The Mutiny on
the Bounty was a mutiny
aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against
commanding officer Lieutenant William Bligh. According to most accounts, the sailors were
attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific island of Tahiti
and were further motivated by harsh treatment from their captain.
Eighteen mutineers set Lieutenant Bligh afloat in a small boat with eighteen of the twenty-two crew loyal to him. The mutineers then variously settled on Pitcairn Island or in Tahiti and burned the Bounty off Pitcairn Island, to avoid detection and to prevent desertion.
Bligh navigated the 23-foot (7 m) open launch on a 47-day voyage to Timor in the Dutch East Indies, equipped with a quadrant and pocket watch and without charts or compass. He recorded the distance as 3,618 nautical miles (6,710 km). He then returned to Britain and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty on 15 March 1790, 2 years and 11 weeks after his original departure.
The British government dispatched HMS Pandora to
capture the mutineers, and Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791. Four
of the men from the Bounty came on board soon after its arrival, and ten
more were arrested within a few weeks. These fourteen were imprisoned in a
makeshift cell on Pandora's deck. Pandora ran aground on part of
the Great Barrier Reef on 29
August 1791, with the loss of 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners. The
surviving ten prisoners were eventually repatriated to England, tried in a
naval court with three hanged, four acquitted and three pardoned.
Descendants of some of the
mutineers and Tahitians still live on Pitcairn
Island; with
only 50 residents, whose ancestors – crew on the HMS Bounty – were so
taken with the island that they mutinied and burned their own ship.
Their postage stamps are rare and expensive since collectors have to hop
on a boat from New Zealand for a ten-day voyage in order to buy them.
