History of the Pitcairn Islands History of 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. Pitcairn was settled again in 1790 by a group of British mutineers on HMS "Bounty" and Tahitians. When the "Bounty" mutineers arrived on Pitcairn, it was uninhabited. However, they found the remains of an earlier Polynesian culture that had since vanished. Archaeologists believe that Polynesians lived on the island from the 11th to the 15th century. These first Pitcairners seem to have operated
Bounty (1960 ship) Bounty (1960 ship) Bounty was an enlarged reconstruction of the original 1787 Royal Navy sailing ship . Built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1960, she sank off the coast of North Carolina during Hurricane Sandy on 29 October 2012. The tall ship was often referred to as HMS "Bounty", but was not entitled to the use of the prefix "HMS" as she was not commissioned into the Royal Navy. Here "HMS" is treated as part of the popular name, and not as a ship prefix. "Bounty" was commissioned by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio for the 1962 film "Mutiny on the