For around ten years after this first settlement the tiny island’s history was one of chaos and bloodshed, after which a period of relative calm set in. The islanders were first rediscovered in 1808 by an American ship, the Topaz, and their first contact with Britain came in 1814, when they were chanced upon by HMS Briton and HMS Tagus; at this time the population was around 40 people, being lead by George Adams, the last survivor of the original mutineers (Ball 1973: 104-19; Lewis 2009: 43-4). Thenceforward there were occasional visits from British ships.

Pitcairn nominally became part of the British Empire in November 1838, when the inhabitants, weary of the liberties taken with them by the crews of passing whalers, petitioned Captain Elliot of the HMS Flyto take the island under the protection of the British Crown. A constitution was written and signed on board the Fly, and Elliot’s naval superiors commended him for his action. The Colonial Office, however, did not see how Pitcairn could be helped, incorporated into the Empire, or governed, and the next official intervention was in 1856, when the entire population was relocated to Norfolk Island, an ex-penal colony (Lewis 2009: 53-4). Many of the deported Pitcairners immediately set about returning to their redoubt, and there was little further outside interference for most of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps the first definitive evidence of the island actually being considered a British possession came in 1898, when Harry Christian – the great-great-grandson of Fletcher – was prosecuted under English law for killing Clara Warren and her child. In response to the murders, the British Settlements Act of 1887 was retroactively applied to Pitcairn in order to facilitate a prosecution. The Act had given the British authorities power to establish laws and institutions of governance in any British settlement where they were deemed necessary, and so ‘from 1898,’ writes Lewis, ‘there could be little doubt but that Pitcairn was a British settlement in the eyes, at least, of the British government’ (ibid.: 57).

However, subsequent central administration was minimal, if it could be said to exist at all. The island was almost wholly neglected by the metropole, and Lewis notes that for the duration of the twentieth century ‘only one Governor of Pitcairn…ever visited the territory for which he was responsible’ (ibid.: 59); indeed, from the date of first settlement until the notorious sex abuse trials of 2004 there had been ‘no effective civil authority presence on the island’ at all (Oliver 2009: 11).