Pitcairn's Island
James Norman Hall
 After two unsuccessful attempts to settle on the island of Tubuai, the Bounty mutineers returned to Tahiti where they parted company. Fletcher Christian and eight of his men, together with eighteen Polynesians, sailed from Tahiti in September 1789, and for a period of eighteen years nothing was heard of them. Then, in 1808, the American sailing vessel Topaz discovered a thriving community of mixed blood on Pitcairn Island under the rule of "Alexander Smith" (the assumed name of John Adams, the only survivor of the fifteen men who had landed there so long before).