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
HMS Pandora (1779) Edward; Hamilton, George (1915). "Voyage of H. M. S. 'Pandora': Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the South Seas, 1790- 1791". Francis Edwards, 1915 Gesner, Peter (2000) "HMS Pandora project - a report on stage 1: five seasons of excavation" "Memoirs of the Queensland Museum - Culture" Volume 2 part 1 pp1-52 Henderson, Graeme (2016) 'The loss of HMS Pandora in 1791' (Chapter 5) pp 67–80 in: "Swallowed by the Sea: the story of Australia's shipwrecks" Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2016. Rawson, Geoffrey (1963) "Pandora's last voyage." London: Longmans, c1963 Steptoe, Dayman (1998)"The human skeletal material