Planets and mutinies in paradise

By Patrick Twohy

This is a tale of a three-hour tour. Well, actually it was a bit more than that. And no one was lost on a desert isle. But still… It includes mutineers, beautiful women, enchanting tropical venues, even enchanting Venus herself — the planet, not the goddess.

The story starts long, long ago, during the 17th century. That’s when Johannes Kepler and others first predicted when Venus, the planet, would pass between the sun and earth. Edmond Halley, he of the eponymous comet, suggested that observing the transit of the planet across the sun could, if precisely recorded from several positions on earth, could make it possible to measure the distance from the earth to the sun.

The idea was to use what’s called parallax, which is when two objects viewed from different angles appear to move relative to each other. If you look at two telephone poles one in front of the other, for instance, you’ll see just the closest one with the other hidden behind it. But if you step 10 meters to one side, you’ll see both poles. And in fact, you could calculate the distance to the further pole through triangulation: You know the distance you stepped aside, and you can measure the angle of the line between the two places you stood and the far pole. 

Channel your high school geometry teacher — if you know angle-side-angle of a triangle, you can calculate all the other sides and angles of the triangle. 

That was Halley’s idea. But he didn’t live long enough to see it used because Venus doesn’t pass in front of the sun very often. It’s happens twice in eight years, than not again for over a century. 

Ok. Enough background.  In December 1761, Venus would transit the sun. Lots of scientific types planned to observe it and use the data to calculate the astronomical unit — the distance from the earth to the sun. 

Unfortunately, cloud cover prevented good observations. Bah.

So … 1769 was it or quit. Scientists and explorers set up observation posts in Russia, Great Britain, Norway, Hudson’s Bay, Philadelphia, Mexico and Istanbul. And Capt. James Cook or the British Royal Navy sailed to Tahiti, only recently visited by Europeans for the first time, to make observations from a spit of land on the northern tip of the island. He called it Point Venus and the Tahitians still use that name today.

The sun came out and observations were made. 

Unfortunately, due to an optical phenomenon tantalizingly called the Black Drop Effect, none of the observations were as precise as had been hoped, and many people called the whole effort a failure. Nevertheless, calculations from the data gathered resulted in estimates of the astronomical unit at about 94 million miles, which is pretty close to the actual distance of about 93 million miles. So, success? Your call. 

Here’s where I found success, but only after years of trying:

On my third trip to Tahiti, I finally managed to get to a certain little tree-lined beach with a lighthouse and a couple of small memorials. Point Venus!

The lighthouse (designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father!) was built in 1867 to commemorate 100 years since Samual Wallis became the first European to see Tahiti. A few yards away is a tiny monument marking the spot where Cook and his crew viewed the transit of Venus two years after Wallis’ visit.

And just beyond that is a rather larger stone structure commemorating the mutiny aboard Capt. Bligh’s HMS Bounty.

Because that happened here, too. Busy island … and funky little park, no?

Lt. Bligh had been sent to Tahiti with the distasteful task of bringing breadfruit from the South Pacific to feed slaves in the Caribbean. In Tahiti, Bligh’s crew found the beautiful women and enchanting tropical venues that I mentioned at the start of this little story. Life was good, and they didn’t relish going back with Bligh to bloody old England. So, for whatever reason — the women, Bligh’s difficult personality or the paradise that his crew found in the South Pacific — crewmen led by Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian took Bligh prisoner. 

They threw him and 18 loyal crew members into a 23-foot open boat and set them adrift, never expecting to hear from them again. In one of the most astonishing feats of navigational prowess in maritime history, Bligh guided the tiny, overloaded vessel 3,600 nautical miles across open ocean to the Dutch outpost of Timor. From thence, he returned to England to report the mutiny.

Meanwhile, the mutineers had split up. Those who stayed on Tahiti were later arrested and tried after Bligh returned to the South Pacific. Others had set sail, landing on an uninhabited rocky islet called Pitcairn Island where they burned their ship and remained undetected by Europeans for decades. Their descendants live there still. 

The three-hour tour I mentioned … it was actually about five hours … took me around the 74 mile circumference of Tahiti by van. In addition to Point Venus, we visited waterfalls, historical sites, a botanical garden and more. But for me, Point Venus was the apex. One tiny bucket list item checked off my lengthy list.