Talk:Pitcairn Islands

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[edit] Newswire

Referring to the follwoing article in New Zealand's 'Newswire' online:

Residents of the remote Pitcairn Island are a step closer to the outside world with the introduction of a host of modern communications.

Thanks to funding from the British Government, all homes now have a private telephone and fast internet connection, as well as live television broadcasts.

Pitcairn's Deputy Governor, Matthew Forbes, says islanders previously communicated via unstable satellite phones and an intermittent internet service.

He says the new services will help reduce Pitcairn's isolation and are being met with enthusiasm by the island's 50 or so inhabitants.

Mr Forbes says a video-conferencing system has also been installed and will be used for contact with health practitioners in New Zealand, and educational purposes.'

Does anybody know if the private telephones in each home refer to the satellite phones in the Wiki article, or are they replacements for them? and the 'fast internet connection', is that the governements sponsored satellite link mentioned in Wiki article?

And the 'live television broadcasts', is that the Free-to-air satellite connection mentioned in Wiki's article, and does anybody have any idea what channels are accesible?

Thanks a lot

62.178.34.10 10:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trials

6 people have been convicted on the child abuse trials. This may change the island those 6 people are the one that operate the long boat access to the island. Without the long boat no food and supplies can get there.

The labor force consists of twelve men, and more than that are on trial in New Zealand -- is this correct? If convicted, will there be zero working-age males in Pitcairn? Tuf-Kat
CIA factbook say 12 able bodied men, presumably theres about 20 men on the island (given a 50:50 male:female ratio) Paul Weaver 21:55 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
More than 12 men have been accused of sexually abusing young girls.
Like how many? When were they accused?
The men of Pitcairn Island blame the police for convincing the females involved to press charges.

Is there police on the island? AxelBoldt 09:51, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

According to Swedish press, 7 out of 14 men are currently on trial. There is no police or justice system, so the whole justice system had to be flown to the Island (presumably increasing the pulation radically). :) Women on the Island claim that no sexual abuse is happening and that 12 years is a normal age for girls to have sex. Of course, the accusation of abuse go much lower down in age than that. Regebro 22:06, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
No, although there is a magistrate. I'll investigate mroe at the weekend but I think that some of the accused have left Pitcairn over the last decade or so. Paul Weaver 07:37, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
The original charges were developed by a visiting/rotating well-meaning English police officer (female) who overheard a conversation between two girls. Pitcairn, with its limited population, extreme isolation and unique history, had obviously developed some social customs that were utterly incompatible with UK law.

[edit] Isolation

Pitcairn Island is one of the smallest and most isolated community of individuals in the world. It has a population of 47 situated on a 4.5 sq km island 1,277 km from the nearest settlement (Easter Island). Even polar stations in Antarctica have more people, and space stations are closer to the earth's surface. Pitcairn Island became a British settlement under the British Settlement Act (1887). From 1952 to 1970 it was administered by the Governor of Fiji, before administration was transferred to the British High Commission in New Zealand. To assist the Governor there is a Commissioner based in Auckland. Locally there is a mayor on the island, and a council of ten members (six who are elected).

The islanders are unhappy that they have been abandoned by London. Despite the island having its own flag, newspaper, internet country code (.pn), stamps, phonecards and language (Pitkern), there is precious little infrastructure. Yup - No airport. No industry (aside from marginal farming and handicrafts). Just one flush toilet. And amazingly there is still no harbour - people have to be taken by boat to ships moored at sea, which come only a few times a year. In lieu of taxation, people aged 15 to 65 are required to donate their labour to community service.

A recent criminal case involving sex crimes with under age girls has required the intervention by Scotland Yard and the establishing of a special court on the island (it is impossible to form a local jury guaranteed to be impartial since everyone knows everybody else). Several defendants have argued about the validity of British law on their island.

[edit] Another Map?

Is it possible to get a map with some other perspective? This map doesn't include any well-known countries or even Latitude/Longitude lines. As shown, the reader has no idea where these islands are. --169.226.247.89 15:50, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have added a link to a map.--Patrick 22:05, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pitcairn Island

I understand that Pitcairn Island itself is undeniably the most important island in the group from almost every perspective, but I think it would be best to create an article, probably containing the bulk of the Pitcairn Islands material, on Pitcairn itself, rather than just leaving Pitcairn Island as a redirect to Pitcairn Islands, which is a geopolitical division and entity encompassing other widely scattered locales in addition to the island itself. Tomer TALK 04:46, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

I dunno but after reading the article, don't you ever wonder what a scary navy these guys might have?
Hahaha. I'm still laughing. Thanks. Levity is good.  :-D Tomer TALK 01:26, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what purpose that would serve aside from taxonomic correctness. Splitting the information about the Island vs. the Islands would be tricky, and probably lead to people adding material to one that's already on the other. If someone wants to learn about the Island, they'll need to know about the Islands, and vice versa. If it were a very large article and this would split off a substantial amount of material, I'd agree, but this would just create (depending on how the split was done) two half-articles, or one nearly-complete article and a stub. Tverbeek 11:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geographical coordinates

Which are the best Geographical coordinates?


I preferred my own geographical coordinates (except the first and the second of geographical coordinates) in the list below: -- Citylover 22:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Pitcairn Islands as a group of islands ( 25°04′00″S, 130°05′00″W) (Getty)

I don't much care what you prefer, if you don't tell us more about your procedure, such as the source from which those numbers were "manually obtained". Almost all of these, of course, are going to span several seconds of arc. You may well be just trying to pull our legs. The obvious one, of course, is Ducie Island, because if you have a correct value, it is not going to contain any 60″ figure. Gene Nygaard 13:56, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I changed the geographical coordinates of Ducie Island by manually obtaining them again. They lie now also a little bit closer to the geographical coordinates of the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online.
  • By the way, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online does not always provide correct geographical coordinates:
    • Sometimes, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online is very reliable, for example in the case of Pitcairn Island (see above).
    • Often, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online is just reliable, for example in the case of Ducie Island (see above).
    • But sometimes, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online is also incorrect:
      • for example in the case of the geographical coordinates for Henderson Island, which definitively do not lie in the center of Henderson Island (see above).
      • or even worse in the case of the geographical coordinates of Oeno Island, where the E is written instead of the W (see above). -- Citylover 08:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  • This is the way I manually obtained the geographical coordinates (copied from Geographic coordinates (obtaining)):
    MSN maps provides geographical coordinates of a location selected from their excellent maps (better than Multimap) if you know the trick. The trick is: First find the feature or the location you want to know the geographical coordinates of, either by manually using the map and zooming in or by entering it into the search field (first click on "Find a Place", then choose Place name in: World Atlas, then choose the right feature from the list). As soon as you approximately see the feature on the map, zoom in as far as possible or necessary. Then, left-click exactly into the center of the feature/area you want to know the geographical coordinate of. Then wait for a short while until the map is rebuilt. Then, right-click on the map wherever you want, choose "properties" and wait for a short while until a pop-up tab appears. In this pop-up tab, the geographical coordinates are already written (in degrees only). Then perform a "select all"-"copy". The degrees-only geographical coordinates can be directly entered into Wikipedia's {{coor d||N/S||E/W|}}-Template. In the preview, click on the template and you will get to the page http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params=... . There, the degrees-only geographical coordinates are converted into degrees-minutes-seconds anyway and displayed automatically at the top of the page, so you can still decide if you want to convert the degrees-only-geographical coordinates into the degree-minutes-seconds-format (alternatively, you can also use the website http://id.mind.net/~zona/mmts/trigonometryRealms/degMinSec/degMinSec.htm for the conversion from degrees-only into degree-minutes-seconds). -- Citylover 07:40, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I tried to figure out how the 60" figure was created. It is probably an error at rounding up, made by the page I used for the conversion from degrees only to degrees-minutes-seconds (http://id.mind.net/~zona/mmts/trigonometryRealms/degMinSec/degMinSec.htm). You can check it for example with the numbers 24.683, 24.6833 and 24.683333333333333 . My numbers are not extremely precise at the second(")-level anyway because the zoom level of the map is high, but not very high, so it is difficult, especially in the case of very small islands to point with the mouse to the middle of the island. One will have to wait for maps or satellite pictures with a higher zoom level in order to adjust the geographical coordinates to an even higher reliability. But since the numbers are probably already now more precise than the minute level, I chose to use the second-level too because this is the standard format. Furthermore, especially for example in the case of Ducie Island, it is difficult to define the center of the island because the center of the island itself might be actually not on land, but south of the small land bridge in the water and furthermore, if you center on the whole reef of Ducie Island and not on the island itself, the geographical coordinates would probably lie even further in the south (if you use/look at for example the MSN Map, you can see it what I mean). -- Citylover 08:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name

I'm thinking of moving this page to Pitcairn. My rationale has three parts:

  • Pitcairn appears to be the official name (it's the name used by the United Nations)
  • If Pitcairn is the official name, it is likely to be the name Pitcairners use themselves (since there are so few of them)
  • Where there are variations of English usage Wikipedia standard says to use the local one

It looks like Pitcairn Islands might describe the group of islands, whereas Pitcairn describes the geopolitical entity.

Thoughts?

Ben Arnold 00:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This article is about the group of islands as well as the political entity. There certainly isn't enough yet to justify splitting.
Guesswork about possible variations in lanugage by a total of 48 men, women, and babies isn't particularly relevant. Gene Nygaard 00:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Of course, one of the major sources of income for the Pitcairn Islands is the selling of stamps to stamp collectors. Just what in the world do you suppose it says on those stamps? See http://www.government.pn/
Looks like a half-baked idea to me (you didn't even have enough sense to look for the official government web site, which is listed right there at the bottom of the article in the "External links"). You political-correctness types really irritate me when you go overboard. Gene Nygaard 00:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of Tahitian women

I've read at least one historical account that the Tahitian women brought to Pitcairn by Christian and his mutineers were not willing, ie., that they were kidnapped from Tahiti in order to provide the mutineers with "wives". (This is from the book "The Bounty" by Caroline Alexander) Assuming this is the truth, I think it should be noted in the article. It certainly would provide a hint that the Pitcairn traditions of patriarchy and oppression of women were in place right from the start. Does anyone object to my adding the note on the Tahitian women being brought against their will? -Kasreyn 23:48, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll tae that as a no. I've added the reference, using the term "kidnapped", though I'm not really satisfied with it. Can anyone think of a better way to make the point? -Kasreyn 11:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Is this book, by Caroline Alexander a work of fiction? If so I most definitely object to the inclusion of the term "kidnapped". Does Alexander say the Tahitian men were kidnapped, as well? -- Geo Swan 17:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
No, it's a very serious historical effort; by "book" I didn't mean novel. It was already being cited as a source on this article before I ever came along (see the end notes). Check it out. It's in fact extremely thorough referenced, with thirty-seven pages of endnotes on its sources and a bibliography that made my head spin. Alexander essentially says that the Tahitians were guests onboard the Bounty at its last stop at Tahiti, and Fletcher Christian cut the cable and sailed away without informing them. One of the women dove overboard and managed to swim back to shore, if I remember correctly. The others were essentially stuck with the mutineers, and when the Bounty was burned, they had no way home. I suppose it would probably be more appropriate for us to say that all the Tahitians were kidnapped, but the paragraph will need a significant rewrite as it's currently worded very awkwardly. -Kasreyn 04:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 67 people

would it be out of the question to list them?

I doubt it would be "out of the question", but there'd be notability issues. The mayoralty already has an article and some of the more well-known residents do likewise. The real question to ask would be whether or not all 67 residents have claims on being listed. BigHaz 02:58, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Most of the 67 are "not notable", just as most of the residents of a village of 67 people on a contiental land mass would be "not notable", and I would suggest that privacy concerns of non-notable, non-public persons should trump any desire to list them here. Rlquall 12:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

hey you know the pitcairn accent, "bou yo bin" and all that its mostly 18th century portsmouth talk

                                                                                    paul

It's funny how Wikipedia has such a huge article about this, including the history, culture, religion, and form of speech, when only 48 people live there.


[edit] Proposed WikiProject

In my ongoing efforts to try to include every country on the planet included in the scope of a WikiProject, I have proposed a new project on Polynesia at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Polynesia whose scope would include the Pitcairn Islands. Any interested parties are more than welcome to add their names there, so we can see if there is enough interest to start such a project. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adams' Amnesty

The history section contains this sentence: "When the American sailing ship Topaz found Pitcairn again, John Adams was granted amnesty for his mutiny". How can an American vessel grant Adams amnesty for an offence under English law? --ukexpat 14:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't say Americans granted amnesty READ the sentence. An American ship found them. After the Americans found him they undoubtedly turned him over to the British who granted amesty. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.142.45.254 (talk) 06:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


hmm, I only wonder, why would a portuguese sailor name the islands he found with spanish words.Just a thought...

Perhaps because he was, as the article states, in Spanish employ at the time. Given that Portugese and Spanish are rather close, how would the names have differed if he had used Portugese?87.81.230.195 (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] geography vandalism

As of 11/15/07, the geography section contains vandalism. Someone please find the vandal's edit and revert the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.216.235.42 (talk) 18:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)