☞Today in History -- On today’s date 229 years ago, September 20, 1793, famous English Royal Navy officer Fletcher Christian, (1764-1793),

☞Today in History -- On today’s date 229 years ago, September 20, 1793, famous English Royal Navy officer Fletcher Christian, (1764-1793), who became the leader of the 1789 Mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty, met his earthly demise at the age of 28 when he was murdered by Tahitian Islanders during a conflict between the Native-Tahitian men & the English mutineers who had settled on remote Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific Ocean.




 It was reported that Fletcher Christian was shot to death whilst he was working by a pond next to the home of his pregnant Tahitian wife. It also was reported that Fletcher Christian’s famous last words, were “Oh, dear!”

☞Requiéscat In Pace, Fletcher Christian.

☞Fletcher Christian (1764-1793), Master’s Mate of His Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty, is best-known for leading a band of mutineers against Captain William Bligh (1754-1817) in an incident that came to be known as “The Mutiny on the Bounty.”
 
☞After the mutiny, Christian & some of the other mutineers, along with several Tahitian men & women, eventually settled on remote Pitcairn Island, where they lived in peaceful isolation until 1793 when a conflict broke out between the mutineers & the Tahitian men, during which all of the Tahitian men & most of the mutineers, including Fletcher Christian, were killed. 

☞Rumors abounded over the following decades that Fletcher Christian had not died on Pitcairn Island, but was instead concealed by his family in Cumberland -- having somehow made his way back to England. Letters supposedly written by Christian were published, but these were overwhelmingly dismissed as forgeries. Peter Heywood (1772-1831), an officer on the Bounty who was later pardoned for his part in the mutiny & who went on to a long & respectable Royal Navy career, claimed to have once seen Fletcher Christian on a street in Plymouth, although the man fled when Heywood ventured to accost him. Noted English-born American historian Leonard F. Guttridge (1918-2009) wrote that “the fate of Fletcher Christian remains almost as much a mystery as the true genesis of his fabled mutiny.”

☞Genealogical Note: Fletcher Christian is a seventh cousin, five-times-removed, to Buttermilk Junction band leader Michael Lee Garrett, who is also a descendant of the Christian family of the Isle of Man.

☞The photograph depicts a hand-colored aquatint etching entitled “Fletcher Christian & the mutineers turn Lieutenant William Bligh & 18 Others Adrift” by noted British marine artist & aquatint engraver Robert Dodd (1748-1815). This etching is now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London.

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