Breadfruit tree and the Bounty
The first time I heard the name of a breadfruit tree was on the campus of my elementary school. At that time, my teacher said that although the fruit of the breadfruit tree really looked like bread, it was too cold in Taipei, and it was native to the tropics that it could not bloom and bear fruit in Taipei.
Later when I became a teacher in Hualien, I discovered that a special vegetable soup sometimes appeared in the school cafeteria in summer: a soup with yellow flesh and white seeds in it. A colleague who is a local told me that it was called “Pacilo”, which is the fruit of the breadfruit tree.
There is always no shortage of “Pacilo” in Hualien’s summer. Not only are they sold in the market, but some people have breadfruit trees in their yards. Local friends said that peeling and cutting the mature fruit and adding a little dried fish to the soup is delicious. The small fruit (male flower inflorescence) is used to repel mosquitoes and is said to be more effective than mosquito coils.
The breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis) is a large perennial tree of the family Moraceae. The flowers are unisexual and monoecious; the fruit is an aggregate fruit formed by 30–68 female flowers (a multi-flowered fruit). Breadfruit is usually best eaten within five days to one week after harvest, and can be stored for two to three weeks if refrigerated.
Current research suggests that breadfruit trees originated from New Guinea, the Malay Peninsula, and West Micronesia in Oceania. Taiwan’s breadfruit trees are native to Lanyu (Orchid Island). In Orchid Island, the breadfruit tree is called “chipogo”, and it is used by the Tao people for making ship bows, stern boards, cushions, and house pillars, footboards of the main house, wooden hats, wooden plates, etc. Milky white juice is sticky and can be used as a bonding agent.
The Tao people seldom eat breadfruit, but the Amis and Taroko peoples in eastern Taiwan often eat breadfruit; however, the most common way to eat breadfruit in the Pacific Islands is to put breadfruit in a hole with leaves to ferment into a “jam” that can be kept for two or three years. As the Pacific Islands often have typhoons in summer, these “jams” are very important emergency food for the aborigines in various places after typhoons. Since breadfruit trees are so important, the “Austronesians” (including the aborigines of Taiwan) always carry the seeds of bread trees wherever they go. Therefore, breadfruit trees are a common sight in the Pacific Islands.
The first European to see a breadfruit tree should be the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Queirós (1570–1615) from the late 16th to the early 17th century. The British navigator Captain William Dampier (1652–1715), who was nearly a hundred years later than him, mentioned that the fruit of the breadfruit tree can be roasted and eaten.
In the 18th century, the breadfruit tree suddenly became a “magic food”. What happened? It turned out that Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), a British botanist who took the HMS Endeavour with Captain James Cook (1728–1779) in 1769, saw the breadfruit tree in Tahiti, because about a quarter of the fruit is starch, and it grows in tropical regions. It was so good that Banks thought the breadfruit tree might be the answer to the nutritional problem of the slaves in the British colony in Jamaica. So in 1787, the Royal Academy of Sciences sent the HMS Bounty to Tahiti to collect bread trees and bring them to the Caribbean Islands for planting. For this purpose, there is also a botanist David Nelson (?-1789) on board.
The HMS Bounty, which was originally scheduled to depart on August 16, finally arrived in Tahiti due to a series of delays and collected a sufficient number of breadfruit trees. However, perhaps due to the management of Captain Wiliiam Bligh all the way, in April 1789 on the way back, the crew headed by Fletcher Christian decided to uphold a mutiny.
So the captain, Nelson and 17 other crew members were rushed to a small boat, and after three months of drifting at sea, they finally reached Kupang, a Portuguese territory in the west of Timor Island. Nelson died of inflammatory fever a few days after arriving there. The crew members who participated in the mutiny were later divided into two groups. One group was found by the warship HMS Pandora in 1791 and brought back to Britain for trial; the other group was hiding in nearby Pitcairn Island. They were not discovered until 1814, when most of the crew (including Christian) were no longer alive.
At the time of the mutiny, all the breadfruit trees collected were thrown into the sea; although Bligh went to Tahiti again in 1791–1793 to obtain breadfruit trees again and brought them to Jamaica; but little did anyone expect that the slaves were not fond of it at all, so after so many years of mobilizing the people, it is just for nothing!
Are breadfruit really very nutritious? In fact, breadfruit contains 27% carbohydrates, most of which are water and vitamin C, which are not particularly nutritious; but it seems that people can easily assume that some exotic fruits and vegetables must have some magical effects, so it is just a superstition.
The Bounty mutiny was later adapted into the movie many times; the 1962 version also rebuilt a ship for the movie. After the film was over, the New Bounty began touring the world, and it also offered people who wanted to board and sail sailboats to enjoy themselves. On October 29, 2012, the New Bounty encountered Hurricane Sandy and sixteen crew members had to abandon the ship. Fourteen crew members survived, but unfortunately the captain Robin Walbridge and crew member Claudene Christian died. And Claudene turned out to be the great, great, great-great-granddaughter of the mutiny leader Christian at the time, and probably can only say that “no coincidence, no novel”!
