Real-Life Lord of the Flies: The Strange and Violent History of Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island is a place so remote, and with a history so bizarre, that until recently it was viewed almost as myth rather than reality. But the events that took place on this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean were very real. Settled by a pack of mutineers of the HMS Bounty in 1790, along with a small group of Polynesians, the island soon became like the famous 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, in which a group of boys stuck on an uninhabited island descended into savagery and immorality. Faced with physical, social, and psychological isolation, along with struggles for power, the Pitcairn population rapidly diminished due to murder, suicide, and madness, and the remaining inhabitants descended into incest, sex abuse, and delinquency. Today, 47 inhabitants from just four families remain on this ill-fated island that carries with it a dark and evil history that has been retold in countless films and books.

A Remote Land

Pitcairn Island is one of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean that make up the Pitcairn Group of Islands. Located more than 3,000 miles (4830 km) from any continent, approximately halfway between New Zealand and the Americas, it is one of the remotest inhabited islands and the least populous national jurisdictions in the world. It is also the last British Overseas Territory in the Pacific.

Measuring just 2.2 miles (3.6 kilometers) from east to west, the island is not much larger than New York’s Central Park. Yet this tiny dot in the ocean has a long and varied history, culminating in the dramatic events beginning in the 18^th century.