By Doug MillsThe story of the HMS Bounty is filled with excitement, intrigue and exotic places. Built at Blaydes Shipyard in Hull England in 1784 the original Bounty started her sailing career as the collier Bethia. In May of 1787 she was purchased by the Royal Navy and refitted for a special mission. She was armed with 4 canon and 10 swivel guns and renamed HMAV Bounty. For this special mission the captains great cabin was torn out and the ship was outfitted with equipment to carry her special cargo, “Breadfruit!” potted breadfruit plants.
The Royal Navy had purchased the Bounty
for a single mission, an experiment. She was to travel to Tahiti
where the crew would collect potted breadfruit plants and carry them
to the West Indies in the hope that they would grow well there and
provide a cheep food source for the slaves there.
William Bligh a 33 year old Lieutenant
in the Royal Navy was appointed the command. On December 23 1787
Bounty set sail from Splithead, England en-route to Tahiti with a
crew of 45. The trip from England to
Tahiti was long and hard.
Bounty spent five months in Tahiti
collecting Breadfruit plants and caring for them till they were big
enough to survive the long voyage to the West Indies. During this
time the crew lived ashore to care for the plants. Many of the men formed connections with the people of this Pacific
island paradise. April 4th, 1789 the Bounty set sail from
Tahiti with her cargo of 1015 potted breadfruit plants.
Friction between the Captain and the
men and been growing through out the voyage due to Bligh’s harsh
treatment of the men and officers of the Bounty. On April 28th,
1789 about 1200 miles west of Tahiti mutiny broke out on the Bounty!
Eighteen discontent officers and men took over the ship, breaking
into Captain Bligh's cabin and holding him a the point of a knife.
Though there were strong words uttered on both sides the ship was
taken with no bloodshed.
Bligh and those loyal to him were
placed in a open longboat and sent away. Bligh and his men managed
to sail 3500 nautical miles to the Dutch port of Coupang where the
boarded a Dutch ship back to England.
The mutineers ended up on Pitcairn
Island which did not appear correctly on the Royal Navy's maps.
There they spent the rest of their days. Though the navy searched
for them for years those on Pitcairn Island were not discovered.
 |
| HMS Bounty at Belfast Maine |
After returning to England Captain
Bligh was put in charge of a second expedition to Tahiti to to finish
the job he had started. He collected 2000 breadfruit plants and
delivered them to the West Indies only to have the slaves refuse to
eat them.
The story of the modern HMS Bounty is
also filled excitement, intrigue and exotic places. She was built in
1960 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia for the MGM Film Studios movie,
“Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando. The Bounty was
built using the traditional methods from the original ships plans,
except that she was built one third bigger than the original Bounty
and carries two diesel motors.
MGM had planned to burn the ship after
the filming was finished, however Marlon Brando found out about their
plans and threatened to walk off the movie if they pursued that plan.
MGM decided to keep Bounty around. Ted Turner aquired the Bounty
when he purched the MGM movie library and used her during the filming
of “Treasure Island” with Charlton Heston in 1989.
Bounty Has changed hands several times
since than. She also stared in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Mans Chest” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End”
introducing her to a whole new generation of movie goers.
She now sails the world with a crew of
25 introducing generations to sailing history. Her captain is now
Captain Robin Walbridge who has been at her helm for nearly 20 years.
Doug Mills writes: ‘The story of HMS Bounty is filled with excitement, intrigue and exotic places’. Alas, it’s also filled with myths and misconceptions, some of which, perhaps, he has unwittingly reiterated
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that whenever the pictured sailing ship visits one of its many ports-of-call in the US, like a ship’s rat it carries a tale wherever it goes. This invariably induces local magazine and newspaper journalists to rush to their libraries or search internet sources to gather information about what they think is a ‘true story’. However, often they come up with a mishmash of fiction and fact. In essence they’re writing legend, not reality, not history.
There was the-once British merchantman collier ‘Bethia’. But she became the Royal Navy’s ‘His Majesty’s Armed Vessel (HMAV) not ‘HMS’ Bounty. A niggling point, but it's one that blows the myth that all British Royal Navy ships were prefixed with ‘HMS’.
So the ex-Hollywood movie ship, albeit a fine wooden vessel, is a two-thirds larger-than-life sized fake, not ‘replica’ as such. That’s fine, now that we know. However, the bit about MGM wanting to burn it after filming the 1962 movie is quite amusing considering that it represented several million dollars worth of investment.
In referring to Marlon Brando who portrayed ‘Fletcher Christian’, this raises more historic truths that eat the heart out of the beloved ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fairy story. For Brando himself (see page 270 of his autobiography ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’) knew that the movie script--- based on the Nordhoff & Hall's trilogy of novels—was biased nonsense.
British maritime archives verify that the ‘piratical seizure’ (not mutiny – a military equivalent of a civilian strike) of HMAV Bounty was a cold-blooded and callous act. Among the victims the main man who emerged as a hero was ‘Captain Bligh’ who later became Vice-Admiral William Bligh RN., FRS.,(1754-1817), my great-great-great-grandfather.
This talented master mariner/scientist captained 15 ships and never lost one during his long and prestigious career. HMAV Bounty was stolen by a minority of single young crewmen who dumped almost half the ship’s crew and 19 of their shipmates into an open boat to be cast adrift. Then the pirates set out on a boozed-up and drug-high rampage of rape, kidnap and bloodshed resulting in the slaughter of over 60 Polynesian men, women and children on the island of Tubuaii.
As Brando himself stated, the first director of the movie, Carol Reed, wanted to portray these selfish seagoing thieves ‘as pathetic as they were in real life’. But the producers didn’t like that, so they sacked him. Thus the criminals were again turned into victims and their victims, again, into criminals.
More proper research required, Mr Mills. But I hope your visit aboard the ‘Bounty’ and those of your readers will prove an experience well worth the gangplank entrance fee. Good luck and God bless America.
Maurice Bligh,
Kent, UK.