I’ve been to the botanical gardens in Jamaica, where Bligh deposited the last of the breadfruit. I have since travelled to Townsville, Australia, where the relics of the Pandora, retrieved from the Great Barrier Reef, are displayed. Eight hard-core mutineers, however, escaped this fate after departing with Christian, along with 20 Tahitian men and women-the latter against their will- for parts unknown, eventually stumbling upon and settling the island of Pitcairn, where their descendants live today.Īlthough I published my book about the Bounty nearly 14 years ago, the story continues to haunt me. However, many of these men were eventually captured on the island and brought back to England where they were found guilty of mutiny and hanged from the yardarms of the HMS Brunswick in Portsmouth Harbour. They sailed back to Tahiti where the majority chose to remain, some with the hope of building new lives. Those who remained on the Bounty, under command of Christian, sailed first to Tahiti, then to the island of Tubuai, where they came to blows with the islanders and with each other. ‘This,’ says he, ‘has been acquired by hard labour.’” Another of the story’s great assets, it must be admitted, is the enduring charisma, in history as it seems in life, of Fletcher Christian. “He bared his Arm, and I was amazed at its Brawniness. “He was then full of professional Ambition and Hope,” Charles recalled. It is Charles who, in an unpublished memoir, gives us a glimpse of young Fletcher as he last saw him headed for the Pacific. One of Fletcher’s other brothers, Charles, had been involved in a mutiny of his own shortly before the Bounty sailed. These events form the heart of “the mutiny on the Bounty.” But for the full story, one must range further back in time to include, for example, the background of Christian’s family: His bankrupt mother had fled to the Isle of Man to escape debtor’s prison, and Fletcher Christian had gone to sea out of financial necessity at the advanced age of nearly 19, instead of following his older brothers to Cambridge and a profession in law. Christian “looked like a Madman is long hair was luse, his shirt Collair open”. We know from Able-Seaman Tom Ellison that at the height of the mutiny Mr. He stood about 5’ 9” tall, was “strongly built” although somewhat bow-legged. The destination was Tahiti, and the mission was to obtain saplings of the breadfruit tree, and to convey these safely to various stations in the West Indies, where they would be propagated as a source of cheap, fast-growing food for slaves. His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England in December of 1787, under the command of 33-year old lieutenant William Bligh. It very soon became clear, however, that even elemental facts about the story were thrillingly murky, including where the story really began and where it ended. I thought it would be fascinating to dig into this less familiar chapter of the Bounty saga-the quest of the HMS Pandora for the mutineers and the subsequent voyage of the captives back to England, in chains, to face the music. My interest in the story of the Bounty was triggered by a short article in the New York Times reporting on the discovery of a ship that, some 200 years ago, had been wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while carrying 14 captured mutineers of HMAV Bounty.
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