Today, Pitcairn is home to 47 people, all connected in some way from the original mutineers.
By all accounts, these 47 people are very busy managing the island’s affairs and growing their own food. But they are now highly suspicious of foreigners and despise the British. Although visitors are allowed on the island – especially cruise ship visitors – the islanders keep their distance and regard them with contempt.
But it was not always like this. Despite their isolation, most islanders left the island around age 15 to be educated in New Zealand, Tahiti or Australia. Some never returned but others did. Pitcairn islanders once welcomed visitors drawn to the romance of the Mutiny on the Bounty story. Some visitors married into the island community, helping to bring fresh blood into what was very quickly a pretty incestuous blood line.
Then in 1999, the British sent a female police officer to Pitcairn Island. Although Pitcairn was officially a British territory, the islanders considered themselves Polynesian and responsible for policing themselves. One day, one of the island’s young women reported a sexual assault to the police officer. She launched an investigation and soon uncovered a deeply entrenched culture of partner-swapping, affairs and most disturbingly, sexual ‘initiation’ of children by the island’s men that spanned back decades.
This was blatant sexual abuse and pedophilia under British law. But many of the Pitcairn islanders argued this was part of their culture and a long-standing Polynesian tradition.
Journalists and New Zealander prosecutors descended on Pitcairn Island for the trial. They recalled how many of the defendants, including mayor Steve Christian – a descendent of Fletcher Christian - skillfully navigated the longboats that brought them in to Bounty Bay.
The resulting conviction of seven of Pitcairn Island’s senior men for sexual assault, including Steve Christian, bitterly divided the Pitcairn community into those involved in the trial and those who were not. The men were incarcerated in a prison they assisted in building themselves on the island.
Today, visitors to Pitcairn Island find it a claustrophobic place. It is impossible to keep anything that happens secret and just as improbable to make friends. As one recent visitor remarked, ‘you are never alone. But you are never lonelier.’
Whether the Pitcairn Island will survive much longer remains to be seen.