Built as a collier of 215 tons in 1784 in Hull, the Bounty was purchased eventually by the Royal Navy to transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to feed slaves in the Caribbean. In 1788, after ten months at sea, the Bounty reached Tahiti. Five months later her captain, William Bligh, ordered that she set sail once more. Mutiny broke out subsequently, led by the Sailing Master, Fletcher Christian. The takeover was bloodless but Bligh and several of the crew who remained loyal to him were set adrift in the ship's launch. Bligh managed to navigate the open boat across 3,500 nautical miles to reach Coupang, in Indonesia, 47 days later. The mutineers, meanwhile, tried to settle on the nearby island of Tubuai but, threatened by the locals, they fled back to Tahiti, where 16 of the mutineers and four men loyal to Bligh chose to remain. Fletcher Christian, trying to avoid the Royal Navy, then fled across the Pacific, eventually rediscovering remote Pitcairn Island. It was there that he, eight crewmen, six Tahitian men and eleven women decided to settle and, to prevent detection, they burned the Bounty on 23 January, 1790. The wreck was discovered in 1957 and two replicas of the ship have been constructed. #18th_century #Bounty #HMS #merchant #navy #sail #sailing_ship
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