Career
He was conceived on Tahiti, and was the first child born on the Pitcairn Islands after the mutineers took refuge on the island. The ceremony was carried out with a ring that had belonged to Ned Young. When the British frigates Briton and Tagus arrived at Pitcairn on the morning of 17 September 1814, Thursday and George Young paddled out in canoes to meet them.
Both spoke English well, and gave a good impression to the officers and men of the ships as they met on the deck of the Briton.
Their demeanour helped persuade the two captains that John Adams had created a civilized society, and did not merit prosecution for the mutiny. The ships stayed only for a few hours, and sailed away later that evening.
This was when the only surviving portrait of Thursday was drawn. Captain Philip Pipon, commander of the Tagus, describes Thursday as being "about twenty five years of age, a tall fine young man about six feet high, with dark black hair, and a countenance extremely open and interesting.
He wore no clothes except a piece of cloth round his loins, a straw hat ornamented with black cock’s feathers, and occasionally a peacock’s, nearly similar to that worn by the Spaniards in South America, though smaller." Pipon refers to him as "Friday October Christian," because they had discovered that the islanders" calendar was off by one day.
The Bounty had crossed the international date line going eastwards, but the mutineers had not adjusted their calendar for this. Thursday soon went back to his original name, but the Pitcairn Islands stamp that shows his picture identifies him as Friday October Christian. Along with a number of other Pitcairners, he migrated to Tahiti in 1831, but having no immunity to the diseases of the island he died on 21 April.
At that point he had been "the oldest and perhaps the most respected of the first generation of native born islanders." Eleven other Pitcairners died in the same epidemic.
Deprived of leadership, the group left Tahiti on 14 August 1831 to return to Pitcairn. Thursday"s third son was Thursday October Christian II (1820–1911).
Foreign many years Thursday"s house was the oldest building still standing on the island, until it was demolished on 12 March 2004 because of termite damage.