21 Facts About Fletcher Christian

In 1787, Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, tasked with transporting breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies.

Fletcher Christian died on Pitcairn, possibly killed in a conflict with Tahitians.

Fletcher Christian's group was not found until 1808 and the sole surviving mutineer, John Adams, gave conflicting accounts of Christian's death.

Charles died in 1768 when Fletcher Christian was not yet four.

Fletcher Christian spent seven years at the Cockermouth Free School from the age of nine.

Fletcher Christian began his naval career at a late age, joining the Royal Navy as a cabin boy when he was already seventeen years old.

Fletcher Christian served for over a year on a third-rate ship-of-the-line along with his future commander, William Bligh, who was posted as the ship's sixth lieutenant.

Fletcher Christian next became a midshipman on the sixth-rate post ship HMS Eurydice and was made Master's Mate six months after the ship put to sea.

The ship's muster shows Fletcher Christian's conduct was more than satisfactory because "some seven months out from England, he had been promoted from midshipman to master's mate".

Unable to find another midshipman assignment, Fletcher Christian decided to join the British merchant fleet and applied for a berth on board William Bligh's ship Britannia.

In 1787 Bligh approached Fletcher Christian to serve on board HMAV Bounty for a two-year voyage to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies.

Bligh originally had every intention of Fletcher Christian serving as the ship's Master, but the Navy Board turned down this request due to Fletcher Christian's low seniority in service years and appointed John Fryer instead.

In 1787, Fletcher Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, on Bligh's recommendation, for the ship's breadfruit expedition to Tahiti.

Fletcher Christian then attempted to build a colony on Tubuai, but there the mutineers came into conflict with natives.

Adams and Maimiti claimed Fletcher Christian had been murdered during the conflict between the Tahitian men and the mutineers.

Fletcher Christian was variously said to have died of natural causes, committed suicide, become insane or been murdered.

Rumours have persisted for more than two hundred years that Fletcher Christian's murder was faked, that he had left the island and that he made his way back to England.

Many scholars believe that the rumours of Fletcher Christian returning to England helped to inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Fletcher Christian appears in R M Ballantyne's The Lonely Island; or, The Refuge of the Mutineers and in Charles Dickens' The Long Voyage.

In Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, Fletcher Christian's ghost appears, possessing a human body, and helps two non-possessed girls escape.

The 1935 and 1962 films are based on the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty in which Fletcher Christian is a major character and is generally portrayed positively.