William McCoy

Who was William McCoy?

William McCoy was a Scottish sailor and a mutineer on board the HMS Bounty.

Following the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the Bounty was taken to Tahiti for a few days before being compelled to set sail. McCoy joined Christian and seven other mutineers. They took with them eleven Tahitian women and six men. After months at sea, the mutineers discovered the uninhabited Pitcairn Island and settled there in January 1790. McCoy had just one consort, Teio, and fathered two children, Daniel and Catherine. After three years, a conflict broke out between the Tahitian men and the mutineers, resulting in the deaths of all the Tahitian men and five of the Englishmen. McCoy was one of the survivors.

His life came to a tragic end after liquor was introduced to Pitcairn Island. By some accounts, McCoy himself was the one who discovered how to distill alcohol from one of the island fruits. He became an alcoholic along with Matthew Quintal and finally ended his life by jumping off a cliff in a drunken frenzy.