Pitcairn Islands

Pitcairn is one of the most isolated inhabited places on Earth: a tiny volcanic island lost in the middle of the South Pacific, days by sea from any other land, the only inhabited island in a group of four. A British overseas territory, it now has only a few dozen inhabitants, all living in a single village, Adamstown. Its history is extraordinary: almost all Pitcairn Islanders descend from the mutineers of the famous ship Bounty and the Tahitians who came with them, taking refuge there in 1790. Today the tiny community struggles to survive in the face of decline and isolation.

Pitcairn is a small, steep volcanic island with no lagoon or sheltering reef, whose cliffs drop straight into an often rough ocean: there is no real harbour, and landing by small boat through the swell is hard and dangerous. The green interior has fertile hills farmed as gardens, and woodland. The group's three other islands (Henderson, a World Heritage site for its birds, and the coral islands of Ducie and Oeno) are uninhabited. The subtropical climate is mild and humid.

Once home to Polynesians who had vanished long before, the island entered legend in 1790. The year before, part of the crew of the British ship Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian, had mutinied against Captain Bligh after a long stay in Tahiti. To escape the Crown's justice, nine mutineers, with Tahitian women and men, sailed to distant Pitcairn, burned the Bounty and hid there. After years of violence, the small colony found peace through faith and was "rediscovered" in 1808. Having grown too large, the population moved to Norfolk Island in 1856; a few families later came back. Since then the community, made up of a few families descended from the mutineers, has struggled against decline and isolation.

On Pitcairn people speak English and Pitkern, a unique Creole formed from 18th-century sailors' English and the Tahitian of the mutineers' companions, still spoken by the community. The island is Christian: in the late 19th century the whole population became Seventh-day Adventists, still the community's church. Faith, which once brought peace to the small colony, still shapes island life, with the Sabbath kept from Friday evening to Saturday evening.

Pitcairn culture was born of the meeting of the sailors' Georgian England and the Polynesia of Tahiti. It mixes English surnames handed down from the mutineers, the Pitkern language and cooking that draws on both worlds. There is wood carving and weaving, whose pieces, long sold to the rare passing ships, kept the island going, and Bounty Day, when a model of the ship is burned. Life is hard and communal, centred on gardens, fishing and mutual help. People eat fish, fruit, taro and pilhi.