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
Hammond Island, Queensland Northern Peninsula Area of Cape York. These close ties continue to exist today. Captain Edwards of HMS "Pandora" named Hammond Island in August 1791, as he travelled through the Torres Strait with the captured Bounty mutineers. In 1802, the British navigator Matthew Flinders, in charge of HMS "Investigator", sailed past Hammond Island. He noticed camp fires burning on the island but did not make contact with the Kaurareg people. In August 1864, a government settlement was established at Somerset at the tip of Cape York. The police magistrates of Somerset were hostile in their dealings with the Aboriginal people of