After seizing the Bounty from Captain William Bligh in 1789, the mutineers searched for a refuge safe from the Royal Navy's reach. They found Pitcairn, misplaced on British charts by several degrees of longitude, and burned their ship to avoid detection. Their descendants still inhabit the island today, making it one of the world's smallest and most isolated communities.
The mutiny itself had erupted in the Pacific in April 1789 over Bligh's harsh discipline and the crew's reluctance to leave the pleasures of Tahiti. After putting Bligh and eighteen loyal crewmen adrift in an open boat — a voyage of nearly 4,000 miles that Bligh miraculously survived — Christian and his fellow mutineers searched island after island for a hideout beyond the Navy's reach.
Pitcairn, an uninhabited volcanic speck, appealed precisely because eighteenth-century charts had recorded its coordinates incorrectly, making it nearly impossible for pursuers to find. The settlers, six Tahitian men, twelve Tahitian women, and nine Englishmen, burned the Bounty in what is now called Bounty Bay, both to prevent escape and detection. The community soon descended into violence, alcoholism, and score-settling; within a decade most of the men, including Christian, were dead. It was not discovered by an American ship until 1808, and today Pitcairn remains a British Overseas Territory of fewer than 50 residents, nearly all descended from the mutineers.
Key people: Fletcher Christian