If You’ve ever enjoyed the book or the film Mutiny on the Bounty, then You know the story of the British ship Bounty and its cruel Captain Bligh.
The story is true. The tiny Pacific island of Pitcairn is proof.
In 1787, William Bligh was sent to the Pacific to bring, back a tropical fruit known as the breadfruit. The British wanted to plant breadfruit on islands in the West Indies.
In 1789, after Bligh’s ship Bounty left Tahiti in the South Pacific, a mutiny broke out aboard the ship, led by master’s mate Fletcher Christian. The mutinous sailors seized the ship and set Bligh and 18 others adrift in a small boat.
The mutineers then journeyed back to Tahiti, where some of them were captured by the British. The rest, along with some women from Tahiti, set sail for a small uninhabited island to the east, where they settled. This island, called Pitcairn, is still inhabited by descendants of the crew of the Bounty and the Tahitian women they brought with them!
Amazingly enough, Captain Bligh lived to tell of the mutiny. He eventually reached the island of Timor, after a voyage of some 4,000 miles in an open boat!
In 1808, he was the victim of another mutiny, this time in Australia. Again he survived. He died in England in 1817.
