Pitcairn Islands

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Pitcairn Islands had a permanent population of just 35 people in 2023, which made them the smallest territory in the world by number of permanent residents. Four volcanic islands make up the group: Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno. Together they form the only British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean, and they are scattered across several hundred kilometres of open water. Only Pitcairn itself has anyone living on it. The nearest inhabited places are Mangareva in French Polynesia, 688 kilometres to the west, and Easter Island, 1,929 kilometres to the east. The islanders descend mainly from nine British sailors who mutinied aboard HMS Bounty, together with Tahitian women. How did such a group end up on a rock with no airport and no seaport? Why could a crime against children go unseen there for so long? And what keeps a community this small running, from postage stamps to honey to satellite internet?

  46429997

• 2. Burning the Bounty

  ›

  In 1790, nine mutineers from HMS Bounty landed on Pitcairn with six Tahitian men, eleven Tahitian women and a baby girl. They set fire to the Bounty. Its remains still lie underwater in Bounty Bay, and the islanders have always known where.

  The wreck drew wider attention in 1957, when National Geographic explorer Luis Marden documented it. The settlers survived by farming and fishing, but the early years were violent. Alcoholism, murder and disease killed most of the mutineers and the Tahitian men.

  Two survivors, John Adams and Ned Young, turned to the ship's Bible as a guide for a new and peaceful society. Young eventually died of an asthmatic infection. Every the 23rd of January the community still marks the mutineers' arrival with a public holiday called Bounty Day.

  1619221320

• 3. Lost on the Map

  ›

  Polynesians reached Pitcairn and Henderson centuries before any European did, and then left. Henderson was most likely abandoned before the 16th century, and Pitcairn in the 17th or early 18th century. Europeans found both islands empty.

  Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, a Portuguese sailor working for the Spanish Crown, reached Ducie and Henderson on the 26th of January 1606. He named them La Encarnación and San Juan Bautista. Some sources doubt which islands he really named.

  Pitcairn itself was sighted on the 3rd of July 1767 by the crew of the sloop HMS Swallow under Captain Philip Carteret. A 15-year-old midshipman, Robert Pitcairn, saw it first, and the island took his name. His father, Marine Major John Pitcairn, was later killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.

  Carteret had no marine chronometer, so his longitude was off by about 3 degrees. That put the island 330 kilometres west of its true position. Captain James Cook failed to find it in July 1773.

  The mutineers' hiding place stayed lonely for years. The first ship seen from the island after the Bounty appeared on the 27th of December 1795, and it never approached. A second came in 1801 and made no attempt to communicate. A third came close enough to see the settlers' house but sent no boat.

  The American sealing ship Topaz, under Mayhew Folger, finally stopped in February 1808, and its crew spent ten hours ashore. Whalers then became regular visitors, and the last one recorded was the James Arnold in 1888. Folger's report reached the Admiralty, but Sir Thomas Staines knew nothing of it when he found the island in September 1814 with HMS Briton and HMS Tagus. He wrote a detailed report. Only John Adams remained alive among the mutineers, and he was granted amnesty.

  1214151621

• 4. Faith and Exile

  ›

  In 1832, an American adventurer named Joshua Hill arrived after failing to win support from the British government and the London Missionary Society. He reported founding a temperance society, a Maundy Thursday Society, a monthly prayer meeting, a juvenile society, a Peace Society and a school.

  Pitcairn Islanders traditionally date their status as a British colony to the 30th of November 1838. They also count themselves among the first territories to extend voting rights to women.

  By the mid-1850s the community had outgrown its island, and its leaders asked Britain for help. The offer was Norfolk Island. On the 3rd of May 1856, all 193 islanders sailed on the Morayshire and arrived on the 8th of June after a difficult five-week voyage. Eighteen months later, 17 of them returned home, and 27 more followed five years later. Because Norfolk was repopulated by Pitcairners, its people trace their origins to the smaller island.

  An officer's visit in April 1881 found the 96 residents happy and in perfect health. The crew of HMS Thetis left biscuits, candles, soap and clothing. An American trading ship, the Venus, brought cotton seed in 1882 so the islanders could grow a crop for trade.

  In 1886, a Seventh-day Adventist layman named John Tay visited and persuaded most islanders to accept his faith. He came back in 1890 with an ordained minister to perform baptisms. The majority of islanders have been Adventists since, and Pitcairners rest from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. The church built in 1954 is the island's only church building. The Adventist church also ran the island's school from the 1890s until 1958, when the government took over.

  2627969722

• 5. A Hidden Crime

  ›

  Three cases of imprisonment for raping underage girls were reported on Pitcairn in the 1950s. Little else came to light until 1999, when Gail Cox, a police officer from Kent in the United Kingdom, served a temporary posting on the island. She uncovered allegations of sexual abuse.

  A 15-year-old girl then chose to press rape charges, and a criminal investigation code-named Operation Unique began. The charges included 21 counts of rape, 41 of indecent assault and two of gross indecency with a child under 14. Over two years, police from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom interviewed every woman who had lived on Pitcairn in the previous 20 years, along with all the accused men. Simon Moore, an Auckland Crown Solicitor, became Pitcairn's first Public Prosecutor to hold the file.

  Neville Tosen, an Australian Seventh-day Adventist pastor, lived on the island for two years around the turn of the millennium. He noticed mood swings in the children and needed three months to understand they were being abused. He tried to raise the matter with the Island Council, which also serves as the island's court, but was rebuffed. One councillor told him, "Look, the age of consent has always been 12, and it doesn't hurt them."

  A study of island records confirmed that most girls had their first child between the ages of 12 and 15. Tosen said the girls had been conditioned to believe they became eligible at 12. Mothers and grandmothers told him their own childhoods had been the same. Tosen was sure the harm was real, saying, "They did suffer, no doubt about it."

  In 2004, charges were laid against seven men living on Pitcairn and six living abroad. That was nearly a third of the male population and half of the island's adult men. On the 25th of October 2004, six men were found guilty, including Steve Christian, the island's mayor at the time. The islanders surrendered about 20 firearms ahead of the trials.

  After the final appeal was lost, Britain built a prison at Bob's Valley. The men began their sentences in late 2006, and by 2010 all had finished their terms or moved to home detention. In 2016, Mike Warren, mayor from 2008 to 2013, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for possessing child pornography.

  3135394036

• 6. Islands and Wildlife

  ›

  Henderson Island makes up about 86 percent of the territory's land, yet nobody lives there. Its shores are steep limestone cliffs covered in sharp coral, and fresh water is scarce. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage site in 1988. Its nearly inaccessible interior shelters the flightless Henderson crake, a bird found nowhere else.

  The islands formed over a centre of upwelling magma called the Pitcairn hotspot, and they are the southeasternmost reach of the Tuamotu archipelago. Pitcairn is a volcanic remnant built mostly of tuff, with its settlement, Adamstown, inside the volcanic basin. Steep cliffs leave Bounty Bay as the only way in. The island has no permanent water source, only three seasonal springs. Oeno and Ducie are atolls, with five and four islets respectively.

  About 16 plant species are thought to be unique to Pitcairn. They include tapau, once an important timber, and the giant nehe fern. The red berry, Coprosma benefica, is perilously close to extinction.

  Between 1937 and 1951, Irving Johnson, skipper of the 96-foot brigantine Yankee, brought five Galápagos giant tortoises to Pitcairn. Turpen, also called Mr T, is the sole survivor. A protection order makes it an offence to harm or distress him.

  Of 20 breeding bird species, Henderson hosts 16, Ducie 13, Oeno 12 and Pitcairn six. The Pitcairn reed warbler, which islanders call a sparrow, was added to the endangered list in 2008. A small population of humpback whales visits each year to breed.

  In March 2015, Britain created one of the largest marine protected areas in the world around the islands, covering 834,334 square kilometres. A satellite watchroom at Harwell in Oxfordshire, called Project Eyes on the Seas, helps gather evidence against illegal trawlers. In March 2019, the International Dark-Sky Association approved all four islands as a Dark Sky Sanctuary.

  4650555849

• 7. Stamps, Honey and Diesel

  ›

  In 1940, Pitcairn issued its first postage stamp. Collectors loved it, and stamp sales became the community's dominant source of income. Profits went into a general fund that paid wages, subsidised imports and travel to New Zealand, and funded a school with the first professional teacher on the island, hired from New Zealand. Coins and .pn domain names later added to the fund.

  By the end of the 20th century, fewer people were writing letters or collecting stamps, and the fund shrank. In 2004 the island went bankrupt. Britain has since covered 90 percent of the annual budget.

  In 1998, the UK's Department for International Development funded a beekeeping programme on Pitcairn. The study found one of the best disease-free bee populations anywhere. The bees are placid enough that keepers work with minimal protection. The honey goes to New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and Fortnum & Mason in London sells it. It is reportedly a favourite of King Charles and formerly Queen Elizabeth. Honey is a protected monopoly under government supervision.

  Islanders also export dried bananas, papayas, pineapples and mangoes under the Bounty Products and Delectable Bounty brands. Carvers make sharks, whales, turtles and models of the Bounty from miro wood harvested on Henderson. Others produce tapa cloth and painted leaves. The government holds a monopoly over anything islanders make for sale.

  Isaac's Valley, southeast of Adamstown, grows bananas, mangoes, breadfruit, sweet potatoes and sugarcane. Fishing happens almost daily, and land allocation is at the government's discretion. Manganese, iron, copper, gold, silver and zinc have been found in the exclusive economic zone.

  Diesel generators supply the island's power. A wind plant planned to cut diesel costs was cancelled in 2013, three years overdue and at a cost of £250,000. Every home has a solar system that generates over 95 percent of its household electricity.

  7371722857

• 8. A Shrinking Community

  ›

  Only two children were born on Pitcairn in the 21 years before 2012. Mothers who gave birth in that period often travelled to New Zealand for safer health care. In 2005, Shirley and Simon Young became the first married outsider couple to obtain Pitcairn citizenship.

  A diaspora survey by Solomon Leonard Ltd in 2014 projected that by 2045 only three working-age people would remain if nothing changed. Of the hundreds of emigrants contacted, only 33 took part, and just three wanted to return. The labour force counted 31 able-bodied adults, and only seven were under 40. Each longboat needs a crew of at least three, the crew retirement age is 58, and two of the four coxswains were in their late 50s.

  Since 2015, eight migrants have been approved for settlement, and three live on the island. Each is expected to have at least NZ$30,000 in savings and to build a house costing about NZ$140,000. The council reviews their status after two years. Living there costs an average of NZ$9,464 a year.

  Isolation shapes every journey. A 2014 medical emergency required a 540-kilometre trip in an open boat to Mangareva, followed by an air ambulance flight of 1,570 kilometres to Papeete. A one-way fare on the supply ship costs Pitcairners NZ$500, while others pay NZ$5,000.

  The islanders speak Pitkern, a creole built from 18th-century English with elements of Tahitian. It is taught alongside English at Pulau School, which follows the New Zealand syllabus. Children go on to secondary school in New Zealand at 13, or study by correspondence. Pitkern is closely related to Norfuk, spoken on Norfolk Island.

  The Governor, who is also British High Commissioner to New Zealand, represents the King from Wellington. Under a constitution adopted in 2010, the islands run as a representative democracy, the smallest in the world. The United Nations lists the territory as non-self-governing. In 2012, a single 1 Mbit/s satellite link served all the families. A 4G network arrived in Adamstown in December 2017, and Starlink became available in February 2024. The British government may at some stage have to decide the islands' future.

  9998866364