Pitcairn Island has its own timezone. It has roughly 40 to 50 permanent residents. This makes Pacific/Pitcairn the least populated distinct timezone identifier in the IANA database, perhaps the least populated distinct timezone in the world.

The island sits at 130 degrees West longitude in the South Pacific, which places it at UTC-8:30 by solar reckoning. The timezone was simplified to UTC-8:00 in 1998. No daylight saving.

The mutineers

Pitcairn’s history is one of the most extraordinary in the Pacific. On April 28, 1789, crew members of HMS Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian, seized the ship from Captain William Bligh in what has become the most famous naval mutiny in history. Bligh and 18 loyal crew members were set adrift in an open boat in the middle of the Pacific.

Bligh survived, navigating 6,700 kilometers to Timor in an act of seamanship that eclipses almost anything else in the story.

Christian and eight other mutineers, along with twelve Tahitian women and six Tahitian men, sailed Bounty to Pitcairn Island, arriving in January 1790. They burned the ship to avoid detection. For nearly 20 years, the outside world did not know where they were.

When the American sealing vessel Topaz found the island in 1808, only one mutineer was still alive: John Adams, calling himself Alexander Smith. He was surrounded by Tahitian women and the children born on the island. Adams had become the island’s patriarch and its informal religious leader.

Pitcairn was never charged. He died there in 1829.

40 people, one timezone

The current population of Pitcairn Island is somewhere between 40 and 55 people, fluctuating as some residents move to New Zealand and occasionally return. Every adult is a significant portion of the island’s population.

The island has no airport. The only way to reach it is by boat from the supply ship that calls irregularly, most commonly from Mangareva in French Polynesia, a journey of about 36 hours each way. The supply ship visits perhaps 4 to 6 times per year.

Adamstown, the island’s only settlement, has a post office that issues stamps (collectible), a church, a community hall, and a medical center. Internet arrived via satellite. The island publishes a newsletter called Pitcairn Miscellany.

The fact that Pitcairn maintains a distinct UTC-8 offset rather than adopting the timezone of, say, New Zealand (UTC+12/+13) or French Polynesia (UTC-10) reflects historical inertia as much as anything else. The island is a British Overseas Territory. It keeps its own time because it has always kept its own time, and because 40 people are not a constituency that generates much pressure to change things.

Descendants of the mutineers

Almost all of Pitcairn’s current inhabitants are descendants of the original Bounty mutineers and Tahitian companions. Family names on the island, Christian, Young, Warren, Brown, are the surnames of the 1790 founders.

The island made international news in 2004 when six men, including the mayor, were convicted of sexual offenses against children. The trial was conducted partly on the island, with judges flown in, applying English law. It was one of the largest criminal trials relative to population in history: six defendants out of a population of roughly 80 at the time.

This complicated Pitcairn’s already strange status. It is a British Overseas Territory in the South Pacific, with a history rooted in 18th-century colonial seafaring, maintaining governance structures designed for populations thousands of times its size.

The timezone nobody lives in at UTC-8 (except them)

UTC-8 is also the timezone of the US Pacific coast during Pacific Standard Time (winter months). During summer, California and the Pacific Northwest shift to UTC-7. Pitcairn stays at UTC-8 year-round.

This means that in summer, Pitcairn shares its offset with no inhabited major jurisdiction. It is, in the strictest sense, on its own time.

For developers

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