History of the Pitcairn Islands It was rediscovered by the British on 3 July 1767 on a voyage led by Captain Philip Carteret, and named after Robert Pitcairn, the crew member who first spotted the island. Pitcairn was one of the sons of John Pitcairn. On January 15, 1790, the mutineers of "Bounty" and their Tahitian companions arrived on the island. The group consisted of Fletcher Christian and eight other mutineers from the Bounty. These were Ned Young, John Adams, Matthew Quintal, William McCoy, William Brown, Isaac Martin, John Mills and John Williams. Also with them were six Polynesian men (Manarii/Menalee, Niau/Nehou, and Teirnua/Te Moa
Timor "HMS Pandora", sent to arrest the "Bounty" mutineers, landed in 1791 after that ship sank in the Great Barrier Reef. The island has been politically divided in two parts for centuries. The Dutch and Portuguese fought for control of the island until it was divided by treaty in 1859, but they still did not formally resolve the matter of the boundary until 1912. West Timor, was known as Dutch Timor until 1949 when it became Indonesian Timor, a part of the nation of Indonesia which was formed from the old Netherlands East Indies; while East Timor was known as Portuguese