Pitcairn Island & It's Unique History

Pitcairn Island is a group of 4 volcanic islands that comprised Pitcairn, Henderson Island, Ducie Island, and Oeno island which is situated in the Pacific Ocean.

These islands are the final outside regions of the English in the Pacific. The total area of these islands will be 46.6 square km and is the second largest. Only a portion of Pitcairn Island spreads across 3.6 km from the east to the west that is populated.

As of now, these islands have only 50 residents that come from 4 different families making this the least populated place in the world. Most of the people here come from the rebellious family of the ex-sailor of the Bounty ship and the Polynesian(Tahiti) that accompanied them.

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They stayed on the island in 1790 and burned one of the only ships that carried them there. The shipwreck can still be seen underwater at Bounty Bay.

Before both Henderson Island and Ducie Island were discovered in 1606 by a Portuguese explorer, Pedro Fernandes de Queiros, Pitcairn Island was habited by the Polynesian. They only lived on Henderson Island, Pitcairn Island, and Mangareva island which were 400 km apart from one another.

Despite the distance being so far apart, the people of the island managed to sell their things to other islanders by boat and had a robust social relationship by being highly dependent on an exchange economy basis.

When one particular resource has depleted, it will result in the abolition of social interaction and exchange economy that will ultimately trigger the civil war that started in Mangareva.

The war led to the extinction of the residents of Pitcairn Island and Henderson Island. Due to that, when the island was found by the Europeans in the 17th century, both of them were inhabited.

In 1791, during the mission of the Bounty ship sailors that were rebellious, The Royal Captain of the Navy, Edwards discovered Ducie Island again. The island was named after Royal Navy Captain, Francis Reynolds-Moreton, Baron Ducie, the third.

Location of Pitcairn Island

In 1838, Pitcairn Island became a British colony and the first island where freedom of speech was given to women. Only 1 decade later, the society quickly grew on the island.

The British government offered Norfolk Island to the people of the Island and in 1856, the whole population of Pitcairn Island as many as 193 people moved to Norfolk Island.

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But only after 18 months, 17 of them were forced to return to their original island followed by 27 others in 5 years period. Today, the island is home to 60 residents and offers free land to those who wish to move there.

However, the offer was hard to be accepted since no one in the modern world would be willing to live on such an isolated island. It is not similar to moving to a place where you can freely move about wherever you want.

One must also take note that he or she will need to wait 3 months for the next boat to get to the island. So how difficult is it to get to Pitcairn Island one might ask?

Since it is a region under British rule, we will use London as the starting point for taking off. So from there, you have to take a flight to Los Angeles and from LA, you will take another flight to Tahiti which would take an altogether 24 hours of journey.

Then another flight needs to be taken from Tahiti to the closest island to Pitcairn Island which has an airfield which is Mangareva Island. This flight will take around 5 hours and 30 mins but the problem is that this flight is only available once a week.

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But waiting one week at the Tahiti will not be such a bad idea as there are tons of activities that can be done there. After arriving in Mangareva, one has to take a boat to Pitcairn Island which is located 531 km from Mangareva. The boat service is also another big problem as the instances are quite rare too.

If you missed the boat, then you will have to wait around 3 months for the next one. When you manage to get on the boat, the journey from Mangareva to Pitcairn Island will take 32 hours in total.

This ultimately makes Pitcairn Island one of the most isolated and hard-to-reach islands in the world.

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