Print. John Adams was the last survivor of the 'Bounty' mutineers on Pitcairn Island. He had enlisted on the ship under the alias 'Alexander Smith'. The reason is not known but it often covered previous desertion from another ship, sometimes to follow popular officers when they moved vessel. Such aliases were called at the time 'pusser's [purser's] names'; that is, for evading charges of desertion and entering in a new ship's muster and accounts for pay and deductions against it for purser's stores, from clothing to tobacco.

In September 1793 Adams managed to avoid the killing of five of the mutineers (including Fletcher Christian) by Tahitian men who had accompanied them and over the following seven years was taught to read and write by the well-educated Edward Young until the latter died at Christmas 1800 of asthma. That left Adams as sole survivor from the nine ship's crew who found refuge on Pitcairn with about 20 Tahitians who had accompanied them (originally six men and 11 to 14 women).

By this time all the Tahitian men were dead and Adams was thereafter the pious leader and teacher of the Pitcairn community of surviving Tahitian women and their half-British children. The first visitor to land on Pitcairn and meet him there was the American, Mayhew Folger, master of the Nantucket sealer 'Topaz' who stumbled across the island and came ashore for a few hours in February 1808: the first Royal Naval visitors in 1814 (who did not know of Folger's visit) quickly saw that Adams was a benevolent influence and assured him of continued liberty there. The sketch on which this image is based was drawn by Richard Beechey (later a naval captain and well-known marine painter) when HMS 'Blossom', commanded by his older brother Frederick, visited the island in 1825. It is one of the illustrations in Frederick's published account of the voyage (1831). The Beechey brothers were two of the sons of the portrait painter, Sir William Beechey.