In
1775, the Society of West India Merchants proposed that bread fruit
trees, native to the South Pacific, be transported to the West Indies
to be grown as a food staple for slaves.
Twelve years later, the Royal Navy purchased the Merchant ship Berthia especially for that purpose.
Once the vessel was approved by the botanist Joseph Banks, Berthia was
purchased from Messrs Wellbank, Sharp and Brown in May 1787. The ship
was re-fitted at Deptford Dock. A little known fact was that the
Admiralty ordered the ship sheathed in Copper.
Half the trees were destined for Jamaica, the other half for the Royal
Botanical Gardens at St Vincent. At his discretion, Lieutenant William
Bligh could take some of the trees for Kew Gardens on his return to
Britain.
On August 17, Lieutenant Bligh was appointed to command HM Armed Vessel
Bounty, as the ship was officially designated. Sailing from Portsmouth
on December 23, 1787, the HMS Bounty set sail for Tahiti, arriving
there on October 26, 1788.
After 5 months on the Island paradise, which the crew thoroughly
enjoyed, with the notable exception of Bligh’s ‘s increasingly harsh
discipline, Bounty weighed anchor on April 6, 1789, with over 1,000
breadfruit trees.
Twenty-two days later, 5 members of the 43-man crew seized the ship in
a bloodless mutiny. The ringleader was Fletcher Christian, whom Bligh
had previously appointed as second in command. Bligh and 19 of his
supporters were put on the 23-foot Bounty launch.
Christian attempted a landing on Tubuai, about 400 miles North of
Tahiti. The crew met with a poor reception and decided to return to
Tahiti.
There they loaded four hundred and sixty hogs, fifty goats, and
embarked twenty-eigt Tahitians, nine men, eight boys, ten women and one
girl. A second visit to Tubuai was no better, but they did befriend
some of the locals, including the Tubuaian Chief and fifteen of his
people, who left with them.
They returned to Tahiti, where sixteen of the mutineers decided to stay on the Island.
Navigating with a defective chronometer, the mutineers reached Pitcairn
Island in early 1790, burnt the ship and decided to settle on the
Island.
The English mutineers divided the Island and relegated the others to
second-class citizens. Relations between the men turned violent and
several were killed.
Eighteen years later, on February 6 1808, the Nantucket sealer Topaz
visited Pitcairn. The sole male survivor of the original band of
settlers was Alexander Smith. He changed his name to John Adams to
lessen his chance of arrest, should the British ever visit the Island.
In 1825, the Island fell under the protection of the British Crown. The
man of the HMS Pandora, which had been dispatched for that very
purpose, eventually arrested fourteen of the mutineers in Tahiti.
On August 28, 1791, HMS Pandora struck the Great Barrier Reef and sunk, with four of the mutineers drowning.
The ten remaining mutineers were eventually brought to trial in England and three of them hanged.
Lieutenant Bligh on the other hand, with the fully loaded Bounty launch
(with 7 inches of freeboard on a 23 foot vessel), made his way to the
Dutch settlement of East Timor. On his way, he landed on the Island of
Tofoa, in Fiji. Unfortunately, they met with a poor reception and one
of the crew was killed.
He arrived at his destination having travelled 3,600 miles for
forty-three days in unsheltered waters on very meagre rations. He only
lost one member of his crew in this outstanding feat of navigation. The
voyage of the Bounty launch has remained almost without peer in the
history of navigation. Bligh re-performed his original mission in HMS
Providence in 1792.
The story of the HMS Bounty has inspired countless retellings. The
first of the several movies of the mutiny was called appropriately “The
mutiny on the Bounty” appeared in 1935. The stars were Charles Laughton
and Clark Gable and featured the Lilly as the Bounty. Replicas of the
Bounty were built for the 1962 remake starring Marlon Brando and Trevor
Howard, and for Bounty (1985) with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins.
Barrow,
Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of HMS Bounty. Bligh, Narrative of the
mutiny of the Bounty. Knight, H.M. Armed Vessel Bounty. Smith, Some
remarks about the mutiny of the Bounty.
