The Pitcairn Island radio operator, Tom Christian, was a great-great-great-grandson of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian.
From Wikipedia:
Tom Christian MBE (1 Nov 1935 – 7 Jul 2013) was a citizen of Pitcairn Island, and was its long-serving radio operator.
Christian served as the Governor’s appointee on the Pitcairn council for forty years. In 1983, Christian was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire.
When Christian was 17, he left the island for New Zealand and stayed for three years, where he was trained to operate the radio station ZBP, first set up by the New Zealand military during World War II.
The Telegraph reported that Christian had spent other relatively brief periods off-island, that he had always been attracted to life off-island, and never expected to stay on the island so long. Christian, like most Pitcairn Islanders, was a follower of Seventh-day Adventism, and worked for six months at a Seventh-day Adventist radio station in California. He also made several cruises as a radio operator on a freighter vessel. In later years, Christian visited the outside world where he delivered lectures on Pitcairn and its history.
Christian was described as one of the two most sought after amateur radio operators in the world. Christian, with call sign VP6TC/VR6TC, served as “the voice of Pitcairn” from the mid-1950s to his retirement in 2004. His radio hut was atop Spyglass Hill, which, at 870 feet (270 m) elevation, is the highest point on the island.
Visual communication by lamps with passing ships was started by Mr Andrew Young, the former Island Secretary, in 1921, and in 1922 the Marconi Company, whose attention was attracted by Mr Young’s experiments, presented a crystal receiver to the island. In 1926 a New Zealand radio enthusiast gave a small coil transmitter, and in 1938 two United States citizens installed transmitting and receiving equipment provided by private subscription.
In cooperation with the Navy Office, Wellington, regular communications were established in 1940 and improved in 1944, when Pitcairn became a meteorological station. In 1952 additional short-wave facilities were introduced, and during 1962 the complete re-building of the station was begun with financial assistance from the British government. Pitcairn Island radio, call-sign ZBP, has registered frequencies of 500, 7859 and 12,990 kilocycles. When the new equipment is installed it is proposed to register new frequencies in the 15, 17 and 22 megacycle bands.
Pictured: the original radio station building and wind-powered generator
Memories
“I have been lucky enough to work Tom Christian at ZBP – from a distance of about two nautical miles.
The Old Man decided we were going to have a slightly “scenic” tour of the Pacific, going to NZ from Ecuador via Ile de Rap (looks like a crown, hollow in the centre) and Pitcairn.
“I was under strict instructions NOT to make contact on 500. However, the main rx (R554a) nearly lifted itself off the desktop, as he called “WHITE REEFER CLOSE TO ZBP HW?”.
“Simultaneously they called us on Ch 16.
“As luck would have it, they didn’t need us to stop, so after we did a circle and I’d had a quick chat with Tom, off we went to NZ. This would be around 1978, ship was Wild Curlew / GQUH. Different times, different times indeed.”
– Neil Harrison (Facebook, Feb 2023)
“Stopped there in September 1965 to provide provisions and exchange mail from the ST Ceramic / GFLM on my first trip from London to Auckland.”
– Karl Wilson (Facebook, Feb 2023)
“We had an engine problem off Pitcairn on the Lincolnshire. I am certain it was Tom Christian who called us up on 500 kHz asking if we would like to go ashore. The skipper refused, of course! We were stopped for about 16 hours while repairs were made.”
