In 1787, Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, tasked with transporting breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies.

Fletcher Christian was born on 25 September 1764, at his family home of Moorland Close, Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, England.

Fletcher and his brothers Edward and Humphrey were the three sons of Charles Christian, an attorney-at-law descended from Manx gentry, and his wife Ann Dixon.

Moorland Close was lost and Ann and her three younger children were forced to flee to the Isle of Man, to their relative's estate, where English creditors had no power.

The three elder Christian sons managed to arrange a £40 (equal to £6,790 today) per year annuity for their mother, allowing the family to live in genteel poverty.

He served for over a year on a third-rate ship-of-the-line along with his future commander, William Bligh, who was posted as the ship's sixth lieutenant.

The ship's muster shows Christian's conduct was more than satisfactory because "some seven months out from England, he had been promoted from midshipman to master's mate".

[4] Unable to find another midshipman assignment, Christian decided to join the British merchant fleet and applied for a berth on board William Bligh's ship Britannia.

[4] In 1787 Bligh approached Christian to serve on board HMAV Bounty for a two-year voyage to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies.

The following year, halfway through the Bounty's voyage, Bligh appointed Christian as acting lieutenant, thus making him senior to Fryer.

[6] He was formally stripped of his naval rank in March 1790 and discharged after Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty Board.

"[11] Heywood was found guilty but pardoned; Stewart drowned when the Pandora sank in 1791; Young slept through the mutiny although he did join the mutineers ex post facto.

In time, they landed on Pitcairn Island, where they stripped Bounty of all that could be floated ashore before Matthew Quintal set it on fire, stranding them.

[7][13]: 369 The American seal-hunting ship Topaz visited Pitcairn in 1808 and found only one mutineer, John Adams (who had used the alias Alexander Smith while on Bounty), still alive along with nine Tahitian women.

According to an account by a Pitcairn woman named Jenny who left the island in 1817, Christian was shot while working by a pond next to the home of his pregnant wife.

Thursday and Charles are the ancestors of almost everybody with the surname Christian on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, as well as the many descendants who have moved to Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

[16] Many scholars believe that the rumours of Christian returning to England helped to inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

posited that Christian knew nothing of the mutiny until it had been completely organized and he was offered the choice of being shot along with Bligh or taking command of the ship and the mutineers.

[19] In Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, Fletcher Christian's ghost appears, possessing a human body, and helps two non-possessed girls escape.