On 28 November 1787, HMAV Bounty set sail for Tahiti – a Polynesian island in the South Pacific Ocean. Under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh, the Bounty was tasked with transporting breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the British colonies in the West Indies, and then to return home. Yet, less than two years later and mere weeks before reaching the West Indies, Bligh was overthrown by his own men and cast to sea in one of the ship’s boats. What ensued was a legendary survivor’s story, in which Bligh, without a map and only basic provisions, managed to navigate 3,900 nautical miles and eventually make it back to Britain, swiftly taking retribution against those who had overthrown him eleven months earlier.
Born on 9 September 1754, William Bligh was signed for the Royal Navy at the age of seven. The son of a customs officer, Bligh joined the navy in 1770, serving as an able-seaman on the HMS Hunter, before being transferred to the HMS Crescent in 1771. After six years as a midshipman, he was promoted to sailing master of the HMS Resolution in 1776 and served under Captain James Cook on his final voyage to the South Seas. It was here that Bligh rose to prominence, gaining unrivalled navigational skills that would be vital to the early successes of his voyage to Tahiti.
The 1787 Bounty voyage was undertaken at the request of Caribbean plantation owners, who were seeking subsistence food for their slaves. Searching for a solution to food shortages, the plantation owners had turned to English botanist Sir Joseph Banks, a veteran of Cook’s first Pacific voyage, who recommended feeding them Tahitian breadfruit – a green hanging fruit with white flesh, integral to the diet of French Polynesians. Bligh himself took up the voyage in order to win a considerable premium offered by the Royal Society.
The vessel itself had been built in 1784 at the Blades shipyard in Hull as a 215-ton collier named Bethia. In May 1787, an unenthusiastic Admiralty purchased the Bethia for £1,950 and appointed Bligh as her commander. Bligh’s crew was composed of 46 men, 44 of whom were Royal Navy personnel and two of whom were botanists. Most of the Bounty’s crew were chosen by Bligh or were recommended to him by influential patrons, in fact, several of the crew had sailed with Bligh before, most notably the 23-year-old, Fletcher Christian.
Christian was born on 25 September 1764, to a prestigious family just outside Cockermouth, Cumberland. He joined the navy as a midshipman in 1783, and in 1786, he secured a position on the merchant ship HMS Britannia, captained by Bligh. In 1787, Bligh recruited Christian to serve on board the Bounty, initially intending for him to serve as the sailing master. However, the navy turned down this request owing to Christian’s low seniority and instead appointed the veteran John Fryer. Christian served as the master’s mate.
Although Bligh was certainly qualified to command such an expedition, his feelings regarding the voyage were dangerously complex. Despite performing well on the Resolution, Bligh felt that his contribution had been overlooked after the death of Cook, and he had great ambitions to command scientific experiments of a similar magnitude. He took a drastic pay cut when he re-joined the Royal Navy and was bitterly disappointed not to have been promoted to a post-captaincy for the expedition. On the Bounty, Bligh decided to occupy the roles of both captain and purser, a decision that, given his preoccupation with financial matters, would prove tragic.
Having been held up at Spithead, Hampshire, for 49 days, the Bounty finally set sail on 23 December 1787. The ship quickly settled into its sea-going routine, with Bligh implementing a strict regime in order to manifest his goal of a superb expedition. By most accounts, he was a model if somewhat dour officer, concerned with the welfare of his men, specifically their cleanliness, diet and exercise. For the last purpose, he was said to have employed a blind fiddler to whose tunes the men danced until their feet ached.
From the start of the voyage, Bligh had cultivated a warm relationship with Christian. Shortly after embarking, Bligh had promoted him to acting lieutenant, which would likely have brought about a promotion to lieutenant upon their return to England. Moreover, when the ship finally anchored at Tahiti on 26 October 1788, Bligh entrusted Christian with command of the shore party responsible for collecting the breadfruit trees.
With the 31,000-mile journey complete, Bligh’s first plan of action was to secure the co-operation of the local chieftains, as well as the King of Tahiti, Pōmare I. This was achieved through the endowment of gifts, in return for which Bligh simply asked for breadfruit plants, a request that the chiefs were happy to accept. The crew was then forced to wait five months for the breadfruit to set, during which the men soon grew used to the idyllic lifestyle on Tahiti.
Over the course of their stay, a number of the crew developed relationships with women on the island (altogether 18 officers and men), including Christian. He formed a close relationship with a Tahitian woman named Mauatua, to whom he gave the name ‘Isabella’, after a former sweetheart from Cumberland. Bligh himself vowed to remain chaste. However, on 5 January 1789, three members of the crew – Charles Churchill, William Muspratt and John Millward – were so enamoured with the island women that they deserted, taking a small boat, arms and ammunition. Among the belongings Churchill left on the ship was a list of names that Bligh interpreted as possible accomplices in a desertion plot, in which Christian was implicated. While the matter was later dropped, it did nothing to dampen Bligh’s growing impatience with his men.
From their arrival on the island, Bligh had been accepting of the men’s relations, so long as they continued to do their duty efficiently. However, as time passed, his orders became increasingly authoritative. From February onwards, the pace of work drastically increased: more than 1,000 breadfruit plants were potted and carried into the ship, where they filled the great cabin. The crew’s inability to maintain this level of output enraged Bligh, writing that his officers were “neglectful and worthless”. Moreover, upon the death of the ship’s surgeon, Thomas Huggan, Bligh attributed it to “the effects of intemperance and indolence”. When the ship finally set sail for the West Indies on 4 April 1789, Bligh was, as Gavin Kennedy writes, “a bad-tempered man with no confidence in those around him, who was indulging in verbal thuggery at the slightest provocation”.
The men had grown so used to their idyllic lifestyle on the island that on this voyage they came to resent their captain. In the three weeks following their departure from Tahiti, Bligh’s anger and intolerance became increasingly paranoid, with Christian becoming a particular target of his erratic rages. On 22 April, the Bounty arrived at Nomuka, in the Friendly Islands (modern-day Tonga), intending to pick up supplies. Bligh placed Christian in charge of the foraging group; however, they were harassed and threatened by the locals, forcing Christian to return to the ship with his task incomplete, where he was cursed by Bligh as “a damned cowardly rascal”.
A week later, the rising unrest among the crew culminated in Christian deciding that a mutiny was the only way to relieve the Bountyof Bligh’s despotism. In the early hours of 28 April, Christian entered Bligh’s cabin with three other men, tied his hands behind his back and brought him onto the deck. While Bligh, trouserless, shouted himself hoarse, the ship’s crew gradually divided into those loyal to Christian and those loyal to Bligh.
Christian and his 24 men forced Bligh and his 18 followers into the Bounty’s launch, supplied them with food, drink and navigational equipment, and set them adrift. The mutineers then turned the Bounty back towards Tahiti, where 16 of them decided to leave the ship and risk the chance of discovery on the island. On 23 September, Christian left Tahiti with eight white sailors and twenty-six Polynesians in search of an island that the British Navy would not be able to find. Their fate remained a mystery until 1808, when an American whaler touched at Pitcairn Island and discovered the last of the Bounty mutineers, John Adams, presiding over a seemingly idyllic mixed-race community, composed primarily of women and children.
Bligh, meanwhile, had performed the astonishing feat of navigating the open boat 3,900 nautical miles to the Dutch colony of Timor. He reached England amid a storm of publicity on 14 March 1790, and in June, he published his account of events, A Narrative of the Mutiny on board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty. In this book, which quickly became a best-seller, Bligh claimed that the mutiny was a “close-planned act of villainy” prompted by the sailors’ desire to return to Tahiti and “fix themselves in the midst of plenty”. Bligh also expressed deep hurt at Christian’s betrayal.
Soon after Bligh’s arrival in England, George III sent out the HMS Pandora to search for the mutineers. The ship reached Tahiti in March 1791 and managed to arrest 14 of Bligh’s former crew. However, on the return voyage, disaster struck; the Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and sank, resulting in the deaths of 31 of the crew and four Bounty members. The ten surviving mutineers were brought back to England and court-martialled, and on 29 October, three were hanged. Though Christian, his eight men, and the Bounty were still unaccounted for, the scandal seemed to have run its course.
Bligh’s popularity was now at an all-time high. A new version of his book was published in September 1792, downplaying the mutiny and offering those who had already bought the first edition “a fuller account of our passage from Timor to Europe, than that contained in the Narrative”. Despite the notoriety of the mutiny (the title ‘Bounty Bastard’ dogged him for the rest of his life), Bligh received several other commands, served as governor of New South Wales from 1805 to 1810, and was promoted to rear admiral in 1811 and vice admiral in 1814.
In his time serving after the mutiny, Bligh’s courage, navigational skills and intelligence were undeniable. He was commended at the Battle of Camperdown (1797) by Lord Nelson and performed well at the Battle of Copenhagen (1805). He was also credited with the discovery of some 13 Pacific islands, and he was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1801.
However, Bligh was never able to overcome a fatal inability to control his relationships with his men. While he was captain of the Director, his crew took part in the general mutiny of the fleet at the Nore in 1797. In 1805, he was court-martialled for abusive language, but was later acquitted. In 1808, while governor of New South Wales, his bad relations with the New South Wales Corps helped spark the Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was arrested by his own military officer, kept under guard for a year, and subsequently sent home.
While Bligh’s seafaring prowess was undisputed throughout his career, a complete inability to form stable relationships with his crew prevented him from rising further up the ranks. Time and again he would be promoted and then undermined by his fiery temper and paranoia. Ironically, for a captain who has been the subject of countless plays and novels, Bligh never properly learned to manage the theatre of command.
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Christian, Glynn. 2021. The Truth about the Mutiny on HMAV Bounty – and the Fate of Fletcher Christian. Pen and Sword History.
Bligh, William. 2012. Mutiny on the Bounty. Courier Corporation.