How old is the hms bounty

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Captain William Bligh would lead the Bounty on this long voyage. It took 10 months for the Bounty to reach Tahiti and once there they remained for 5 months. The rest of the mutineers then sailed the ship to the island of Tubuai. They stayed in Tubuai for around 3 months before heading back to Tahiti. From there Fletcher Christian and several others sailed the Bounty to Pitcairn Island, where they burned the ship and were not discovered for 18 years.

Back on the launch, Captain Bligh navigated the boat to safety without any charts, using just a sextant and a pocket watch. It took them 41 days and nautical miles. They were welcomed by the Tahitians, who traded with them and even took them into their homes. By day, the crew gathered breadfruit and tended the plants; by night, they reveled. Over the course of five months on the island, more than 40 percent of the men were treated for sexually transmitted diseases that had been imported to Tahiti years before by English and French explorers.

When the Bounty set sail again on April 1, , the seeds of mutiny had already been planted. The 23 mutineers put the captain and 18 other men on a boat, gave them some rations and a sextant to help them navigate, and set the boat adrift. The Bounty was under rebel command. Christian and his crew, which included a few captives who remained loyal to Bligh, wanted to build a permanent settlement and set their sights on the Tongan island of Tubuai, about miles south of Tahiti.

There they met and killed a group of hostile native islanders, then went back to Tahiti to seek laborers and supplies. Certain that the Tahitian chiefs, who had good relations with Britain, would refuse to help them if they knew what had happened, the mutineers covered up the mutiny, lied about their mission, and returned to Tubuai with 30 Tahitians. But they gave up the fight for Tubuai after continued hostilities with the islanders and growing divisions among the crew made a takeover unsustainable.

The mutineers returned to Tahiti, only to find that their lie had been discovered. Desperate and cornered by a new plot to mutiny against him, Christian lured a group of Tahitians onto the Bounty for a party, then took them captive and set sail again. Sixteen British sailors were left behind in Tahiti. Meanwhile, Bligh and his loyalists were on a wild journey of their own. With dwindling rations, the group set out for a Dutch settlement in Timor, some 3, nautical miles away.

After 47 days they arrived and reported the mutiny to the Crown. Several died on the way home to England, but Bligh survived. At home, Bligh was court-martialed and acquitted of responsibility for the loss of the ship. Pandora then set sail from England on a mission to capture the mutineers. When the crew arrived in Tahiti in March , they captured the 14 surviving mutineers whom Christian had abandoned. But the Pandora ran into a disaster of its own when it foundered on the Great Barrier Reef, and four of the shackled captives drowned.

In September , the 10 men who had been brought back to England faced court-martial. Under English law, any man who remained on the ship was guilty of mutiny regardless of whether he had actively participated. Four were acquitted, and six sentenced to death by hanging. Three of those six were ultimately pardoned, but the other three mutineers—Thomas Burkett, John Millward, and Thomas Ellison—were hanged on October 29, By this time, the remaining mutineers and their Tahitian captives had found a safe haven on Pitcairn Island, a far-flung island in the southern Pacific.

The verdant, uninhabited island seemed like a potential paradise, and the mutineers soon burned the Bounty and set up a permanent colony there. But the tensions that had marred their voyage persisted on the island.

After a month journey, the Bounty arrived in Tahiti in October and remained there for more than five months. On Tahiti, the crew enjoyed an idyllic life, reveling in the comfortable climate, lush surroundings and the hospitality of the Tahitians. Fletcher Christian fell in love with a Tahitian woman named Mauatua. On April 4, , the Bounty departed Tahiti with its store of breadfruit saplings.

On April 28, near the island of Tonga, Christian and 25 petty officers and seamen seized the ship. Bligh, who eventually would fall prey to a total of three mutinies in his career, was an oppressive commander and insulted those under him.

By setting him adrift in an overcrowded foot-long boat in the middle of the Pacific, Christian and his conspirators had apparently handed him a death sentence. By remarkable seamanship, however, Bligh and his men reached Timor in the East Indies on June 14, , after a voyage of about 3, miles. Bligh returned to England and soon sailed again to Tahiti, from where he successfully transported breadfruit trees to the West Indies.

Meanwhile, Christian and his men attempted to establish themselves on the island of Tubuai. Unsuccessful in their colonizing effort, the Bounty sailed north to Tahiti, and 16 crewmen decided to stay there, despite the risk of capture by British authorities.

Christian and eight others, together with six Tahitian men, a dozen Tahitian women, and a child, decided to search the South Pacific for a safe haven. In January , the Bounty settled on Pitcairn Island, an isolated and uninhabited volcanic island more than 1, miles east of Tahiti. The mutineers who remained on Tahiti were captured and taken back to England where three were hanged. A British ship searched for Christian and the others but did not find them.

In , an American whaling vessel was drawn to Pitcairn by smoke from a cooking fire. The Americans discovered a community of children and women led by John Adams, the sole survivor of the original nine mutineers.