Transit of Venus

The story of the Bounty mutiny is well known. Fletcher Christian’s mutineers set Captain William Bligh and others adrift in a ship’s boat. Bligh sailed some 5000 kilometres to safety; the mutineers returned to Tahiti before making their way to isolated and uninhabited Pitcairn Island.

But what of the women who joined the Bounty at Tahiti? Their powerful and compelling story is told in Transit of Venus. Mauatua and her friends and relatives speak directly to us in beautiful and startlingly perceptive ways as they move away from their homeland and pass into the feverish intensity of drunkenness, betrayal and murder that mark the early years on Pitcairn. In so doing, they assert their place in a story that has fascinated readers for generations.