Mutiny on the Bounty (history)
The Mutiny on the Bounty was a historical event in the late 18th century, most widely known through fiction, of an officer and part of the crew of a British Royal Navy ship rebelling against their commander.
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2 The mutiny 3 Aftermath of the mutiny 4 Motivations Behind the Mutiny 5 The mutiny in literature and cinema 6 Further reading 7 External links |
HMS Bounty or rather, His Majesty's Armed Vessel (HMAV) Bounty was, before her purchase on May 26, 1787 by the British Royal Navy and renaming, the collier Bethia, a coal-carrying merchant ship. She was a tiny sailing ship at 215 tons, mounting only four four pounders (2-kg cannon) and ten swivels. By way of comparison, Cook's Endeavour displaced 368 tons, and Resolution 462 tons.
Her only two commanders were Lt. William Bligh, RN, and the mutineer Fletcher Christian. Lieutenant William Bligh, 33-year-old former sailing master of HMS Resolution, was appointed commanding officer of HMAV Bounty on 1787 August 16. Though now routinely portrayed as the epitome of abusive sailing captains, Bligh received the appointment because he was considered an exceptionally capable naval officer -- an evaluation he was to prove correct.
The ship had been purchased by the Royal Navy for a single mission in support of an experiment: they were to travel to Tahiti, pick up breadfruit plants, and transport them to the West Indies in hopes that they would grow well there and become a cheap source of food for slaves. The experiment was proposed by the wealthy botanist Joseph Banks, who recommended Lieutenant Bligh as the commander.
In June 1787, Bounty was refitted at Deptford. The great cabin was converted to house the potted breadfruit plants, and gratings fitted to the upper deck. Her complement were 44 officers and men.
On December 23, 1787, Bounty sailed from Spithead for Tahiti. For a full month, she attempted to round Cape Horn, but adverse weather blocked her. Bligh ordered her turned about, and proceeded east, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the width of the Indian Ocean. Bounty raised Tahiti on October 25, 1788, after ten months at sea.
Bligh and his crew spent five months in Tahiti, then called "Otaheite", collecting and preparing a total of 1015 breadfruit plants. Bligh allowed the crew to live ashore and care for the potted breadfruit plants, and they became socialised to the customs and culture of the Tahitians. Master's Mate and Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian and a Tahitian named Maimiti married.
Bligh was not surprised by his crew’s reaction to the Tahitians. He recorded his analysis (all misspellings in original are retained):
Background
Three crewmen deserted and were recaptured. Instead of hanging them, as the crime of desertion was usually punished, Bligh ordered them flogged.
Bounty left Tahiti on April 4, 1789. On April 28, in the Friendly Islands, Fletcher Christian led the famous mutiny. Of the 42 men on board aside from Bligh and Christian, 11 joined Christian in mutiny while 31 remained loyal to Bligh.
The mutineers ordered Bligh, the ship's master, two midshipmen, and the ship's clerk into the launch of the Bounty.
Several more men voluntarily joined Bligh rather than remaining on the Bounty.
In all, 18 of the loyal crew were in the launch with Bligh;
the other 13 were forced to stay and man the ship with the mutineers. Equipped only with a sextant and a pocket watch -- no charts or compass -- Bligh navigated the 23-foot launch on a 41-day, 3200-mile voyage to Timor,
passing through the difficult Torres Strait along the way and landing on June 14.
The only casualty of his voyage was a crewman who was stoned to death by the natives of the first island they tried to land on. Lieutenant Bligh went on to attain the rank of Vice Admiral.
Meanwhile, the mutineers sailed for the island of Tubuai, where they tried to settle. After three months, however, they returned to Tahiti to put 16 of the crew ashore. Christian, eight other crewmen, six Tahitian men, and 11 women, one with a baby, set sail in Bounty hoping to elude the Royal Navy.
The mutineers passed through the Fiji and Cook islands, but feared that they would be found there. Moving on, they rediscovered Pitcairn Island, which had been misplaced on the Royal Navy's charts. On January 23, 1790, they burned the ship in what is now Bounty Bay. Her remains continue visible there into the 21st century.
Lieutenant Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty on March 15, 1790.
HMS Pandora, under the command of Captain Edward Edwards,
was dispatched November 7, 1790 to search for the Bounty and the mutineers.
Pandora reached Tahiti on March 23, 1791.
Four of the men from the Bounty came on board the Pandora soon after its arrival,
and ten more were arrested in a few weeks.
These fourteen, mutineers and loyal crew alike, were imprisoned in a makeshift cell on the Pandora,
which they derisively called "Pandora's Box".
On May 8, 1791, the Pandora left Tahiti,
and spent about three months visiting islands to the west of Tahiti in search of the Bounty and the remaining mutineers, without finding anything except flotsam -- some spars and a yard.
Heading west through the Torres Strait,
the Pandora ran aground on a reef (part of the Great Barrier Reef) on August 29, 1791.
The ship sank the next day,
and 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners were lost.
The remaining 89 of the ship's company and ten prisoners assembled in four small boats and sailed for Timor,
arriving there on September 16, 1791.
After being repatriated to England,
the ten prisoners were tried by a naval court.
In the judgement delivered on September 18, 1792,
four men whom Bligh had designated as innocent were acquitted.
Two were found guilty, but pardoned;
one of these was Peter Heywood, who later rose to rank of captain himself.
Another was reprieved due to a legal technicality.
The other three men were convicted and hanged.
In other trials,
both Bligh and Edwards were tried for the loss of their ships,
and both were acquitted.
Even before Edwards had returned from his search for the Bounty,
the HMS Providence and its tender the Assistant began a second voyage to collect breadfruit trees on August 3, 1791.
This mission was again championed by Joseph Banks and again commanded by Bligh,
now promoted to Captain Bligh.
The second voyage was a complete success,
collecting 2126 breadfruit plants and hundreds of other botanical specimens.
Departing Tahiti on July 19, 1792, Bligh once again successfully navigated the Torres Strait.
When the American sailing ship Topaz, commanded by Mayhew Folger, rediscovered Pitcairn Island in 1808, only John Adams, ten women and some children still lived. Murder accounted for most of the deaths, though suicide, accident, and disease played parts. Fletcher Christian was believed to have been one of the murder victims; he was survived by Maimiti and their son Thursday October Christian, the first child born on the island. However other accounts given say that Fletcher left the island and made it back to England. In 1825, John Adams was granted amnesty for his mutiny; Pitcairn's capital, Adamstown, is named for him. On November 30, 1838, the Pitcairn Islands (which include the uninhabited islands of Henderson, Ducie, and Oeno) were incorporated into the British Empire.
To this day, there is considerable debate on what caused the mutiny to occur. The true reasons for the mutiny may never be known and what they were might have been lost to time.
Some people blame Captain Bligh for causing the mutiny. They feel that Bligh was a villain and tyrant, who abused the crew to the point that Christian and the crew felt they had no choice but to mutiny.
Other people feel the blame rests entirely with Fletcher Christian and the crew. They feel that Bligh was not an unusually harsh captain, that he was for the most part a man of his times.
For the book Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language, Greg Dening analyzed ships’ logs for the statistics on floggings at sea between 1765 and 1793. Fleet-wide, 21.5% of sailors received at least one lash, and the average number of lashes per flogging was five. At one extreme, George Vancouver had 45% of his crew flogged, averaging 21 strokes per flogging; Bligh was well below average, with 19 percent of his crew receiving an average of 1.5 lashes; whatever Bligh’s faults, unusually harsh discipline was not among them. This is also brought out by the fact that three deserters during the voyage were flogged instead of being hanged.
As mentioned previously, while at Tahiti the men found they liked the place, especially the native women. Those who hold the crew responsible felt that after spending so much time at Tahiti they did not want to return to the ordinary life of a seaman. Those holding the crew responsible feel that the mutiny occurred because many of the crew wanted to return to a life of ease and sexual excess on Tahiti.
The novel Mutiny on the Bounty, and the several movies and television shows based on it, relate a fictionalized version of the mutiny.
At least one of the movies had Fletcher Christian dying of burns after attempting to douse the fire aboard the Bounty.
The first movie version was In the Wake of the Bounty (1932), starring Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian. The next movie was Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which won the Oscar for Best Picture that year. It starred Charles Laughton as "Captain" Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. Another Mutiny on the Bounty was released in 1962, starring Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh and Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian. A fourth film, Bounty (1984), starred Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson as Bligh and Christian.
General Characteristics
The mutiny
Aftermath of the mutiny
Motivations Behind the Mutiny
The mutiny in literature and cinema
Further reading
External links