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The 10 pigtails and the tobacco tin they were stored in
The 10 pigtails alongside the tobacco tin they were stored in. Photograph: King’s College London
The 10 pigtails alongside the tobacco tin they were stored in. Photograph: King’s College London

Scientists hope to prove pigtails belong to HMS Bounty mutineers

This article is more than 7 years old

Human hairs will be DNA tested to identify whether they come from 18th-century sailors who cast Captain Bligh adrift

A collection of hair taken from 18th-century pigtails and stored for more than a century in an old tobacco tin has arrived in London for analysis that could prove it belonged to some of the most famous troublemakers in naval history – the sailors responsible for the mutiny on the Bounty.

Scientists hope to extract mitochondrial DNA, using the same technique that identified Richard III after the skeleton of the last Plantagenet king was found under a Leicester car park. Researchers would then have the even more challenging task of identifying an unbroken female line to a living descendant, to get a crucial match.

“If the hair is in good condition, I don’t see that it would be impossible to extract the DNA – it’s a technique we regularly use in forensic work – but that’s where the difficulties will really begin,” said Denise Syndercombe-Court, the project leader from the analytical and environmental sciences division at King’s College London.

The hair is said to be from seven of the nine mutineers and three of their female Polynesian companions, who cast Captain Bligh and the 18 crew members who remained loyal to him adrift on the south Pacific in a small boat in April 1789. The mutineers sailed to Tahiti and then on to establish a new home on the remote Pitcairn Island, where their descendants live to this day.

The 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, is the most famous depiction of the incident. Photograph: Moviestore Collection

The incident inspired several books and films, most famously the 1962 version starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutiny. One of the pigtails is said to be Christian’s.

The pigtails were bought by an American collector at a Sotheby’s auction some years ago, and recently presented by his widow complete with the tobacco tin and a handwritten label with their claimed history, to the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre in California.

Herb Ford, the centre’s director, said that despite the notoriety of the story, if the DNA testing and matching was successful it would be the only physical proof of the men’s identity.

“If the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticates that it is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on Pitcairn Island in 1790, it will be the only tangible physical evidence of their having existed. There is only one known mutineer grave on Pitcairn – that of John Adams. Of the whereabouts of the remains of the eight others, we can only speculate.”

Ford first contacted Scotland Yard for help in analysing the hair, and the Metropolitan police referred him to King’s College, whose scientists often work with the force on contemporary crime cases.

He has appealed for public help in tracing the mothers of the mutineers, and their direct descendants.

Pitcairn Island, where descendants of the mutineers live to this day. Photograph: Alamy

Bligh, who was on a mission to collect breadfruit trees regarded as a possible crop to feed slaves in Caribbean plantations, has gone down in legend as a brutal commander, but in fact was regarded by his contemporaries as a moderate man, exceptionally concerned for the welfare of his sailors.

He wrote to his wife: “I have been run down by my own Dogs,” and was baffled by the mutiny. He navigated the small open boat across more than 3,500 miles to the nearest European settlement, and eventually returned to England, where he was cleared in a court martial of losing the Bounty. He died in 1817, and is buried in Lambeth, south London, where his tomb is topped with a breadfruit.

Although the package containing the pigtails has arrived safely at King’s, Syndercombe-Court has wrestled with her curiosity and refrained from opening it. “We need to open it under very special clean conditions to avoid contamination as much as possible, so we won’t open it until we are ready to begin work next month,” she said. “But I am told that there are definitely several different colours and textures of hair, so we know at least that we are dealing with several individuals.”

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