Pitcairn Has 35 People, No Airport, and a 2004 Sex Abuse Trial That Almost Emptied It

On April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and 18 sailors aboard the HMS Bounty mutinied against Captain William Bligh, set him adrift in a launch with eighteen loyal crewmen, and stole the ship. Looking for a place to hide where the Royal Navy would not find them, Christian sailed to a tiny, rocky volcanic island in the central Pacific that the Admiralty's charts placed about 188 miles off its actual position. They burned the Bounty in what is still called Bounty Bay, in January 1790. Nine of the mutineers, six Tahitian men, eleven Tahitian women, and a baby girl set up housekeeping ashore. They went undiscovered until an American whaler stumbled on the colony in 1808.

The descendants are still there. The island sits 1,199 miles from Easter Island in one direction and 428 miles from Mangareva in the other — among the most isolated permanent human settlements on Earth. Pitcairn has no airport. The supply ship from New Zealand calls a few times a year. There is no harbor; visitors arrive in the islanders' aluminum longboats, which they ferry through the surf at Bounty Bay. The population peaked at 233 in 1937 during the islands' postage-stamp economy boom and has been declining since. As of 2023 it stood at about 35.

In 2004 the British colonial government brought charges against thirteen Pitcairn men — almost the entire male population over 18 — for historic sexual offences against minors. The trial was held in tents on the island. Six were convicted, including the mayor Steve Christian, on October 25, 2004; the resulting sentences would, briefly, have effectively closed the colony. A bargain reduced the sentences to mostly community service so that the men could continue to crew the longboats and keep the island viable.