Bounty hero had mental disorder

By Keith Perry

Swashbuckling hero Fletcher Christian was suffering from a form of mental illness when he staged his mutiny on the Bounty, one of his descendants claims in a new book.

Auckland author Glynn Christian, a direct descendant of the first mate on the Bounty who led a mutiny with eight crew against tyrannical skipper Captain Bligh in 1789, said he commissioned leading London psychiatrists to study reports of Fletcher Christian's personality.

"For the first time I have had a genuine diagnosis of his physical state at the time he rebelled and the experts concluded that he was experiencing a form of mental breakdown on the day of the mutiny.

"It is a state called brief psychotic disorder, which can last from a day to a week, but then you go back to normal. He was described as wild-eyed and dishevelled, which also points to temporary madness. Bligh also said Christian was insane."

Glynn Christian, aged 57, who has just published a revised edition of the 1992 biography of his famous forefather, Fragile Paradise, said his ancestor finally snapped when Bligh piled on the pressure after the ship left Tahiti, forcing him to carry out arduous daily chores such as small- arms practice and cleaning of bunks.

He said Christian also suffered from a medical condition that causedg him to perspire excessively and there was evidence Bligh taunted him about his problem.

Crew members were appalled at his cruel treatment of an obviously sick man and no one helped Bligh fight off the mutiny.

Bligh and Christian also had a strong father-son relationship and after they left Tahiti, where the crew had relaxed and fallen in love with local women, Christian rebelled against Bligh as an authority figure.

"Bligh could not tolerate Christian's rejection of him as a father figure," the author said.

After the mutiny, Christian and eight other crewmen fled to Pitcairn Island, where they settled and where their descendants still live.

But they ignored the rights of the indigenous Polynesians and Fletcher Christian, along with seven mutineers, was murdered by the angry locals around 1794.