Everyone saw the ad for chocolate with a name consonant with the rebel ship. Advertising clearly hints at freedom, peace and earthly paradise to those who consume this product. The commercial is clearly aimed at people who do not know the real story of the Bounty ship.
The history of the campaign of the British warship "Bounty" for saplings of breadfruit, the vicissitudes of this dramatic voyage were not lost even among the turbulent events of the 18th century, rich in rebellions, geographical discoveries and other exciting adventures.
British warship "Bounty" April 3, 1789 (according to some sources, April 4) under the leadership of Captain Bligh sailed from the coast of Tahiti towards the Caribbean archipelago with valuable cargo on board. Breadfruit seedlings, the fruits of which were supposed to feed the slaves on the sugarcane plantations of the English colonists in the West Indies, however, did not achieve their goal: a mutiny broke out on the ship, as a result of which not only plants suffered.
As a result of this rebellion and subsequent events, an unknown island was discovered, novels were written, films were made, and thanks to the efforts of copywriters, the dramatic trip of the Bounty to the southern seas is now firmly connected in the public consciousness with paradise pleasure.
On Christmas Eve, 1787, the three-masted schooner Bounty sailed from the English harbor of Portsmund. There were rumors for a long time about where and why this ship was headed, but the course and the official goal of the expedition were announced to the sailors already on the high seas. The ship had an exotic destination: not to the New World, not to wild Africa, not to fabulous, but already familiar India, not to the shores of New Holland (Australia) and New Zealand - the path lay on a paradise island in the South Seas, as then called the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean.
The mission, indeed, was unique: the schooner of the British Royal Navy did not go in search of new lands and not to fight the natives, and not even for black slaves or untold treasures. The Bounty team had to reach the paradise island of Tahiti, find and deliver to England a miracle plant, with which it was planned to make an economic revolution. The purpose of the long journey was breadfruit seedlings.
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In the late 18th century, as a result of the US War of Independence, the British Empire lost its richest North American colonies. The encroachment on political ambitions is nothing compared to the economic defeat that British businessmen have suffered. Of course, in Jamaica and St. Vincent, they still harvested a good harvest of sugar cane, the sale of which brought dealers and the state treasury a decent income, but … The fact is that this very cane was grown by black slaves from Africa, who were fed with yams and bananas, and grain and flour for them were brought from the American continent.
The independence of the United States of America hit hard on the pockets of the British slave owners. Now the Americans had to pay completely different money for grain or import it from Europe. Both were not cheap and significantly reduced the income from the sale of everything that was grown on the plantations of slaves. The increased costs of maintaining slaves, to put it mildly, upset English businessmen. It was necessary to somehow save the situation - to look for cheap bread. It was then that they remembered that travelers who visited Tahiti often describe a certain "bread fruit". These fruits grow on tree branches, have a pleasant sweet taste and are the main food of the locals for eight months of the year. The schooner "Bounty" went for this manna from heaven.
The famous English traveler Captain Cook wrote that in Polynesia, Tahiti, bread grows on trees. This was not a metaphor - it was about a mulberry plant that produces nutritious and delicious fruit the size of a coconut. When the most advanced English planters from the islands of the West Indies read Cook's travel notes, which, among other things, spoke of the breadfruit, they realized that the Philosopher's Stone, at least on the scale of one plantation, had been found. Their bright minds dawned on a brilliant business idea: to transport seedlings of a breadfruit tree from Tahiti and feed the slaves with its fruits, thus saving a lot of money on buying real bread. According to calculations, the profit from each plantation should have doubled from this innovation.
The people who mastered the overseas colonies at that time were determined and fearless, therefore, not fearing the wrath of their superiors, they sent a petition to King George III of England to help spread breadfruit in the places of their settlements. The king was imbued with the needs of the colonists and issued an order to the Admiralty: to equip a ship in Tahiti in order to collect and deliver the shoots of an amazing plant to the planters of the West Indies.
The British navy did not have a suitable ship capable of accommodating, in addition to the crew and provisions, hundreds of seedlings that needed special care on the way. It took too long to build a new ship. The Admiralty bought the three-masted sailboat Betia from a private shipowner for 1950 pounds sterling, which was altered, equipped with cannons and introduced into the Royal Navy under the name Bounty (Generosity). The relatively small dimensions of the ship (displacement of 215 tons, length along the upper deck of 27.7 meters and width of 7.4 meters), typical of other sailing ships of that time, were compensated for by its large carrying capacity and excellent seaworthiness, and its flat bottom was supposed to protect against catastrophic collisions with reefs.
If you imagine life on sailing warships of the 18th century even for a minute, then you shouldn't be surprised at the frequent riots on them. The captains had no one and nothing limited power over the crew, even over the officers - what can we say about the lower ranks, who, for disobedience and intimidation to others, could simply be hauled up on the yard without unnecessary delay. Punishment in the form of flogging was also common. On small ships, as a rule, incredible crowding reigned, water was often not enough, the crew suffered from scurvy, which claimed many lives. Tough discipline, arbitrariness on the part of captains and officers, inhuman living conditions have repeatedly provoked bloody collisions on ships. There were few hunters in England to volunteer to serve in the royal navy, and forced recruitment flourished:special detachments caught sailors of the merchant fleet and fettered them to the royal ships.
The commander of the Bounty was appointed a young but experienced navigator, Lieutenant William Bligh. By the age of 33, he had already managed to swim in the South Seas on the ships of the famous Cook, visited Polynesia, and knew the West Indies well, where he was supposed to deliver breadfruit seedlings. Unfortunately, in addition to a good experience in seafaring, Bly had a bad character and imbalance, and he considered brutal violence to be the best way to communicate with the crew.
William Bligh in 1792.
November 29, 1787 "Bounty" with a team of 48 people left England to cross the Atlantic Ocean, round Cape Horn and, leaving the Pacific Ocean, go to the island of Tahiti. The purpose of the return trip was the island of Jamaica - across the Indian Ocean, past the Cape of Good Hope. Swimming was calculated for two years.
Due to delays due to the fault of the Admiralty, the ship set off with a delay, when violent storms raged at Cape Horn. Unable to cope with the fierce winds, Bligh was forced to turn and walk towards the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the Atlantic in stormy southern latitudes. Having passed the southern tip of Africa, "Bounty" for the first time in the history of navigation crossed the Indian Ocean in the "roaring forties" and safely reached the island of Tasmania, and then - Tahiti.
The crew lived in Tahiti for five months, gradually acquiring friends and romantic relationships with beautiful Tahitian women. Describing this period, historians note that the sailors became as swarthy and almost as freedom-loving as the indigenous inhabitants of the island, so when the ship with breadfruit saplings, carefully dug out and carefully prepared for a long journey, set off for the destination, the crew was not able to withstand for long. petty tyranny of the captain, humiliation that he invented without counting for the crew (according to some testimonies, he even flogged an officer!), a meager diet and a lack of fresh water. Everyone was especially outraged by the fact that the captain was saving on water for people in favor of plants that required watering. (However, keeping the cargo intact for the captains of all times is a matter of honor, and people are an easily replenished resource).
On April 28, a rebellion broke out on the Bounty, led by Fletcher's first mate Christian, to whom Despot Bly showed particular dislike. Trapped in bed by the rebellious sailors, bound hand and foot before he could offer any resistance, Bligh, in one shirt, was taken to the deck where a kind of trial was held, presided over by Lieutenant Fletcher Christian.
Although the rest of the ship's officers remained on the side of the captain, they showed themselves cowardly: they did not even try to resist the rebels. The rebellious sailors put Bligh, along with his 18 supporters, on a longboat, supplied water, food and melee weapons, and left the Tofua Islands in view of the sea … And the Bounty returned to Tahiti after a short wandering across the ocean. Here there was a split among the rebels. Most were going to stay on the island and enjoy life, and the minority listened to the words of Christian, who predicted that one day the British fleet would appear on the island and the rebels would be hanged.
The crew of the longboat, led by Captain Bligh, with a minimum supply of food and no nautical charts, made an unprecedented voyage of 3,618 nautical miles and 45 days later reached the island of Timor, a Dutch colony in the East Indies, from where it was already possible to return to England without problems. During the voyage, the captain did not lose a single person; losses were only during skirmishes with the natives.
“I invited my companions to disembark,” says Bly. “Some could barely move their legs. We were left with only skin and bones: we were covered with wounds, our clothes turned into rags. In this state, joy and gratitude brought tears to our eyes, and the inhabitants of Timor silently, with an expression of horror, surprise and pity, looked at us. Thus, with the help of Providence, we overcame the hardships and difficulties of such a dangerous journey!"
Portrait of William Bligh in 1814.
The rebels remaining in Tahiti in 1791 were captured by Captain Edwards, the commander of the Pandora, which the British government had sent in search of the rebels with orders to bring them to England. But "Pandora" ran into an underwater reef, killing 4 rebels and 35 sailors. Of the ten rioters brought to England with the shipwrecked sailors of the Pandora, three were sentenced to death.
Upon his return to England, he continued his service in the navy, and soon was again sent for the ill-fated breadfruit seedlings. This time he managed to bring them to Jamaica, where these trees quickly took root and began to bear fruit. But the negro slaves refused to eat the fruits of this tree. However, this incident had nothing to do with Captain Bligh. Upon his return to England, he received a cold welcome at the Admiralty. In his absence, a court hearing was held, where the former rebels brought charges against the captain and won the case (in the absence of Bligh). The main evidence of the events on the ship was the diary of James Morrison, who was pardoned, but was eager to wash the shame of the rebel from the name of the family. The diary contradicts the records of the ship's log and was written after the events. These notes became the basis of the novel.
In 1797, William Bligh was one of the ship captains whose crews mutinied in the mutiny at Spithead and Burrow. Despite meeting some of the sailors' demands at Spithead, other vital issues for the sailors were not resolved. Bly was once again one of the captains touched by the mutiny - this time in the Burrow. During this time, he learned that his nickname in the navy was that Bounty Bastard.
In November of the same year, as captain, HMS Director took part in the Battle of Camperdown. Bligh fought three Dutch ships: Haarlem, Alkmaar and Vrijheid. While the Dutch suffered heavy casualties, only 7 sailors were injured on the HMS Director.
William Bligh took part under the command of Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801. Bly commanded HMS Glatton, a 56-gun battleship that was armed exclusively with carronades as an experiment. After the battle, Bligh personally thanked Nelson for his contribution to the victory. He navigated his ship safely between the banks while three other ships ran aground. When Nelson pretended not to notice signal 43 from Admiral Parker (stop fighting) and raised signal 16 (continue fighting), Bly was the only captain who could see the conflict between the two signals. He followed Nelson's order, and as a result, all the ships behind him continued to fire.
Caricature of Bly's arrest in Sydney in 1808, depicting Bly as a coward.
Bligh was offered an appointment as Governor of New South Wales in March 1805, with a salary of £ 2,000 a year, double that of former Governor Philip Gidley King.
He arrived in Sydney in August 1806, becoming the fourth governor of New South Wales. There he survived another mutiny (the Rum Riot) when, on January 26, 1808, the NSW Corps, under the command of Major George Johnston, arrested him. He was sent to Hobart on the Porpoise with no support to regain control of the colony, and remained effectively imprisoned in jail until January 1810.
Bligh returned from Hobart to Sydney on 17 January 1810 to formally transfer the post to the next governor and bring Major George Johnston to Britain for trial. On the Porpoise, he left Sydney on May 12, 1810, and arrived in England on October 25, 1810. The tribunal fired Johnston from the Marine Corps and the British military. Blay was subsequently promoted to Rear Admiral, and 3 years later, in 1814, he received a new promotion and became Vice Admiral.
Bly died on Bond Street, London on December 6, 1817, and was buried in the family plot at St Mary's in Lambeth. This church is now the Museum of the History of Horticulture. His grave depicts the fruit of a breadfruit. The plaque is on Bly's house, one block east of the Museum.
And what happened to the Bounty next?
Christian gathered a team of eight like-minded people, lured six Tahitians and eleven Tahitian women to the Bounty, and sailed away in search of a new homeland. In January 1790, nine rebels, twelve Tahitian women and six Polynesians from Tahiti, Raiatea and Tupuai and a child landed on an uninhabited island lost in the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean.
It was literally the end of the earth - four thousand miles southeast of the island, no land, an endless ocean desert. The southern part of the Pacific Ocean is one of the most deserted and far from civilization regions of the planet, it is no coincidence that spent space stations are dumped here.
After unloading the food available on the Bounty and removing all the gear that could be useful, the sailors burned the ship. This is how the Colony of Pitcairn was founded.
Meanwhile, the colonists for some time were quite happy with life, since the gifts of nature on the island were enough for everyone. The aliens built huts and cleared tracts of land. The natives whom they took away or who themselves voluntarily followed them, the English graciously left the duties of slaves. Two years passed without major quarrels. However, there was one “resource” that was very limited in Pitcairn - women. Because of them, it began …
The Polynesian part of the male population demanded equality. First of all, women were not divided. Each of the nine sailors had their own "wife", and for the six natives there were only three ladies. The discontent of the disadvantaged grew into a conspiracy.
When a Tahitian wife died from one of the rebels in 1793, the white settlers did not think of anything better than taking the wife of one of the Tahitians. He took offense and killed his girlfriend's new husband. The rebels killed the avenger, and the remaining Tahitians revolted against the rebels themselves. Christian and four of his men were killed by the Tahitians. It would seem that everything, but the killing did not end there. The Tahitian wives of the sailors went to avenge their murdered husbands and killed the rebellious Tahitians. All Polynesian men were killed. There are now four sailors left on the island (Midshipman Young and sailors McCoy, Quintal and Smith) with several women and children.
There was a lull for a while. The settlers settled their homes, cultivated the land, collected sweet potatoes and yams, raised pigs and chickens, fished, and gave birth to children. But if Young and Smith lived peacefully, then two sidekicks McCoy and Quintal behaved aggressively. They learned how to make moonshine and regularly organized drunken fights. In the end, McCoy died in an alcoholic stupor after jumping into the sea. And Quintal, having lost his wife (she crashed, collecting bird eggs on a rock), became completely brutal: he began to demand the wives of Young and Smith, and threatened to kill their children. It all ended with Smith and Young conspiring to hack Quintal to death with an ax.
This man, who pondered a lot about his previous disorderly life, completely reborn as a result of repentance, had to fulfill the duties of a father, priest, mayor and king. With his justice and firmness, he was able to win unlimited influence in this strange community.
An extraordinary mentor of morality, who in his youth broke all the laws for whom there was nothing sacred before, now preached mercy, love, harmony, and the small colony flourished under the meek, but at the same time firm management of this man, who became at the end of his life righteous.
Such was the morale of the Pitcairn colony when William Beachy's ship appeared off the coast of the island to replenish its cargo of seal skins.
In 1808, Pitcairn Island was discovered by the fishing vessel Topaz. They noticed that the island was inhabited by inhabitants of an unusual race. As it turned out later, these were the children of Alexander Smith, one of the rioters of the "romantic" ship. Smith himself turned out to be a priest on the island and taught to read and write.
The captain considered the island uninhabited; but, to his great amazement, a pirogue came up to the side of the ship with three mestizo youths who spoke English fairly well. The surprised captain began to question them and learned that their father served under the command of Lieutenant Bligh. The odyssey of this officer of the British navy at that time was known to the whole world and served as the subject of evening conversations on the tanks of ships of all countries.
The first visitors were struck by the small people living on the godforsaken island, and the atmosphere of benevolence and peace prevailing in the colony. Everyone was impressed by the patriarch of Pitcairn - John Adams. When the question of his arrest arose, the British authorities forgave the former rebel and left him alone. Adams died in 1829, at the age of 62, surrounded by numerous and dearly loving children and women. The only village on the island is named in his honor - Adamstown.
Pitcairn became part of the British Empire, an English colony in the South Seas. In 1831 London decided to resettle the islanders to Tahiti. It ended tragically: despite the warm welcome, the Pitcairns could not live far from their homeland, and within two months 12 people died (including Thursday October Christian, the firstborn of Fletcher Christian). 65 islanders returned home.
In 1856, a second resettlement of residents was undertaken - this time to the uninhabited island of Norfolk, a former English penal servitude. But again, many of the Pitcairns wanted to return to their homeland. So the heirs of the "Bounty" were divided into two settlements: Norfolk and Pitcairn.
The direct descendants of the rebels still live on Pitcairn today. The colony is a unique political, economic and socio-cultural entity in the Pacific Ocean. The island has its own coat of arms, flag and anthem, but Pitcairn is not an independent state, but an "overseas territory of the United Kingdom", the last shard of the once great British Empire. The islanders speak a strange dialect - a mixture of Old English and several Polynesian dialects. There is no TV, sewerage, running water, ATMs and hotels, but there is a satellite phone, radio and Internet. The main source of income for local residents is the export of stamps and the sale of the.pn domain name.
Pitcairn is administratively subordinate to the British government in Auckland, located approximately 5300 km from the island. In 1936, up to 200 people lived on Pitcairn, but every year the number of inhabitants decreases as people leave for work or study in New Zealand and never return. Currently, 47 people live on the island.
Among the few relics of Pitcairn, the main one is considered to be the "Bounty Bible" by Fletcher Christian himself, carefully preserved in a glass box in the church. She was stolen (or lost - details of her disappearance are still unknown) in 1839, but returned to the island in 1949. The Bounty anchor, discovered by the expedition of the National Geographic Society, flaunts on a pedestal near the walls of the courthouse, and a little further down the road installed guns from the "Bounty", raised from the bottom of the sea. Among the sights of the island, you will certainly be shown the anchor from the ship "Acadia", which was wrecked on Ducie Island, and on the other side of Bounty Bay - the grave of John Adam, the only surviving grave of the rebels.
The island became a British colony in 1838. The British High Commissioner for New Zealand is currently the Governor of Pitcairn. The island has a local self-government body - the Island Council, which consists of a magistrate, 5 members elected annually, 3 members appointed for one year by the governor, and a secretary of the island.
The history of the rebels continues to this day. In the fall of 2004, an unprecedented scandal over Pitcairn Island spilled over into the front pages of many Western newspapers: several men on the island were tried in Adamstown, accused of numerous rapes and sexual abuse of young girls.
Remembering the Bounty
The dramatic story of the Bounty's voyage was subsequently replicated by writers, artists, filmmakers, and in the 20th century it became especially popular thanks to films (four of them were shot, the first in 1916, the last with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, in 1984, various travel essays and Merle's novel “The Island.” And when the Mars company named its chocolate bar with coconut by the name “Bounty”, it became clear that the world-wide glory of the rebellious ship was probably not in vain.
The first significant writer to take an interest in the history of the Bounty was Jules Verne, whose story Rebels from the Bounty was published in 1879. The writer collected material about the riot on the English ship, working on his "History of great travels and great travelers".
The most detailed study of the voyage of the rebel ship was made by Bengt Danielsson, a member of the famous expedition of Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon-Tiki raft, in his book On the Bounty to the Southern Seas.
Captain William Bligh (Jules Verne, for example, saw him as a noble victim of circumstances) turned out differently for different authors, and they depicted episodes of a happy stay in Tahiti and the details of the riot in different ways. But a grateful audience, always with a constant and never-dying interest, reasonably exploited by the entertainment industry, perceived this distant story, which still amazes the imagination not only with the cruelty of manners and exotic components, but also with the human desire for freedom.
By the way, until now in specialized publications you can find drawings of the lost ship, instructions describing the assembly of models. People play this game with passion: build your own "Bounty".
In the fall of 2012, there was a storm off the coast of America. Tropical storm Sandy, which formed in the western Caribbean, began to gain strength after passing through Jamaica. He was reclassified as a Category I hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale on Wednesday evening. After Cuba, the hurricane passed over Haiti and headed towards the Bahamas. In the future, forecasters predict its path along the east coast of the United States.
Here is one of the victims.
Top view of the sunken sailboat.
On the path of Hurricane Sandy in North Carolina, the legendary sailboat Bounty sank, which was used in the filming of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series.
The vessel, which was carrying 16 people, stopped communicating on Sunday night. On Monday morning, the Coast Guard began searching for the sailboat. When the rescuers, surveying the area from the air, found the sailboat, the crew had already left the sinking ship and moved to the liferaft. Despite the difficult weather conditions caused by Hurricane Sandy - winds of up to 65 kilometers per hour and waves of more than three meters - rescuers were able to lift the sailors aboard the helicopter.
However, it later turned out that not everyone managed to escape. As the owner of the vessel, Bob Hansen, said, during boarding the raft, three sailors were washed into the water by a wave. One of them managed to get to the raft, two more, including the captain of the ship Robin Volbridge, were carried away by the current
The sailboat also made tourist cruises in the Caribbean.
Launched in Lunenburg, Canada in 1960, the sailboat Bounty is a replica of a historic ship that was burned down in a crew mutiny in 1790. The new vessel became famous after it was used on the set of the movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" with Marlon Brando. Most often, the vessel was used as a training vessel.
Replica of HMS Bounty in Swinoujscie, Poland, 2012.
