Pitcairn is an isolated island in the South Pacific, notable for its unusual history: in 1790, the surviving mutineers from the HMS Bounty and a small number of Tahitian men and women settled on the island, burning the ship which brought them there and intending to stay for good. No contact was made with the outside world until 1808, when an American ship visited the island, finding that most of the mutineers had long since died of alcholism, suicide, or murder. Pitcairn was declared a British colony in the 1830s, and the population has fluctuated since then - in 2014 just 56 people lived there. In 2004, several prominent Pitcairn men were tried for sexual assault against generations of Pitcairn girls and women. Kathy Marks' Lost Paradise is an account of both those trials and the history of the island.
Mike, who was qualified to drive heavy machinery, was keen to use Pitcairn's big red tractor. He needed a local license, but when he applied to the council's internal committee, chaired by Randy Christian, nothing happened. He made inquiries. Still nothing happened. "They kept saying things like 'After the next ship's been,'" said Mike.
Vaine Peu, an amiable Cook Islander and the partner of Charlene Warren, told a similar story; Turi Griffiths, Darralyn's husband, also from the Cooks, could not get a license, either. As for Simon Young, an Englishman who had settled on Pitcairn with his American-Filipina wife, Shirley, he had managed to secure a license, but only for an old blue tractor, and only for collecting rubbish, which was his job. Mike, Vaine, Turi, and Simon had one thing in common: they were all outsiders. Meanwhile, two local teenagers were being trained to drive the big red tractor.
Those who could not drive the tractor, which was used in countless chores, most notably to plow the islanders' gardens, were dependent on those who could. And those who could were men who had been born on Pitcairn and spent their lives there: the "Big Fence gang," as they were called.
If the big red tractor was a symbol of power from which outsiders were excluded, it was eclipsed by the longboat - Pitcairn's umbilical cord, and the sole preserve of Steve Christian and his followers.
Such is the aura surrounding the longboat that it was an anticlimax to discover that it is just a large open boat with an outboard engine and an aluminum hull. The boat's mystique dates from the days when it was made of wood, powered by oars, and hauled up the slipway by hand. While less muscle may be required now, its significance has not diminished: without it, Pitcairn could not function. The boat, or boats, for there are two of them, collect people and supplies from the ships in all weather. Cargo, including fuel drums and timber, is lowered in a net; for those standing underneath, it can be dangerous work. The heavily laden vessel is then guided back into shallow, surf-lashed Bounty Bay, and it is their skill in accomplishing this task in the wildest conditions that give Pitcairn's men their intrepid reputation...
...For the local boys, joining the crew is a rite of passage, and they long to be skipper or coxswain, just like other boys dream of driving a train. The coxswain is the person with the highest standing on the island. In an exceptionally macho culture, he is the most macho figure of all.
Steve has been a coxswain since the age of seventeen. Randy, the only one of Steve's sons living on the island, and thus seen as the heir apparent to his political power, is a coxswain. So is Dave Brown. So is Jay Warren. Those men were always at the back of the boat, in charge of the tiller or engine. Len Brown, who in his day headed one of Pitcairn's leading families, was among the island's most capable engineers and coxswain's.
Vaine Peu, Simon Young, and Mike Lupton-Christian had all asked to be trained for the key roles. But the locals were unenthusiastic, for according to them, you had to have grown up on Pitcairn. So "the boys," as they were known, continued to control the longboat, and, with it, the community's access to resources, its economy, its very survival.