A South Seas State of Nature: The Legal History of Pitcairn Island, 1790-1900

Abstract

Author(s): Eshleman, Michael O. | Abstract: Pitcairn Island was uninhabited in 1790 when the mutineers of the Royal Navy's Bounty settled there with men and women from Tahiti to serve as slaves and wives for the sailors. Murders and accidents claimed the lives the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian, and those of every adult male save John Adams. Adams led the remaining islanders under a benevolent dictatorship for the rest of his life, a South Seas Christian monarchy cut off from the rest of the world. After the island was rediscovered, new settlers arrived, including a delusional Englishman named Joshua Hill who took over the island and ruled the islanders by fear. After he was removed by the Royal Navy, it supervised the island for decades, its ships regularly visiting the island and its officers writing several simple legal codes for the Pitcairners. The islanders consented as they considered themselves to be English and were fervently loyal to Queen Victoria. The British administration was very light for decades, the islanders largely running their own affairs. That changed after a Pitcairner murdered two islanders in 1897. The British realized there was no way to try the defendant short of taking him to London. The solution was to place the island under the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. The High Commissioner was a British official based in Fiji whose job was to bring law and order to a vast swath of the Pacific and suppress the slave trade among the islands. The High Commissioner arranged for a trial for the murderer, who was convicted and hanged. Pitcairn's government operated under the High Commissioner until 1952 and now is run by the British ambassador to New Zealand.