Fletcher Christian was an English seaman, master's mate aboard the transport ship HMS Bounty. In 1789, Christian led a mutiny that seized control of the Bounty from her commander, Lieutenant William Bligh. Bligh and a number of sailors who refused to join the mutiny were set adrift in the ship's longboat. Christian and the mutineers sailed the Bounty first to Tahiti, where they took on board a number of Polynesian men and women, and then to Pitcairn Island, where they settled, burning the ship so that it would not be discovered. Fighting later broke out among the settlers, and Christian and most of the other mutineers were killed.
The song lyrics are the thoughts of someone who is imagining how Christian might have felt on Pitcairn and compares his own feelings to those he attributes to Christian. Many of the lyrics reference the events of the mutiny directly. For example "... and gave our captain up to the sea" describes the abandonment of Bligh in the longboat. Similarly, "the tattoist's needle" is probably a reference to the fact that tattooing was practiced in Tahiti and other Pacific Islands, and may have been the first place that British sailors such as Christian encountered the practice. The line "I sucked hard on every pleasure" probably refers to the fact that before the mutiny the Bounty visited Tahiti and remained there for five months. During that time, many of the sailors lived ashore and formed relationships with Polynesian women; one of the probable motivations for the mutiny was that the sailors wanted to return to their comfortable life on Tahiti.
Fletcher Christian was an English seaman, master's mate aboard the transport ship HMS Bounty. In 1789, Christian led a mutiny that seized control of the Bounty from her commander, Lieutenant William Bligh. Bligh and a number of sailors who refused to join the mutiny were set adrift in the ship's longboat. Christian and the mutineers sailed the Bounty first to Tahiti, where they took on board a number of Polynesian men and women, and then to Pitcairn Island, where they settled, burning the ship so that it would not be discovered. Fighting later broke out among the settlers, and Christian and most of the other mutineers were killed.
The song lyrics are the thoughts of someone who is imagining how Christian might have felt on Pitcairn and compares his own feelings to those he attributes to Christian. Many of the lyrics reference the events of the mutiny directly. For example "... and gave our captain up to the sea" describes the abandonment of Bligh in the longboat. Similarly, "the tattoist's needle" is probably a reference to the fact that tattooing was practiced in Tahiti and other Pacific Islands, and may have been the first place that British sailors such as Christian encountered the practice. The line "I sucked hard on every pleasure" probably refers to the fact that before the mutiny the Bounty visited Tahiti and remained there for five months. During that time, many of the sailors lived ashore and formed relationships with Polynesian women; one of the probable motivations for the mutiny was that the sailors wanted to return to their comfortable life on Tahiti.