Live Online Chat

  [California Study Center]

PITCAIRN ISLANDS STUDY CENTER, located on the campus
of Pacific Union College, 1 Angwin Ave., Angwin, Calif., 94508
 

MUTINEER ISLAND ELECTS THE FIRST
NON-PITCAIRNER IN 232-YEAR HISTORY
 
     Pitcairn Island, South Pacific Ocean, November 23, 2022 ----- For the first time in its 232-year history, the fewer than 50 people living on Pitcairn Island have chosen a non-Pitcairner-born person to be their mayor, the top governmental office on the island.

     He is 57-year-old Simon Young of Yorkshire in England, who came to live permanently on Pitcairn enough years ago to qualify for the top political post. His victory total was 19 votes versus 16 for an islander who was also seeking the office.

     Young first visited Pitcairn Island for a short time in 1992, then returned in 1999 with his wife Shirley, an American, to live permanently on the island. He is a veteran of the British Royal Air Force, whose home was in Pickering, North Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom.

     For a couple of years before his election earlier this month, Young was editor of the monthly Pitcairn newspaper The Pitcairn Miscellany.

     Most of those living on Pitcairn Island are descendants of the mutinous British sailors who in 1789 mutinied against their captain William Bligh on the ship H. M. S. Bounty. The naval incident was widely publicized, and later become known worldwide as "The Mutiny on the Bounty."

###