Fool’s paradise

Islands have a special appeal. We imagine that on an island we’ll somehow ‘get away from it all’. In the era of Brexit and climate concerns, Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, more than 3,000 miles from the nearest landmass, is flooded with requests from people hoping to settle there. I would advise them to think again.

I spent several months living on Pitcairn — a mile-by-mile-and-a-half volcanic rock battered by a hostile ocean, home to a handful of descendants from the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians they took with them. But I did not, as I’d hoped, discover a self-reliant paradise. What my time on Pitcairn taught me is that islands are no Edens.

Adamstown, the capital and only settlement, is a tortured sea-surrounded village, thwart with divisions, where bullies and petty squabbles govern daily life. Far from feeling free, conformity on Pitcairn is so strong that even holding hands in public is forbidden by law. The 38 islanders may be the descendants of mutinous rebels, but they’re too terrified to object even to the very worst of treatment among themselves. Soon after I left Pitcairn, seven of the island’s 11 men were charged with child sexual abuse.

Throughout the trials, victims testified to putting up with being assaulted because there was nowhere to go and no one to turn to among the inter-related islanders. Men could molest without fear of censure. The risks of falling out with your neighbour/relative/daughter’s rapist were far too great to cause a fuss. Pitcairners rely on each other for absolutely everything, from sharing fish and food to manning the longboats, the only way of reaching the passing ships that are the sole source of supplies. The adult men are needed to do this, so adult men can get away with doing almost anything else too.