Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004 denied the island's colonial status, and with it the United Kingdom's judicial authority. Defence lawyers for the seven accused men claimed that British sovereignty over the islands was unconstitutional: HMS "Bounty" mutineers, from whom almost all of the current island population is descended (together with Polynesians), had effectively renounced their British citizenship by committing a capital offence in the burning of the "Bounty" in 1790, they said. According to the Public Defender of the Pitcairn Islands Paul Dacre (who was appointed in 2003), islanders still celebrated this act annually by burning an effigy of the "Bounty" in a symbolic rejection
Mutiny on the Bounty (novel) remains with the "Bounty" after the mutiny. He subsequently returns to Tahiti, and is eventually arrested and taken back to England to face a court-martial. He and several other members of the crew are eventually acquitted. A musical based on the same story appeared in the West End during the 1980s. It was written by and starred David Essex. An earlier novel, "Les Révoltés de la Bounty" ("The Mutineers of the Bounty"), was published by Jules Verne in 1879. Mutiny on the Bounty (novel) Mutiny on the Bounty is the title of the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James