Читать книгу Trouble in Paradise: Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Britain’s Most Remote Island - Kathy Marks - Страница 16

It was Tuesday morning, which meant that Pitcairn’s one shop, situated on the main road, a couple of banana groves down from the square, was open for business. But you had to be quick, for it would be closed by 9 a.m.—and if you missed it, you had to wait until Thursday, when it opened for another solitary hour of trading.

The small shop was crowded, although probably no more than a dozen people were browsing the dusty shelves, stacked with tins of lambs’ tongues and condensed milk. Olive Christian, a grandson on her hip, was inspecting bottles of bleach, while her mother-in-law, Dobrey, chatted animatedly in Pitkern to another elderly islander. Olive’s son, Randy, and several other men who were about to go on trial stood around, laughing loudly at some private joke. They were mostly barefoot, and carried fishing knives in their belts. As Claire and I roamed the aisles, a figure in a baggy grey T-shirt leant over a freezer of meat. ‘We don’t like reporters here,’ said Dave Brown, with a half-smile.

Short and stocky, with a bushy moustache, Dave was charged with 16 offences, including indecent assault and gross indecency with a child. But, like the other defendants, he was free on bail, and for now he was just gassing with his mates.

Behind the till, entering purchases in tattered account books labelled simply ‘Dobrey’ or ‘Olive’, was Darralyn Griffiths, née Warren. Darralyn had withdrawn from the case, claiming that she had been coerced into giving a statement; it was common knowledge, however, that she and Dave had had an ‘affair’ that began when he was 34 and she was 13. It had prompted many a sly wink at the time, although not from Dave’s wife, Lea, or Darralyn’s mother, Carol, whose main objection had been that Dave was married.

Also open that morning, again for the blink of an eye, was the minuscule post office, presided over by Dennis Christian. Dennis, the postmaster, was charged with three sexual assaults. Considerably more forthcoming than Dave, he explained to us politely that Pitcairn’s once booming stamp business was in decline. ‘Hardly anyone mails any more,’ he said. ‘Everyone jumps on the internet nowadays.’

The library, too, had unlocked its door for an hour, revealing a closet-sized space and shelves piled haphazardly with Bounty-related books, airport novels and travel guides. All could be borrowed indefinitely, without risk of a fine. Next door, the island secretary, Betty Christian, was sweeping out her office, which had another picture of the Queen on the wall. Outside, a few of the older women were swapping gossip on the wooden bench, which was known as the ‘bus shelter’.

I had now met, or at least laid eyes on, all seven of the Pitcairn-based defendants: Randy Christian and Jay Warren on the longboat; Steve Christian in the pink bulldozer; Dave Brown at the shop; Dennis Christian at the post office; and Len Brown, our next-door neighbour, in his garden. The seventh man was Terry Young, who lived near the store with his mother, Vula. I had passed him in the main road, a large, lumbering figure. Terry was charged with one rape and seven indecent assaults.

Within two or three days of landing, we knew who was who among the 40 or so Pitcairn residents. (Half a dozen were away.) And they, of course, knew who we were: six despised reporters tramping around their island. We could not have avoided the locals if we had tried. Every time we stepped out, we bumped into them; often as we walked along the dirt tracks, they would overtake us on the quad bikes that they hopped on even for short trips. I was never sure whether to wave: it seemed rude not to, but sometimes the only response was an icy stare.

Not everyone was unfriendly. Outside the medical centre, I met a chatty, baby-faced Englishman: Mike Lupton-Christian, who is married to Brenda Christian, Steve’s sister. Mike and Brenda had met in England, and had moved to the island in 1999 with her son from a previous marriage, Andrew. Mike, who had added Brenda’s surname to his, appeared to be well suited to Pitcairn life. A former manager of retail and leisure services for the British military, he had a practical nature and was not afraid to get his hands dirty. But his attempts to muck in had so far been frustrated.

Mike, who was qualified to drive heavy machinery, was keen to use Pitcairn’s big red tractor. He needed a local licence, 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 licence either. As for Simon Young, an Englishman who had settled on Pitcairn with his American – Filipina wife, Shirley, he had managed to secure a licence—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 plough 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 aluminium 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. But 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 that task in the wildest conditions that gives Pitcairn’s men their intrepid reputation.

The longboat slows down as it approaches the cove and pauses, with its motor idling. The engineer turns round to face the open sea; when he spots a suitable wave, he opens the engine up at full throttle. The boat is swept forward and surfs into the bay through a slender, rock-studded channel, skidding to a halt by the jetty—which, for passengers, is like landing at the bottom of a helter-skelter. There is little room for error, though, and islanders have been killed or seriously injured on occasions when the swell has seized the boat and dashed it against rocks.

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 has the most kudos of anyone on the island. In an exceptionally macho society, he is the most macho figure of all.

Steve has been a coxswain since the age of 17. 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 coxswains.

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.

As of 2004, Steve and Randy occupied the highest-ranking official positions on Pitcairn. As mayor, Steve was the community leader and chairman of the local council, which administers the island day to day. (The Governor wields overall authority.) Randy was chairman of the influential internal committee, which, among other things, allocated jobs. The pair also headed the unofficial hierarchy, for the real power base on the island was not the public hall, where the council met monthly, but Big Fence, Steve’s family home, where important decisions were made by his ‘inner circle’, and the same men gathered on Friday nights for rowdy drinking sessions.

Only native-born Pitcairners were part of the gang. Outsiders, particularly men, were regarded with hostility and suspicion. Steve and his mates, it is said, saw them as a threat to their jobs, and to the cosy way they ran the place for their own benefit. ‘They hate outsiders with a vengeance,’ a former Pitcairn teacher told me. ‘It’s their rock, and they don’t want anyone else on it.’

At the same time, Pitcairn is desperate for new blood. From a high of 227 in 1937, the population has dropped to around 50. Yet as much as newcomers are needed, they are feared and disliked, and also looked down on, because they lack the Bounty lineage. The locals ridicule them for breaking invisible protocols, and say of them in Pitkern that they ‘cah wipe’—do everything wrong.

According to Mike Lupton-Christian, as an outsider, ‘you’re actually treated quite badly … They don’t like people coming in with new ideas or doing anything better than them. You become very unpopular if you disagree with them.’ Mike’s house, built high on a hillside overlooking the Pacific, is derisively called ‘Pommy Ridge’ by other islanders.

In the past, some newcomers have turned up starry-eyed and then left, unable to deal with the hardships of Pitcairn life. But outsiders are expected to fail. Nola Warren, one of the matriarchs, says, ‘People from outside can’t live here. They’ll never settle down. They wouldn’t be able to cope.’

Some are not given much of a chance. Nicola Ludwig and Hendrik Roos, from the German city of Leipzig, were ideal immigrants: young, strong and fit, with small children. They loved the outdoors, and were eager to adopt a self-sufficient lifestyle. Nicola, whose family is now in New Zealand, told me recently, ‘We went to Pitcairn for an adventure and to get away from the outside world. We were absolutely naïve about the place. We thought it was this little community full of greenies, where everyone is nice to each other.’ Although Hendrik pitched in, particularly on the boats, the Pitcairn men ostracised him and subjected him to anti-German insults. Eighteen months after the family arrived, a container ship offered them a free passage to Auckland. They packed up and left.

Some islanders are treated as outsiders, too. Brenda Christian—small, but very strong and fit—is always in the thick of it with the men, flitting around the boats and shouldering heavy loads. Yet Brenda is not considered a true Pitcairner. She left the island at the age of 18 and did not return until 30 years later.

Like Brenda, Pawl Warren has an obvious rapport with island life. Shaven-headed Pawl, who gave us a fright when we first saw him on the longboat, left Pitcairn as a baby and grew up in New Zealand. In 1993, inspired by the Hollywood films about the mutiny, he moved back with his wife, Lorraine, and three children. Pawl describes the island as ‘a magical place’, but adds, ‘It’s not been easy to fit in here, because the hierarchy was already established.’

Even locals who have not lived away may experience similar problems. Tom and Betty Christian—elders of the Church, well travelled, well read and relatively affluent—are envied and distrusted by many of their fellow islanders. The couple, who have pioneered most of Pitcairn’s commercial ventures and undertaken overseas trips sponsored by the Adventist Church, find themselves increasingly isolated in their own community.

In the early 1990s, in an effort to boost the population, British administrators introduced a scheme to attract young Norfolk Islanders. A few people took up the offer of work and cheap housing; none of them ended up staying for long. Even Randy Christian’s wife, Nadine, who has married into the island’s most powerful family, confides, ‘The Pitcairners have their own way of doing things. I’ve had to try and do stuff the Pitcairn way, but it’s very difficult.’

I asked Matthew Forbes, Karen Wolstenholme’s successor as Deputy Governor, who, in his opinion, had been the last outsider to settle successfully on the island. After a long pause, Forbes suggested Samuel Warren, an American whaler who arrived in 1864.

Nadine, Steve Christian’s daughter-in-law, had been one of the talkative women at the Big Fence meeting; for the time being, she and other female relatives were as close as we would get to Steve. However, we soon came to know his voice well, thanks to the VHF radio system that is Pitcairn’s domestic telephone network. Every house and public building has a VHF unit. If you want to speak to someone, you holler out their name three times on the main frequency, Channel 16. (Only a first name is needed.) When they respond, the two of you switch to another channel—and everyone else adjusts their sets, in order to eavesdrop.

The radio in our living room crackled into life dozens of times a day, as the islanders got in touch with each other to chat or make plans. Steve’s rich tones rang out frequently. He might have been about to go on trial, but he was, unmistakably, still in charge. It was he who made public announcements, informing people when the next ship would be calling, or telling them not to worry if they saw smoke rising—‘We’re just burning rubbish.’

While Steve was elected mayor in 1999, unofficially he had been a leader since his teens. Good-looking, self-confident and powerfully built, he had always stood out: cleverer than his peers, a bit more articulate, and possessing a certain raw charm. His late father, Ivan, had been magistrate for eight years, and his mother, Dobrey, remains a formidable woman. Despite a strict upbringing, Steve was described as a tearaway by a Royal Air Force team stationed on Pitcairn in the 1970s, when he was in his early 20s. In a report to British authorities, the team also tipped him as a ‘future strongman’, and said that he would be a ‘severe loss’ if he decided to emigrate. Steve never did leave, except for limited periods, and that has been a source of strength.

In his youth, Steve had the pick of the local girls, and he eventually married Olive Brown, Len’s eldest daughter, although—much to people’s amusement—he reportedly also had affairs with her two younger sisters; he was referred to as ‘the man with three wives’. The birth of three sons, Trent, Randy and Shawn, consolidated his status. In addition, Steve has a multitude of talents. It is said of him that he can fix anything, and that he is a person who gets things done. A few years ago, when the islanders were heading home in a gale and rough seas, a rope got caught in the longboat’s propeller. Steve dived overboard, cut the rope and was back in the boat before some of its occupants had realised anything was amiss.

On another occasion, when a woman was seriously ill, her husband contacted a specialist in California via ham radio. (Until recently, the only health professional on Pitcairn was a nurse.) The doctor proffered a long-distance diagnosis, and Steve, on his instructions, fashioned two surgical instruments which the nurse then used to perform an emergency procedure. The woman believes that Steve saved her life. ‘It was a miracle, and he was part of that miracle,’ she says.

Steve himself walks with a limp, the legacy of a teenage accident that has required two hip replacements. Nevertheless, he is physically equal to Pitcairn’s tough environment. He is said to be good company, and an entertaining host. He has something else, too—an ‘X-factor’, one outsider calls it, saying, ‘You can feel it as soon as he walks in. He carries himself like a leader.’

The Adventist Church filmed a series of documentaries about Pitcairn; watching them while on the island, I was struck by the way that Steve dominated nearly every scene—leading a group of young men off on motorbikes to hunt wild goats; debating the design of a new longboat with New Zealand engineers; driving around in a Mini Moke, the island’s one car; and giving the signal for Christmas presents to be distributed in the square. Steve even built the Pitcairners’ coffins.

To his fellow islanders, he was the linchpin of the community. Nothing happened without Steve’s say-so, and if he was away temporarily, on Norfolk Island, for instance, the others would still consult him. ‘Steve liked to be boss,’ says Tony Washington, a New Zealander who taught on Pitcairn in the early 1990s. ‘He had more say than Jay [Warren], although Jay was magistrate. When we went on a trip to Henderson [a neighbouring island], it was Steve who decided when we should come back.’

Neville Tosen describes him as ‘the evil genius who ruled Pitcairn’. He adds, ‘And yet I came to recognise him as a person of ability. He was smart. He understood the island and the way things were done. He could think his way through problems and come up with a solution. He was the brains of the place.’

Others say that Steve surrounded himself with yes-men and treated Pitcairn as his personal fiefdom. He would turn up late to communal dinners, knowing that no one else would start eating without him. ‘Pitcairn was an oligarchy,’ says Leslie Jaques, who has succeeded Leon Salt as Commissioner. ‘Steve ruled, and everyone else did what they were told. The way the community was run was medieval.’

There was an in-crowd, but not everyone in it was equally favoured. The island’s pecking order was quite intricate, it seems, and was reflected in the jobs that people did, and even by their positions in the longboat. As one British official observes, ‘It was almost like an Indian caste system. You had your place in society, and you never moved from it.’

For six decades the mainstay of the Pitcairn economy was stamps. First issued in 1940, they became the cream of many a collection, coveted because of the island’s colourful history and exotic location. So popular were they, in fact, that within a few years the community was able to build a new school and, for the first time, hire a professional teacher from New Zealand.

The proceeds from stamps went into a Pitcairn Fund that until a few years ago met the island’s running costs, as well as subsidising freight charges and the price of diesel fuel and building materials. The fund—latterly bolstered by sales of coins, phonecards and the .pn internet domain suffix—enabled the islanders to travel to New Zealand for further education and health care, and be paid salaries for carrying out ‘government jobs’. Capital items, such as longboats, tractors and generators, have always been provided by Britain, which is also responsible for maintaining the infrastructure.

As stamp collecting and letter writing fell out of fashion, the fund dwindled. Thanks to British subsidies, Pitcairn has nonetheless continued to enjoy full employment, in a manner reminiscent of a Cold War-era Communist state. The government jobs, equivalent to a public service bureaucracy, include deputy postmaster, trainee tractor driver, second assistant forester and keeper of John Adams’ grave. While there may be a whiff of absurdity about some of the jobs, who gets what is a serious matter, for the small stipends—NZ$500 (£200) a month for the island’s engineer, for instance—can go a long way on Pitcairn. And, until recently, who got what depended on your connections.

When Steve Christian’s daughter, Tania, arrived for an extended visit, she was promptly given two positions: museum keeper and librarian. Simon Young, the English newcomer, who had a horticulture degree and wanted to work in biosecurity, was made garbage collector. That had been the job of Hendrik Roos, the German settler. His wife, Nicola Ludwig, had been gardener of the cemetery.

Steve was not only mayor; he was chief supervising engineer—probably the most significant post on Pitcairn. (Randy was his deputy.) He was also the island’s dentist, having completed a course in New Zealand that qualified him to perform extractions. He was the radiographer. He was the number one tractor driver. He was the explosives supervisor, and a heavy machinery operator. He was a longboat coxswain. Steve had eight paid jobs.

The Christian clan has traditionally been the aristocracy on Pitcairn, but not all Christians are equal, and in Steve’s day his branch has been pre-eminent. The Warren clan also plays a prominent role in island affairs, securing some of the best jobs for family members. Despite lacking Steve’s force of personality and charisma, Jay is regarded as his main rival for power.

The mayor—or magistrate, as the office was formerly called—has always been a man. Betty Christian once nominated a woman. ‘Everyone laughed. They thought it was the biggest joke they’d ever heard,’ she says. Many women thought so too. When an outsider asked one older islander, Nola Warren, why a woman could not be in charge, she replied, ‘Because it’s never been, and it just can’t be.’

One of Pitcairn’s attractions is that people do not pay tax. Instead, they carry out ‘public work’: painting buildings, repairing the slipway, clearing the roads of undergrowth. They can go fishing if the weather is good, or tend their gardens and orchards. The islanders grow, among other things, mangoes, pineapples, passionfruit, strawberries, avocadoes, watermelons, pumpkins, peppers and sweet potatoes. Everything thrives in the volcanic soil and semi-tropical climate.

The locals trade their produce with the crews of passing ships, swapping fruit and fish for items such as timber, frozen chickens and cans of Coke. Their most valuable commodity, however, is the wooden carvings to which they devote most of their free time. The carvings are sold to passengers on the cruise ships that visit Pitcairn during summer, and also through the islanders’ websites. A Bounty replica can fetch US$120. Not long ago, on a cruise ship, a Pitcairn family made US$10,000 in one day.

Souvenirs account for three-quarters of the Pitcairners’ earnings. Most homes have a workshop equipped with power tools, and the carvings—while no longer produced by hand—are still made from the richly veined miro wood harvested locally or on Henderson Island, 15 hours away by longboat. (Henderson is one of three other islands, all uninhabited, in the Pitcairn group; the other two are Oeno and Ducie.)

Most of the Big Fence crowd are drinkers. For a long time Pitcairn was a dry island—in theory, at least. Alcohol is banned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1997 the locals voted to legalise its importation, but a licence is still required and drinking in public remains outlawed; in the outside world, Pitcairn retains its teetotal image. You cannot buy alcohol on the island, any more than you can buy cigarettes or ice cream or a carton of milk.

Seventh-day Adventism replaced John Adams’ idiosyncratic brand of Anglicanism in 1876, after the American-based Church posted a box of literature to Pitcairn, then dispatched a missionary to argue its cause. The islanders were baptised in a rock pool, and since pork was now a forbidden food, they killed all their pigs—pushed them off a cliff, so the story goes.

Adventism, an evangelical Christian denomination, has 14 million members worldwide. Followers believe that Saturday is the Sabbath, and that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent; they are expected to dress modestly, and avoid shellfish as well as pork; tobacco is another prohibited substance. Dancing, gambling and the theatre are frowned on, along with works of fiction and music other than hymns.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been a generous benefactor to Pitcairn, raising funds for the community and sending out teachers and pastors. It is not clear, though, how deeply the faith implanted itself, or to what degree the islanders ever observed its precepts. Certainly, they called themselves Adventists, and until a few years ago the pews were always crowded on Saturdays. But going to church was, like elsewhere, the done thing, and on Pitcairn the church was also very much a social focus.

Outsiders were struck by the locals’ earthy language, peppered with innuendo and swear words, and by their relaxed sexual morals. Roy Sanders, a New Zealand teacher, described a Sabbath service in the 1950s that was punctuated by heckling and jeering, and ‘intermittent spitting out of the windows’. Ted Dymond, a visiting British official, reported in the 1970s, ‘The lengthy and rambling sermon was soporific and I counted seven islanders in deep slumber.’ Some believe that Pitcairn’s history has been characterised by cycles of moral decay and religious renewal. Others are doubtful about the renewal part.

Nowadays Seventh-day Adventism is no longer a spiritual anchor. Yet Saturday is still ‘the Sabbath’, and everybody has a quiet day. Even some of the least pious islanders continue to pay a tithe, and the pastor is deferred to, outwardly at least. Council meetings, market days and communal meals begin with a prayer. ‘They all look so bloody sincere, with their heads bowed,’ remarks Bill Haigh, an Englishman who has spent long periods living on Pitcairn, modernising its communications on behalf of Britain.

‘Sacrificial living’, it seems, has never been embraced by local people, despite being a central plank of Adventism. Carol Warren has five freezers, and most households own at least three, among an array of white goods and electrical appliances: fridges, deep-fryers, microwaves, video cameras, stereo systems, DVD players, television sets, video recorders. The Pitcairners are defensive about their material possessions—more so, perhaps, than about any other aspect of their lives. It certainly feels odd, in such a remote, rugged spot, to find homes stuffed with the emblems of Western-style wealth. Paradoxically, the houses themselves are relatively basic, with concrete floors and unpainted walls, and the furniture is plain.

The multiple freezers and fridges, the islanders point out, are a necessity—and after opening a bag of flour infested with weevils, I could see what they meant. Moreover, the hoarding instinct is ingrained, for no one is ever quite sure when—or if—the next ship will come. The video and DVD players, too, are crucial in a place with no television, cinema or theatre, and no restaurants, pubs or cafés. Such goods are also status symbols, though, and in that respect Pitcairn is not much different from anywhere else. I suppose I had expected, rather naïvely, to find people living the simple life.

Carol told Sue Ingram, the Radio New Zealand reporter, ‘We’ve had it really good for a long time, and I don’t think a lot of our people in New Zealand could live like we do. We do live quite extravagantly. I have everything they have, plus.’

Pitcairn has been fairly prosperous for decades. Roy Sanders, the teacher in the 1950s, was taken aback to find children with gold watches and expensive fountain pens. A British official in that era reported that the islanders were reticent about their earnings; however, he added, ‘Judging from the manner in which some of them journey up and down to New Zealand—even to England—they cannot be too badly off.’

Not everyone benefits equally from the spoils of the island. Take the share-out, which is one of Pitcairn’s more charming traditions. Based on an old naval custom, it takes place in the square and is used to distribute the catch from a communal fishing trip or goods donated by a ship. The fish (or flour, or clothing, or whatever) is divided into piles equivalent to the number of households. Everybody turns their back, except for one person, who points to a pile; another person, facing away, calls out the name of a family. The process is repeated until every family has been allocated a ration—with everyone, in theory, receiving equal.

Mike Lupton-Christian told us that the share-out had become a joke, with Steve Christian and Dave Brown often siphoning off the prime items beforehand: bottles of beer, for instance, or the best cuts of meat. As Mike put it, ‘The stuff is shared out equally, only Steve’s family gets a bigger share.’ It was the same when a ship wanted to buy a consignment of fish or produce. ‘The order only goes to those in the know,’ he said.

As for the general dishonesty that Gail Cox, the Kent constable, had tried to address, Mike’s belief was that ‘everyone in the community had something on everyone else … Nobody was prepared to shop anyone else … It was a bit like the sexual abuse thing.’

The ‘sexual abuse thing’ was now plunging the island into its worst crisis since the mutineers’ day. Pitcairn’s leading men stood accused of paedophilia, a crime so abhorrent that it sometimes causes vigilante-style reprisals. Not only had they preyed on children, it was alleged, they had done so within their own small, introverted community, targeting girls who lived a few doors away—the daughters of cousins and neighbours, or, in some cases, family members.

If a prosecution was launched, though, the island’s name would be blackened, and relationships in this most interdependent of societies ruined. The community was already in a precarious state, thanks to the fragile economy and falling population. Could it survive this latest and most devastating blow? And how would fans of the legendary Bounty island react?