-photo.jpg "mutiny on the bounty")
Sixteen British sailors were left behind in Tahiti.
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. The mutineers returned to Tahiti, only to find that their lie had been discovered. But they gave up the fight for Tubuai after continued hostilities with the islanders and growing divisions among the crew made a takeover unsustainable. 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. There they met and killed a group of hostile native islanders, then went back to Tahiti to seek laborers and supplies. Oil Painting by Newell Convers Wyeth, Bridgeman ImagesĬhristian 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 400 miles south of Tahiti.
#Mutiny on the bounty series#
Right: In 1940, the infamous mutiny inspired the Bounty Trilogy, a series of novels written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, with illustrations by N.C. 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. “I have been in hell for weeks past with you,” Christian reportedly told Bligh.Ĭhaos ensued and the ship’s crew split into two factions, one loyal to Bligh, the other determined to desert. On April 28, a group of mutineers led by Christian armed themselves with the Bounty’s muskets and burst into Bligh’s cabin, taking him prisoner. Though historians still argue about the true cause of the mutiny, they agree that for Christian, his captain’s accusation was the final straw. On April 27, he accused Christian of stealing from the Bounty’s stash of coconuts and punished the entire crew for the theft. The captain was “fault-finding, insulting, petty and condescending” on the journey, writes Bounty expert and author Sven Wahlroos, and “seems to have relished humiliating all his officers.” He singled out his master’s mate Fletcher Christian, scapegoating and punishing him in front of the crew. The men had experienced Tahiti as a paradise, and Bligh, who was widely known as a strict disciplinarian, was frustrated by his crew’s lack of discipline. When the Bounty set sail again on April 1, 1789, the seeds of mutiny had already been planted. Bligh, who had the reputation of a tyrant, survived the mutiny on board his ship and would later testify against the mutineers in a court-martial. Right: Portrait of William Bligh, a navigator and explorer who commanded the H.M.S. 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. They also formed attachments to the island’s women, who sold sexual favors in exchange for items like nails.īy day, the crew gathered breadfruit and tended the plants by night, they reveled. They were welcomed by the Tahitians, who traded with them and even took them into their homes.
#Mutiny on the bounty full#
It was as idyllic as the Bounty’s crew had been told it would be, and they took full advantage of it. In October 1788, after a storm-tossed journey spanning 10 months and 27,000 miles, the Bounty finally reached Tahiti. But Bligh anticipated a peaceful journey to Tahiti, which had been visited by Captain James Cook in 1769 and was viewed by British mariners as a breadfruit-laden paradise. Veteran captain William Bligh had been tasked with a voyage to gather breadfruit, a tropical fruit related to the fig that the British crown thought would make cheap, nutritious rations for the enslaved workers at sugar plantations in the British West Indies.Ĭarrying a crew of 46, including two botanists, the ship had no commissioned officers except for Bligh and sailed alone, lacking the protection of other British vessels. The Bounty was a vessel of Britain’s Royal Navy, but its mission was peaceful.
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