On July 1, 1788, the small armed vessel HMS Bounty left Simon’s Bay after repairing leaks and storm damage sustained while trying to force a passage around Cape Horn late in the sailing season. Lieutenant William Bligh, 34, the ship’s irascible captain, had been forced to turn tail and run for the Cape when his sailors were at point of collapse.
The ship was on its way to Tahiti to load young breadfruit trees which were to be transported to the Caribbean sugar islands to feed thousands of slaves who worked on the plantations.
Although Bligh was the vessel’s only commissioned officer, there were other “gentlemen” aboard, including the surgeon, the botanist, some midshipmen and the master’s mate, Fletcher Christian, 24, whom Bligh promoted to acting lieutenant during the voyage.
Bligh and Christian had previously been on friendly terms but they quarrelled during the Bounty’s 38-day lay-over at the Cape, apparently about money that Bligh had lent Christian, whose family had been reduced to poverty by his mother’s financial mismanagement.
The voyage to Tahiti was completed in 10 months and the Bounty spent another five waiting for the breadfruit saplings to adjust to their pots.
Christian and the crew were loath to leave this tropical paradise, where living was easy and lovely young women were generous with their favours.
The men were strictly disciplined when they finally set sail on April 4, 1789, and many became victims of Bligh’s sporadic rages, which have been labelled as symptoms of “intermittent explosive disorder”.
In an age when honour and dignity were deeply cherished, verbal abuse was more passionately resented than corporal punishment.
Three weeks after sailing, Bligh pushed Christian over the edge by publicly accusing him of stealing coconuts and rebuking him for failing to obtain water while under attack in the Friendly Islands.
Christian plotted mutiny and was supported by 18 sailors who longed to return to the delights of Tahiti.
The captain and 18 loyalists were bundled into a small open boat with a few navigational instruments and a meagre supply of provisions and cut loose in the vast Pacific Ocean. The mutineers then threw the breadfruit trees overboard and sailed back to Tahiti.
Faced with imminent disaster, the short-tempered captain rose to the occasion and navigated his overloaded 23-foot launch 3618 nautical miles to the Dutch island of Timor, arriving on June 14, having lost one man during the voyage. The survivors were covered in sores and their bodies were “nothing but skin and bones habited in rags”.
Bligh purchased a boat in order reach Batavia and arrange a passage home with the Dutch October fleet. Meanwhile, he and many of his sailors fell ill with fever and some died.
More next week.
* Jackie Loos' "The Way We Were" column is published in the Cape Argus every week.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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