However, according to this meticulously researched book, that was far from the end of the adventure. The mutiny was just the prologue, writes Presser, a travel writer who has visited more than 130 countries; the real story involves what happened to the mutineers later. Eventually, they reached the daunting Pitcairn Island, one of the most remote islands in the world. Leading a mixed bag of sailors, Tahitian men, and Tahitian women that the Englishmen had taken as partners, Fletcher pronounced the island perfect for a self-sustaining, peaceful, and democratic minisociety. Of course, all did not go as planned. Some of the ex-sailors wanted a Caribbean-style feudal system and treated the Tahitian men as slaves and the women as pieces of a rotating harem. Inevitably, there was an outbreak of violence, although after several cycles of murder and retribution, it burned itself out and a measure of peace was reestablished. Eighteen years after the initial landing, another ship chanced upon them. By that time, there was a growing population of offspring—so many that some eventually moved to another island. Presser’s extensive research included “hundreds of resources from old captains’ logs to newspaper clippings to the other tomes penned by writers who have similarly descended down into the darkness of Pitcairn. He also lived there for several months, and he found the people to be tough yet also gossipy and obsessive. Armchair adventurers will appreciate the author’s sharp and sympathetic eye, showing us the mechanics of a truly remote civilization.

Presser’s detailed account provides a sense of authority to a story too bizarre to be anything but true.