An unholy alliance of renegades from British justice and South Sea islanders from nearby Tahiti settled Pitcairn in 1790, but their ideal of founding a new community quickly soured as the men started wiping out each other's gene pools. Their descendants clung on, however, jumped into the Bible, procreated and went forth. Norfolk Island and New Zealand now have substantial numbers of Bounty descendants, and a small number still till the soil and go to Saturday church on Pitcairn.

The island is not on any international air routes and getting there is strictly for the determined, but that can be precisely the attraction in a world increasingly at our fingertips. While facilities are limited on Pitcairn, you can drop in on your own yacht or from a passing cruiser and spend a day walking, talking to locals, swimming in St Paul’s Pool, eating and checking out the points of interest, like ancient Polynesian rock carvings, the Bounty Bible, John Catch a Cow and Bitey Bitey (the local language is, as you may gather, a little quirky).

Full country name: Pitcairn Islands
Area: 450 hectares (1111.5 acres)
Population: 44
Capital: Adamstown
People: Polynesian and European
Religion: Seventh Day Adventist
Government: British dependency
Head of State: Queen Elizabeth II
Governor: Martin Williams

Facts for the Traveler

Visas: None needed if you make a brief visit from a passing ship. If you want to stay longer you have to apply through the British Consulate General in Auckland. Allow plenty of time as it will take about six months for the application to be considered.
Health risks: None
Time: GMT/UTC minus 8.5 hours
Weights & measures: Metric

When to Go

July and August are probably the best months to go, but unless you get here aboard your own yacht, your choice is limited by the timetables of the passenger ships that call in.

Events

Church on Saturdays is the most regular event on the island, and birthdays are usually good excuses for a get together and celebration. Each year on 23 January the Bounty’s demise is celebrated by towing a burning model of the ship across Bounty Bay.

Activities

You can walk across the island in about half an hour. Although offshore swimming is not safe, a tidal pool, known as St Paul’s Pool, is a favourite swimming spot despite a perilous descent to get there. The fishing around the island is excellent.

Culture

While the Polynesians who arrived presumably brought the rich culture of Tahiti with them, much of that has died out on Pitcairn. Weaving palm baskets is one skill that has been maintained, and many of the Pitcairn men carve intricate animals and replicas of the Bounty out of local timber.

The language is English, but among themselves Pitcairners speak a slightly slurred version full of local idiom, words and place names that make it almost impossible for outsiders to understand. It includes many Tahitian and 18th-century English seafaring words: if they drink too much, all hands (ie everyone) are likely to capsize (fall over), for example. Pitcairners embraced the Seventh Day Adventist Church in the late 19th century, which was responsible for the children’s education until 1948, when a teacher was finally sent from New Zealand. Alcohol is banned (that ban seems to be slipping) and the islanders are not allowed to eat pork or fish without scales, which means the plentiful crayfish in island waters are used only as bait. Land is held under a system devised by Fletcher Christian and is based on family ownership.

Pitcairners are virtually self sufficient in food, although they do a lively trade with passing ships. They raise goats and poultry for their own consumption, and goats also roam wild on the island. They catch fish around the coast, but there are no commercial fisheries.

Environment

Pitcairn is volcanic, with steep cliffs and a rugged coastline, although the volcanoes are long gone. It lies just to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn in the South Pacific, about two thirds of the way as the albatross flies from Australia to South America. Its nearest neighbours are Easter Island and the far-flung south-eastern islands of French Polynesia, the Tuamotu and Gambier groups. The island is only 3km long by 1.5km wide (1.8mi by 0.9mi), an area you can explore easily in a couple of hours. A few outlying islands or atolls - Henderson (which is eight times larger than Pitcairn), Ducie and Oeno - complete the group.

Pitcairn was mostly forested when the Bounty crew and the Polynesians arrived, but that has largely been replaced by fruit trees and gardens now except for a small section on the western tip of the island. Locals have taken some steps toward forest regeneration, with the council establishing a plantation of miro (Thespesia populnea), a species popular for wood carving. The only native mammal is the Polynesian rat, and the best known birds that breed on Pitcairn are the fairy tern and common noddy. A few endemic bird species, including the Henderson chicken, inhabit Henderson.

Pitcairn’s climate is subtropical, with mean monthly temperatures averaging 18?C (64?F) in August (winter), to 24?C (75?F) in February (summer). July and August are the driest months and November the wettest, although the rainfall is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year (islanders are used to mud).

Tag: Pitcairn Islands