The Pitcairn Islands, officially the Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, is a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean that form the sole British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean. The four islands — Pitcairn proper, Henderson, Ducie, and Oeno — are scattered across several hundred miles of ocean and have a combined land area of about 18 square miles (47 km2). Henderson Island accounts for 86% of the land area, but only Pitcairn Island is inhabited. The nearest places are Mangareva to the west and Easter Island to the east.
The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the south Pacific on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Bligh meanwhile completed a voyage of more than 3,500 nautical miles in the launch to reach safety, and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice.
Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, was an English civil servant, geographer, linguist and writer.
John Adams, known as Jack Adams, was the last survivor of the Bounty mutineers who settled on Pitcairn Island in January 1790, the year after the mutiny. His real name was John Adams, but he used the name Alexander Smith until he was discovered in 1808 by Captain Mayhew Folger of the American whaling ship Topaz. His children used the surname "Adams".
Adamstown is the capital of, and the only settlement on, the Pitcairn Islands.
The history of the Pitcairn Islands begins with the colonization of the islands by Polynesians in the 11th century. The Polynesians established a culture that flourished for four centuries and then vanished. They lived on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, and on Mangareva Island 540 kilometres (340 mi) to the northwest, for about 400 years.
Fletcher Christian was master's mate on board HMS Bounty during Lieutenant William Bligh's voyage to Tahiti during 1787–1789 for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the Bounty, Christian seized command of the ship from Bligh on 28 April 1789.
HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy launched in May 1779. The vessel is best known for its role in hunting down the Bounty mutineers in 1790. Pandora was partially successful by capturing 14 of the mutineers, but wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on the return voyage in 1791. HMS Pandora is considered to be one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Southern Hemisphere.
Edward "Ned" Young, was a British sailor, mutineer from the famous HMS Bounty incident, and co-founder of the mutineers' Pitcairn Island settlement.
Mayhew Folger was an American whaler who captained the sealing ship Topaz that rediscovered the Pitcairn Islands in 1808, while one of HMS Bounty's mutineers was still living.
Peter Heywood was a British naval officer who was on board HMS Bounty during the mutiny of 28 April 1789. He was later captured in Tahiti, tried and condemned to death as a mutineer, but subsequently pardoned. He resumed his naval career and eventually retired with the rank of post-captain, after 29 years of honourable service.
James Morrison (1760–1807) was a British seaman and mutineer who took part in the Mutiny on the Bounty.
Pitcairn's Island is the third installment in the fictional trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall about the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty. It is preceded by Mutiny on the "Bounty" and Men Against the Sea. The novel first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post then was published in 1934 by Little, Brown and Company. Chapters I–XV are told in the third person, and Chapters XVI–XXI are told in the first person by John Adams. The epilogue that follows is in the third person.
Matthew Quintal was a Cornish able seaman and mutineer aboard HMS Bounty. His surname was, in all probability, the result of misspelling the Cornish surname "Quintrell". He was the last of the mutineers to be murdered on Pitcairn Island. He was murdered or executed by Ned Young and John Adams, leaving them the last two mutineers alive on the island.
HMS Bounty, also known as HM Armed Vessel Bounty, was a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to the West Indies. That mission was never completed owing to a mutiny led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian. This incident is now popularly known as the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers later burned Bounty while she was moored at Pitcairn Island. An American adventurer rediscovered the remains of the Bounty in 1957; various parts of it have been salvaged since then.
This is a list of books in the English language which deal with the Pitcairn Islands and their geography, history, inhabitants, culture, biota, etc.
William Muspratt (1759–1797) was an able seaman (AB) on His Majesty's Armed Ship Bounty. After participating in the Mutiny on the Bounty on 28 April 1789, he was court-martialed at Spithead in September 1792, sentenced to death, but escaped the hangman's noose after his conviction was overturned on appeal. He returned to active service in the British navy, and likely perished in 1797 aboard HMS Bellerophon.
The Mutiny of the Bounty is a 1916 Australian-New Zealand silent film directed by Raymond Longford about the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty. It is the first known cinematic dramatisation of this story and is considered a lost film.
The Bounty Bible is a Bible that is thought to have been used on HMS Bounty, the ship famed for the Mutiny on the Bounty.
Rosalind Amelia Young was a historian from Pitcairn Islands.
