‘Mutiny on Bounty’ island in South Pacific offering free land to newcomers

Ahoy mateys! The “Mutiny on the Bounty” island wants you to drop anchor there.

Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific is trying to boost its dwindling population with a free land and housing offer to anyone looking to ditch city life for white-sand beaches, crystal-blue waters, killer sunsets and year-round sunshine.

But only true swashbucklers need apply — surviving on the volcanic, 2-mile-by-1-mile rock takes a person with big breeches.

You can only get to the tiny British territory by boat. Travelers must first fly to Tahiti, then to Mangareva (Gambler Islands). From there, it’s a 30-hour sail on the MV Silver Supporter, the island’s supply freighter.

The homes are ramshackle, overgrown with vegetation and door-free, according to Brandon Presser, who visited the island in 2022 to write a book called, “The Far Land: 200 Years of Murder, Mania and Mutiny in the South Pacific.”

“It’s like a trailer park at the end of the world,” lamented Presser after his six-week visit.

Residents — roughly 50 of them, and mostly elderly — consist of two feuding families and are clannish. They subsist on home-grown fruits and vegetables along with cans of food delivered by the freighter four times a year. They avoid visitors.

There’s dark history to the paradise. Many men on the island have been accused of sexual abuse against the island women and, on one occasion, a child. The problems were resolved in various court cases.

Pitcairn was first famously featured in a 1932 historical novel named “Mutiny on the Bounty” by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. In 1962, the classic was made into a movie starring Marlon Brando, and later, a Mel Gibson re-make.

Both films recreate the 1789 revolt aboard the HMS Bounty, where cruel Capt. William Bligh faced a violent mutiny led by his first mate, Fletcher Christian (played by Brando and Gibson in the films), after a pleasant stop in Tahiti. The mutineers set Bligh and his loyalists adrift, yearning to stay in paradise.

Some of the mutineers settled in Tahiti, where they were later caught and arrested. But others, including Fletcher Christian, escaped British clutches by fleeing 1,300 miles southeast to Pitcairn.

Nearly 240 years later, fewer than 50 descendants of the original mutineers remain, and they need some new — and much younger — souls to join them.

A 2014 report showed a grand total of seven people between the ages of 18 and 40 living on the island. It is projected that by 2045, only three working-age residents will remain.

Applicants must prove they can support themselves and have sufficient funds to pay contractors to build a home on their land — about $90,000 — and they must have medical evacuation insurance.

Torika Christian, a resident who documents her island life to her 3,364 TikTok followers, said the island gets a bad rap.

After all, it’s super tax-friendly — and recently installed an Internet connection, after the transition to SpaceX’s Starlink in 2024.

“This place is paradise,” she said. “We welcome everyone with open arms and after spending some time away, I know that I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Still, she continued: “You definitely have to be comfortable with isolation.”