Bounty history. Sex, moonshine and breadfruit. The whole truth about the mutiny on the ship "Bounty. Bounty in world culture

Everyone has seen an advertisement for chocolate with a name consonant with the rebellious ship. Advertising clearly hints at freedom, peace and earthly paradise to those who consume this product. The commercial is clearly intended for people who do not know the real story about the Bounty ship.

The history of the campaign of the English warship "Bounty" for breadfruit seedlings, the ups and downs 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.

As a result of this rebellion and subsequent events, a hitherto unknown island was discovered, novels were written, films were made, and thanks to the efforts of copywriters, the Bounty's dramatic trip to the southern seas is now tightly connected in the public mind with heavenly pleasure.

On Christmas Eve 1787, the three-masted schooner Bounty left the English harbor of Portsmund. There have been rumors about where and why this ship is heading for a long time, 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: not in search of new lands and not to war with the natives, and not even for black slaves or countless treasures, the schooner of the British Royal Navy set off. The Bounty team was supposed to reach the paradise island of Tahiti, find and deliver to England a miracle plant, with the help of which it was planned to make an economic revolution. The goal of the long journey was breadfruit seedlings.

At the end of the 18th century, as a result of the American War of Independence, the British Empire lost its richest North American colonies. The infringement of political ambitions is nothing compared to the economic defeat suffered by British businessmen. Of course, in Jamaica and in St. Vincent they still harvested a good harvest of sugar cane, the sale of which brought a decent income to businessmen and the state treasury, but ... The fact is that this same cane was grown by black slaves from Africa, who were fed yams and bananas, and grain and bread flour for them were brought from the American continent.

The independence of the United States of America hurt 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 expensive and significantly reduced the income from the sale of everything that the slaves raised on plantations. The increase in the cost 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 had visited Tahiti often describe a certain “bread fruit”. These fruits grow on the branches of trees, have a pleasant sweet taste and are the main food for eight months of the year. local residents. For this manna from heaven, the schooner "Bounty" set off.

The famous English traveler Captain Cook wrote that in Polynesia, in Tahiti, bread grows on trees. It was not a metaphor - it was about a plant from the mulberry family, which gives nutritious and tasty fruits the size of a coconut. When the most advanced English planters from the West Indies read travel notes Cook, where, among other things, it was said about the breadfruit tree, they realized that the philosopher's stone, at least on the scale of one plantation, had been found. Their bright minds were struck by a brilliant business idea: to transport breadfruit seedlings 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 overseas colonies in those days were decisive and fearless, therefore, not being afraid of the wrath of their superiors, they sent a petition to King George III of England to help with the spread of breadfruit in their places of settlement. The king was imbued with the needs of the colonists and issued an order to the Admiralty: to equip a ship to Tahiti in order to collect and deliver to the planters of the West Indies the shoots of an amazing plant.

The British navy could not find a suitable ship capable of accommodating, in addition to the crew and provisions, hundreds of seedlings, which needed special care on the way. Building a new ship was too long. The Admiralty bought from a private shipowner for £1,950 a three-masted sailing ship, the Betia, which was converted, equipped with guns and introduced into the Royal Navy under the name Bounty (Generosity). The relatively small size of the ship (displacement 215 tons, length along the upper deck 27.7 meters and width 7.4 meters), characteristic of other sailing ships of that time, was compensated by its large carrying capacity and excellent seaworthiness, and its flat bottom was supposed to protect against catastrophic reef collisions.

If you imagine life on military sailing ships of the 18th century even for a minute, then you should not be surprised at the frequent riots on them. The captains had unlimited power over the crew, even over the officers - what can we say about the lower ranks, who, for disobedience and intimidation of the rest, could simply be hung up on a yardarm without unnecessary delay. Punishment in the form of flogging was also common. Incredible crowding reigned on small, as a rule, ships, there was often not enough water, the crew suffered from scurvy, which claimed many lives. Strict discipline, arbitrariness on the part of captains and officers, inhuman living conditions more than once provoked bloody clashes on ships. In England, there were few volunteers to serve in the royal navy, forced recruitment flourished: special detachments caught the sailors of the merchant fleet and delivered them chained to the royal ships.

A young but experienced navigator, Lieutenant William Bligh, was appointed commander of the Bounty. By the age of 33, he had already managed to swim in the South Seas on the ships of the famous Cook, visited Polynesia, knew well the West Indies, where he was supposed to deliver breadfruit seedlings. Unfortunately, in addition to a good experience in navigation, Bligh had a bad temper and imbalance, and considered rude violence to be the best way to communicate with the crew.

November 29, 1787 "Bounty" with a team of 48 people left England to cross Atlantic Ocean, go around Cape Horn and, leaving the Pacific Ocean, go to the island of Tahiti. The purpose of the return journey was the island of Jamaica - across the Indian Ocean, past the Cape of Good Hope. Swimming was designed for two years.

Due to a delay due to the fault of the Admiralty, the ship set off late when severe storms raged off Cape Horn. Unable to cope with the fierce winds, Bligh was forced to turn and go to the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the Atlantic in the stormy southern latitudes. Having passed the southern tip of Africa, the Bounty crossed the Indian Ocean for the first time in the history of navigation in the Roaring Forties and safely reached the island of Tasmania, and then Tahiti.

For five months the crew lived in Tahiti, 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 seedlings, carefully dug out and carefully prepared for a long journey, set off for the destination, the crew could not withstand for long. the captain's tyranny, the humiliations that he invented for the crew without counting (according to some evidence, he even flogged an officer!), poor rations and lack of fresh water. Everyone was especially outraged by the fact that the captain saved on water for people in favor of plants that required watering. (However, it is a matter of honor for captains of all times to keep the cargo intact, and people are an easily replenished resource).

On April 28, a rebellion broke out on the Bounty, led by first assistant Fletcher Christian, to whom Despot Bligh showed particular dislike. Caught in bed by the rebellious sailors, bound hand and foot before he could offer any resistance, Bligh, in only his shirt, was led on deck where a sort of trial took place, presided over by Lieutenant Fletcher Christien.

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 together with his 18 supporters in a longboat, supplied them with water, food and edged weapons, and left the Tofua Islands in the sea in sight ... And the Bounty, after a short wander across the ocean, returned to Tahiti. There was a split among the rebels. Most were going to stay on the island and enjoy life, and a minority listened to the words of Christian, who predicted that one day the British fleet would come to the island and the rebels would fall to the gallows.

The crew of the barge, led by Captain Bligh, with a minimum supply of food and without nautical charts, made an unprecedented passage of 3618 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 any problems. During the voyage, the captain did not lose a single person, the losses were only during skirmishes with the natives.

“I invited my companions to land on shore,” says Bly. Some could barely move their legs. All that was left of us was skin and bones: we were covered in wounds, our clothes were in tatters. In this state, joy and gratitude brought tears to our eyes, and the people 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!”

The rebels who remained in Tahiti were captured in 1791 by Captain Edwards, the commander of the Pandora, which the British government sent in search of the rebels with orders to deliver them to England. But the Pandora ran into an underwater reef, killing 4 rebels and 35 sailors. Of the ten rebels brought to England along with the shipwrecked sailors of the Pandora, three were sentenced to death.

On his return to England, he continued his service in the Navy, and was soon sent again 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 no longer had anything to do with Captain Bligh. Upon his return to England, he was met with a cold reception at the Admiralty. In his absence, a court session 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 longed to wash the shame of the rebel from the name of the family. The diary contradicts the ship's journal entries and was written after the events. These notes became the basis of the novel.

In 1797, William Bligh was one of the captains of the ships whose crews mutinied in the mutiny at Spithead and Burrow. Despite the fulfillment of some of the demands of the sailors at Spithead, other vital matters for the sailors were not resolved. Bligh was again one of the captains affected 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 of HMS Director, he took part in the Battle of Camperdown. Bligh fought with three Dutch ships: Haarlem, Alkmaar and Vrijheid. While the Dutch suffered heavy losses, only 7 sailors on HMS Director were wounded.

William Bligh took part under the command of Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801. Bligh commanded HMS Glatton, a 56-gun ship of the line, which was experimentally armed exclusively with carronades. After the battle, Bligh personally thanked Nelson for his contribution to the victory. He got 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), Bligh was the only captain who could see the conflict between the two signals. He followed Nelson's orders, and as a result, all the ships behind him continued firing.

Bligh was offered the governorship of New South Wales in March 1805, with a salary of £2,000 a year, double that of the 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 26 January 1808, the New South Wales Corps under 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 until January 1810.

Bligh returned from Hobart to Sydney on January 17, 1810, to formally hand over the post to the next governor and bring Major George Johnston to Britain for trial. On the ship Porpoise he left Sydney on 12 May 1810 and arrived in England on 25 October 1810. The Tribunal dismissed Johnston from the Marine Corps and the British military. Subsequently, Bligh was awarded the rank of Rear Admiral, and 3 years later, in 1814, he received a new promotion and became Vice Admiral.

Bligh died in Bond Street, London on 6 December 1817 and was buried in the family plot at St Mary's Church, Lambeth. This church is now the Horticulture History Museum. On his grave, a breadfruit is depicted. The plaque is on Bligh's house, one block east of the Museum.

Christian gathered a team of eight like-minded people, lured six Tahitians and eleven Tahitians to the Bounty and sailed away to look for 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 oceanic 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 space stations that have exhausted their lives are dropped here.

Having unloaded the food available on the Bounty and removed all the gear that could be useful, the sailors burned the ship. Thus the Pitcairn colony was founded.

Meanwhile, the colonists for some time were quite satisfied with life, since the gifts of nature on the island were enough for everyone. The aliens built huts and cleared land. The natives whom they had taken away, or who themselves voluntarily followed them, were graciously given over to the duties of slaves by the English. Two years passed without any major quarrels. However, there was one "resource" that was very limited on Pitcairn - women. It started because of them...

The Polynesian part of the male population demanded equality. First of all, the women were not divided. Each of the nine sailors had his own "wife", and for the six natives there were only three ladies. The discontent of the disadvantaged grew into a conspiracy.

When in 1793 the Tahitian wife died of one of the rebels, the white settlers did not think of anything better than to take the wife from one of the Tahitians. He was offended and killed the new husband of his girlfriend. The rebels killed the avenger, and the remaining Tahitians rebelled against the rebels themselves. Christian and four of his men were killed by the Tahitians. It would seem that everything, but the killings did not end there. The Tahitian wives of the sailors went to avenge their murdered husbands and killed the rebellious Tahitians. All male Polynesians were destroyed. Now four sailors remained on the island (midshipman Young and sailors McCoy, Quintal and Smith) with several women and children.

For a while there was a lull. The settlers equipped their homes, cultivated the land, harvested sweet potatoes and yams, raised pigs and chickens, fished, and had children. But if Young and Smith lived peacefully, then two bosom buddies McCoy and Quintal behaved aggressively. They learned how to make moonshine and regularly staged drunken brawls. In the end, McCoy died in a drunken stupor by jumping into the sea. And Quintal, having lost his wife (she broke while collecting bird eggs on a rock), became completely brutal: he began to demand the wives of Young and Smith, threatened to kill their children. It all ended with Smith and Yang conspiring to hack Quintal with an axe.

Since then, peace has reigned on Pitcairn. Two adult men felt their responsibility for the fate of the small colony, for the future of women and children. Young taught the illiterate Smith to read. Regular Bible readings and services began on the island. Young died of asthma in 1800. By the beginning of the 19th century, the sailor Alexander Smith (his adopted name was John Adams) became the sole ruler of Pitcairn.

This man, who had thought a lot about his former disorderly life, completely reborn as a result of repentance, had to fulfill the duties of father, clergyman, mayor and king. With his justice and firmness, he managed to win unlimited influence in this strange community.

An extraordinary teacher of morality, who in the days of his youth violated all laws, for whom nothing was 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 at the end of his life became righteous.

Such was the morale of the Pitcairn colony at the time when William Beechey's ship appeared off its coast to supplement his cargo of sealskins.

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 rebels of the "romantic" ship. Smith himself, it turned out, was a priest on the island and taught literacy.

The captain considered the island uninhabited; but, to his great amazement, a pirogue came aboard the ship with three mestizo youths who spoke English quite well. The surprised captain began to question them and found out that their father served under the command of Lieutenant Bligh. The odyssey of this officer of the English fleet at that time was known to the whole world and served as the subject of evening conversations on the forecastles of ships of all countries.

The first visitors were struck by the small people living on a godforsaken island, and the atmosphere of goodwill and peace reigning in the colony. The patriarch of Pitcairn, John Adams, made a huge impression on everyone. When the question arose of his arrest, the British authorities forgave the former rebel and left him alone. Adams died in 1829, at the age of 62, surrounded by numerous and passionately loving children and women. The only village on the island, Adamstown, is named after him.

Pitcairn became part of the British Empire, an English colony in the South Seas. In 1831, London decided to resettle the islanders in Tahiti. It ended tragically: despite a warm welcome, the Pitcairns were unable to live away from their homeland, and within two months 12 people died (including Thursday October Christian, Fletcher Christian's firstborn). 65 islanders returned home.

In 1856, a second resettlement of residents was undertaken - this time to the uninhabited island of Norfolk, the 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.

Today, direct descendants of the rebels still live on Pitcairn. 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 fragment of the once great British Empire. The islanders speak a strange dialect - a mixture of Old English and several Polynesian dialects. There is no television, sewerage, water supply, ATMs and hotels, but there is a satellite phone, radio and the Internet. The main source of income for local residents is the export of postage 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 to work or study in New Zealand and they don't come back. Currently, 47 people live on the island.
Among the few Pitcairn relics, Fletcher Christian's Bounty Bible, carefully preserved in a glass case in the church, is considered the main one. It was stolen (or lost - the details of its disappearance are still unknown) in 1839, but returned to the island in 1949. The Bounty anchor, discovered by the National Geographic Society expedition, flaunts on a plinth near the walls of the courthouse, and a little further down the The road was equipped with guns from the Bounty raised from the bottom of the sea. Among the sights of the island, you will definitely 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 one preserved from the graves of the rebels.

The island became a British colony in 1838. Currently, the British High Commissioner in New Zealand is also 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 the secretary of the island.
Due to the difference between the traditions that have developed on the island and those accepted in a “civilized” society, in 2004 there was a big scandal: it turned out that sex with minors is in the order of things on the island. Judges, prosecutors arrived on the island, several people were put in a prison, which had to be built specifically for this. In general, they came with their charter to a strange monastery, as usual ... They spent a lot of money - the construction of the prison alone cost more than 14 million New Zealand dollars.
After 2009, the prison was vacated, and it seemed that they were going to convert it into a guest house

The dramatic story of the voyage of the Bounty was subsequently replicated by writers, artists, filmmakers, in the 20th century it became especially popular thanks to films (there were four of them, 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 after the "Bounty", it became clear that the planetary glory of the rebel ship was, apparently, not in vain.

In 1787, a three-masted merchant ship descended from the stocks in Deptford ship "Bounty". A little time passed and the British fleet became interested in this ship. As a result, the ship came under the influence of England, which paid £1,950 for it.

On December 23, 1787, the ship left Pordsmouth under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh, who at one time had a chance to swim with Cook during his third expedition. But the captain's current goals were to get breadfruit seedlings (about 1000 pieces), for which he had to sail to Tahiti. Joseph Banks, a consultant to the Royal Botanic Gardens, suggested to the authorities that the breadfruit would be the ideal cheap food for the black slaves who worked on the English sugarcane plantations. Also during the expedition, it was necessary to correct the maps of the places there and explore a couple of islands in Polynesia.

From the very beginning, the voyage did not go according to the planned scenario: for several weeks the ship was in a storm near Cape Horn, then, due to a headwind, a new course had to be laid, which passed through the Indian Ocean. And only 10 months later (October 26, 1788) after sailing from Britain, the ship saw the shores of Tahiti. As expected, the crew landed in a bad mood, but not only because the voyage was not easy. The captain was a sharp-tempered man, and there was more than one case when he punished and beat people for the most minor offenses.

For half a year, the ship's crew prepared seedlings for long-term transportation. During this time, people got used to the abundance of fruits, bewitching nature and attractive Tahitian women. My heart ached only at the thought that soon they would have to return to the ship again. And so it happened: April 4, 1789 ship "Bounty" said goodbye to the shores of the island.

History of the mutiny on the Bounty

A plan was devised to take care of the trees while sailing, one of the hard points of which was that the seedlings needed plenty of fresh water. Over time, the team began to grow dissatisfied with the fact that the plants were better cared for than they were. This fact and another mockery of the captain over one of the lieutenants provoked Riot on the Bounty held on 28 April. The team equipped the boat, put the captain and 18 crew members in it, who were afraid of the gallows, and sent them to free navigation. And the ship headed back to Tahiti.

Nevertheless, people understood that the punitive sword of British justice would not be long in coming. Therefore, it was decided to leave the island and look for something where they would not be found by the English fleet. Preference was given to the island of Tabuai, where the sailors began to build a settlement. But things did not work out on the island, clashes with the natives constantly arose, because of which it was decided to return back to Tahiti. 16 crew members decided to stay in Tahiti forever, while the remaining eight Englishmen and eighteen Tahitians took the Bounty back to sea. This saved them, because the British, after a little time, nevertheless went out to the rebels who remained on the island.

AT last time The Bounty anchored off Pitcairn Island. The place seemed to be ideal: fertile land, suitable climate, secrecy. And yet, it was not possible to build a colony, the British quarreled with the Tahitians men over women and began to fight each other. In the end, White won, but there were only 4 of them left. Two of them later died due to addiction to alcohol.

Basic sailing data ship "Bounty":

Displacement - 215 tons;
Length - 27.7 m;
Width - 7.4 m;
Speed - 8 knots;
Armament: Guns - 4
Falconet - 8;

The story of one rebellion

"Bounty" (eng. Bounty - generosity)- a small three-masted ship, which became famous thanks to its only one voyage.

The ship was built for trading purposes in 1784 at a shipyard in the English city of Kingston upon Hull (Goulle) and bore the name "Bethia". It was ninety feet long, twenty-four feet wide, and displaced 215 tons. In 1787, the Admiralty bought it for £1,950. The ship was rebuilt and renamed "Bounty". Under renovation "Bounty" sheathed with copper sheets, the sides above the waterline were painted blue with two yellow stripes, the masts, yards, topmasts and bowsprit became brown. The figurehead depicted an Amazon. The ship was armed with four guns - it was prepared for a long and responsible voyage.

The start of the voyage was scheduled for the end of November, but only on December 23, 1787, the ship with a crew of 43 people set off from Portsmouth to Tahiti for breadfruit seedlings in order to deliver them to Jamaica (Antilles) in the future. It was believed that the breadfruit would be eaten by slaves on the West Indies sugarcane plantations, which would be much cheaper than feeding them with ordinary grain bread. The author of the breadfruit project in Jamaica was the famous British biologist Joseph Banks, who took part in the voyages of James Cook in the Pacific Ocean. "My ship "Bounty" will be a real floating garden,” said Banks. It was planned to take on board the ship about a thousand breadfruit seedlings in flower pots, the flat bottom of the Bounty and a sufficiently large carrying capacity helped to protect valuable cargo during navigation from the reefs, which were in great abundance off the coast of the West Indies.

Bounty Captain William Bly

The ship reached the shores of Tahiti almost a year later - on October 26, 1788. And after another six months, on April 4, 1789, he set off from Tahiti to the shores of Jamaica. Captain William Bligh commanded the ship. According to contemporaries, he was often rude to the crew, did not disdain corporal punishment, besides, low-quality provisions were purchased on board the ship, and the crew members experienced a noticeable lack of fresh water, while the plants transported were watered abundantly and often. All this provoked a mutiny on the ship, on April 28, 1789, near the island of Tofua, a riot took place on board the ship, led by Fletcher Christian. Captain "Bounty" and 18 members of the crew loyal to him were landed at sea on a seven-meter launch with a small supply of food and water and sent to all four sides.

Captain Bligh, together with his companions, spent almost seven weeks at sea, the small launch covered 6,700 kilometers (more than three thousand nautical miles) during this time. Despite all the hardships and hardships, Bligh and his team were surprisingly lucky: during the entire time of their wanderings, they lost only one person - midshipman John Norton, who was killed by the inhabitants of Tofua Island, where the exiles wanted to replenish their supply of provisions. After all the wanderings, the barge moored to the island of Timor, and from there Lieutenant Bligh and his supporters returned to Great Britain. On March 15, 1790, the English Admiralty learned of what had happened on "Bounty" rebellion.

And you "Bounty" and the remaining 25 crew members went back to Tahiti, where some of the rebels remained permanently. But the main conspirators understood that one day the British government would overtake them, and they would have to answer for the perfect act before the court. Therefore, the most determined and desperate went to the "Bounty" to look for an island where no one can overtake them.

Fourteen of the sixteen crew members who remained in Tahiti were arrested in 1791 when they were found by the British ship Pandora, specially sent in search of the missing "Bounty". En route to England in the Enterprise Sound, the Pandora was shipwrecked, killing 35 of the Pandora's sailors and four of the Bounty's crew. Arriving in England, the surviving rebels were put on trial, three were sentenced to death by hanging on the yards of the Brustwick ship.

Meanwhile on board "Bounty" nine former crew members (Fletcher Christian, John Adams, William McCoy, Isaac Martin, John Mills, Matthew Quintal, John Williams, Edward Young, William Brown) went to seek their happiness in the ocean, as well as eighteen inhabitants of the island of Tahiti: six men, eleven women and one child. On the voyage, the fugitives also took several types of domestic animals and seeds of various plants.

The island they decide to settle on is called Pitcairn. This small island (4.6 square kilometers) in the southeast Pacific Ocean was discovered by the English sloop Swallow in 1762 and named after the sailor who first noticed it. On January 23, 1790, the rebels from "Bounty" and their Tahitian companions became the first inhabitants of this island, organizing a colony. Everything that could be used in the economy, up to the cladding boards, was removed from the ship, after which the ship, which lived a very short life, was burned and flooded.

But life on the island turned out to be unsweetened, in addition to the fact that the settlers had to equip their lives from scratch, plow the land, build dwellings, soon disagreements began between them, which arose mainly because of women, as well as because of the status of slaves of Tahitian men. Quarrels gradually developed into bloody feuds, as a result of which, four years after landing on the island, only four English men survived, three of whom also died later (one was killed, one died of asthma and one was poisoned by alcohol). And the community, consisting only of women and children who had already been born by that time, began to be controlled by the only man, John Adams, who called himself Alexander Smith. Largely thanks to him, the colony survived, overcoming all difficulties. Adams became a father to children, a teacher and ruler of the island.

Ten years later, in 1808, the English frigate Topaz arrived on the island to replenish the supply of seal skins, and found a community there. In 1814, 2 English frigates arrived on the island to investigate the story that happened on the Bounty. Seeing the community, having met Alexander Smith, the judges were very impressed and forgave the last of the rebels. Gradually, the population of Pitcairn Island grew and already in 1856, part of the islanders moved to Norfolk Island, and later the descendants of the first settlers of Pitcairn settled on all the islands of Oceania. About seventy people now live on Pitcairn Island. The island has its own flag and anthem, but belongs to the UK. The islanders receive their main income from the export of postage stamps dedicated to the rebellion on "Bounty".

Events that took place on "Bounty" are known all over the world. The memory of the sailors who once raised a rebellion against violence and gave life to a small island is alive to this day.

Hundreds of books and tens of hundreds of articles are devoted to the history of the ship and crew. The most complete mutiny on the famous sailing ship was studied by the Swedish scientist Bengt Danielsson, who wrote the book "On the Bounty" to the South Seas in the middle of the twentieth century.

In addition to him, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, J. G. Byron, Jack London and many others wrote about the Bounty.

In 1916, the first film was made in Australia, dedicated to the events of "Bounty". In 1935, an American film about a sailboat starring Clark Gibble was released. In 1962, a new film about "Bounty" where the famous Marlon Brando played the main role. And twenty years later, in 1984, another picture of The Bounty with Mel Gibson appeared on the screens in the USA. Replicas of the Bounty built for the 1962 and 1984 films survive to this day and are located in Massachusetts, USA and Sydney, Australia, respectively. The American replica "Bounty", built according to drawings from the archives of the British Admiralty, until recently was one of the oldest replicas of sailing ships in the world. Due to the fact that during the filming of the film, bulky cameras had to be installed on board the ship, its size differs from the original by about a third. In 2003, a documentary called Survivors of the Bounty was filmed in France.

All that is left of the legendary sailing ship is the Bible and the helm. The Bible is kept in the London Historical Museum, and the helm in the Fiji Museum.

October 29, 2012, hit by Hurricane Sandy, an American replica of the famous sailboat sank off the coast of New Carolina (USA). 14 crew members were evacuated, the captain of the ship was killed.

"Bounty" in our minds is strongly associated with heavenly pleasure, freedom and peace. But few people know what the journey of the Bounty sailboat really was and how it ended.

The British warship Bounty on April 3, 1789 (according to some sources, on April 4), under the leadership of Captain Bligh, sailed from the coast of Tahiti towards the Caribbean archipelago with a valuable cargo on board. Breadfruit seedlings, the fruits of which were supposed to feed the slaves on the sugar cane plantations of the English colonists in the West Indies, however, did not reach their goal: a mutiny broke out on the ship, as a result of which not only the plants suffered.
As a result of this rebellion and subsequent events, a hitherto unknown island was discovered, novels were written, films were made, and thanks to the efforts of copywriters, the Bounty's dramatic trip to the southern seas is now tightly connected in the public mind with heavenly pleasure.

The independence of the United States of America hurt 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 expensive and significantly reduced the income from the sale of everything that the slaves raised on plantations. The increase in the cost 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 had visited Tahiti often describe a certain “bread fruit”. These fruits grow on the branches of trees, have a pleasant sweet taste and are the main food of the locals for eight months of the year. For this manna from heaven, the schooner "Bounty" set off.

The famous English traveler Captain Cook wrote that in Polynesia, in Tahiti, bread grows on trees. It was not a metaphor - it was about a plant from the mulberry family, which gives nutritious and tasty fruits the size of a coconut. When the most advanced English planters from the West Indies read Cook's travel notes, which included breadfruit, they realized that the philosopher's stone, at least on the scale of one plantation, had been found. Their bright minds were struck by a brilliant business idea: to transport breadfruit seedlings 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.

William Bligh in 1792

November 29, 1787 "Bounty" with a team of 48 people left England to cross the Atlantic Ocean, go around Cape Horn and, entering the Pacific Ocean, go to the island of Tahiti. The purpose of the return journey was the island of Jamaica - across the Indian Ocean, past the Cape of Good Hope. Swimming was designed for two years.

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 together with his 18 supporters in a barge, supplied them with water, food and edged weapons, and left the Tofua Islands in the sea in sight ... And the Bounty, after a short wander across the ocean, returned to Tahiti. There was a split among the rebels. Most were going to stay on the island and enjoy life, and a minority listened to the words of Christian, who predicted that one day the British fleet would come to the island and the rebels would fall to the gallows.

Portrait of William Bligh in 1814

Caricature of Bligh's arrest in Sydney in 1808 depicting Bligh as a coward

Bligh was offered the governorship of New South Wales in March 1805, with a salary of £2,000 a year, double that of the former governor, Philip Gidley King.

And what happened to the "Bounty" next?

Having unloaded the food available on the Bounty and removed all the gear that could be useful, the sailors burned the ship. Thus the Pitcairn colony was founded.

Such was the morale of the Pitcairn colony at the time when William Beechey's ship appeared off its coast to supplement his cargo of sealskins.

Among the few Pitcairn relics, Fletcher Christian's Bounty Bible, carefully preserved in a glass case in the church, is considered the main one. It was stolen (or lost - the details of its disappearance are still unknown) in 1839, but returned to the island in 1949. The Bounty anchor, discovered by the National Geographic Society expedition, flaunts on a plinth near the walls of the courthouse, and a little further down the The road was equipped with guns from the Bounty raised from the bottom of the sea. Among the sights of the island, you will definitely 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 one preserved from the graves of the rebels.

The story of the rebels continues to this day. In the fall of 2004, an unprecedented scandal around Pitcairn Island spilled onto the front pages of many Western newspapers: a trial was held in Adamstown over several men on the island, accused of numerous rapes and sexual harassment of underage girls.

Remembering the Bounty

The first significant writer who became interested in the history of the Bounty was Jules Verne - his story The Rebels from the Bounty was published in 1879. The writer collected material about the rebellion on the English ship while working on his History of Great Journeys 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 the book On the Bounty to the South Seas.

Different authors differently obtained the main engine of the plot, Captain William Bly (Jules Verne, for example, saw him as a noble victim of circumstances), they painted the episodes of a happy stop in Tahiti and the details of the riot in different ways. But the grateful public, always with an unfailing and undying interest, reasonably exploited by the entertainment industry, perceived this distant story, which still boggles the imagination not only with the cruelty of morals and the exotic component, but also with the human desire for freedom.

By the way, so far 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. It was reclassified as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale on Wednesday evening. After Cuba, the hurricane passed over Haiti and headed towards Bahamas. In the future, weather forecasters predict its path along east coast USA.

Here is one of the victims.

Aerial view of the sunken sailboat. (Tim Kukl/AFP/Getty Images)

On the way of Hurricane Sandy in North Carolina, the legendary sailboat Bounty, which was used in the filming of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, sank.

The vessel 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 into a life raft. Despite the difficult weather conditions caused by Hurricane Sandy - winds reaching 65 kilometers per hour and waves more than three meters high - rescuers were able to lift the sailors aboard the helicopter.

However, later it turned out that not everyone managed to escape. According to the owner of the ship, Bob Hansen, while boarding the raft, three sailors were washed away into the water by a wave. One of them managed to get to the raft, two more, including the ship's captain, Robin Wolbridge, were carried away by the current.

The sailboat also made tourist cruises in the Caribbean.

The Bounty, launched in Lunenberg, Canada in 1960, is a replica of a historic ship burned in a crew mutiny in 1790. The new ship became famous after it was used on the set of the film Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando. Most often, the ship was used as a training ship.

Replica of HMS Bounty in Swinoujscie, Poland, 2012. (REUTERS/HMS Bounty Organization LLC/Handout)

On the night of April 28, 1789, sailors on a British sailing ship near the island of Tahiti rebelled, put the captain and his supporters in the boat, and then sailed towards a brighter future: they saw it in the form of hot mistresses and juicy tropical fruits. The finale of this event turned out to be quite interesting, and the story of the revolution at the beach resort itself gained immense fame in England. Subsequently, the story of the Bounty formed the basis of several books, films were made in the 20th century, and a coconut-flavored chocolate in a wrapper with views of palm trees and the sea was also clearly released in the wake of the popularity of an ordinary incident at that time.

Breadfruit. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Love, dancing and fatal coconut

It all started not quite romantically. The Bounty sailed to Tahiti for breadfruit seedlings. Not in the sense that loaves and loaves grow on it: it’s just such a plant with hefty green fruits (now it is called “jackfruit” in Asia). Saplings were required for a prosaic reason: in the Caribbean, they were urgently looking for cheap and satisfying food for slaves brought in large quantities from Africa. The sailboat set sail on December 23, 1787. Captain William Bligh he chose the longest route, although he stocked up on provisions: in order for the sailors and officers to move more (to avoid problems with the joints), he made them ... dance on deck. “Sick guy all over,” whispered the team. “We have been sailing for so many months, and here he is arranging balls in the middle of the sea.” Only almost a year later, on October 26, 1788, the Bounty appeared off the coast of Tahiti. Bligh (who had already visited there earlier) knew the essence of island corruption, so he distributed gifts to the leaders, and they allowed them to camp on land to search for breadfruit seedlings. True, the naive William did not take into account that the British, tired of the long voyage, would do more interesting things. As you know, it is hot in Tahiti, and local ladies went bare-chested, or even completely naked: this spectacle had an effect comparable to a stroke on the cold inhabitants of Europe. Of course, hot novels immediately broke out, as a result of which Bligh's first assistant Fletcher Christian and another 17 "tourists" needed urgent treatment for venereal diseases. “You should be looking for breadfruit the way you frolic with girls,” Bly cried out, but no one heard the authorities. The captain acted extremely unaesthetically: he ordered the sailors to be flogged. Then three people hijacked the boat and fled with their mistresses. Finally, about 1,000 breadfruit seedlings were delivered to the Bounty and Bligh decided to sail back. On April 5, 1789, the sailing ship departed for the open sea. The team was angry and frustrated. Still: straight from the arms of gentle islanders, sail yourself on the waves into the unknown. Everyone already didn't care about the breadfruit tree. The sailors wanted to stay on a paradise island and eat pineapples for the rest of their lives. On April 27, Bligh accused Christian of allegedly stealing a coconut from his personal supplies, and punished the entire team for the theft. People went berserk. According to British law, a riot on a ship was supposed to be executed by hanging, and they hanged not only for the rioters, but also for “spectators”: those who simply stood nearby and did not attempt to interfere. This did not stop those wishing to arrange a "ship revolution".

William Bligh in 1792, after the events on the Bounty. Photo: wikipedia.org

War, beauty and strife

During the night, Fletcher Christian and other rebels seized weapons, tying up the captain. William Bligh and the opponents of the rebellion (18 more people) were put in a tiny boat without maps and a compass, but with a supply of food and water for a week. Surprisingly, Bly, together with his supporters, managed to swim 6701 kilometers (!) In 47 days, as he knew the way by heart. This coconut lover had a phenomenal memory, otherwise the overcrowded longboat would not have gotten anywhere. Once on the island of Timor, Bligh informed the British authorities about the mutiny on the Bounty. Interestingly, the captain then returned to London and subsequently went a second time (what a stubbornness) for breadfruit seedlings (in 1791-1793). Bly brought them to the Caribbean, where the plant has been grown very successfully since then, providing the islands with food. Bligh died in 1817, and a breadfruit was depicted on the tombstone at the grave of "Cap". But the fate of the rebels from the captured Bounty turned out to be much more amusing. They sailed to the island of Tubuai and tried to establish a colony there, but the local natives did not appreciate such tourism and attacked the invaders. The British did no better, taking daughters and wives from the islanders on the basis of the principle "my gun shoots better than your spear, so I'm right." Up to a hundred Tubuai residents were killed in clashes. The rebels soon got fed up with the war. They thought to calmly have fun with half-naked beauties and eat bananas with pineapples, and not fight. So sixteen people soon sailed off to live on the island of their dreams: Tahiti. The rebel leader Christian refused to follow them, saying something in the style of a Soviet cartoon: "Tahiti-Tahiti, we are well fed here." The nine remaining "fighters", eleven Polynesian girls and six Polynesian men (as servants) landed on Pitcairn Island. What happened next is known from the words of only one person. Can he be trusted? Don't know.

Pigs, death and a huge harem

In 1808 (18 years later), the American ship Topaz, landing on the shore of Pitcairn, found the last rebel from the Bounty there. John Adams, who lived surrounded by his 8 wives and raised 25 children of various ages. According to Adams, the number of colonists was greatly reduced because of the women's issue. Two islanders in the colony soon died, and the British quietly appropriated the spouses of the Polynesians. In 1793, the native servants rebelled and killed five sailors, including the leader of the rebellion, Fletcher Christian: the ex-senior mate was hacked to death with an ax when he worked in the field (planting the ill-fated breadfruit tree). The surviving whites fled to live on one part of the island, the Polynesians on the other. However, it soon became clear that the British treat ladies much better than the Tahitians. The widows frankly missed the Europeans. A year later, Polynesian women slaughtered all (!) Of their native husbands in their sleep and returned to the inhabitants of Foggy Albion. They began to live and live, until the sailor Kvintal suddenly discovered that moonshine could be made from one plant, and began to eat alcohol like a horse. The guy soon drank himself to delirium tremens, often ran with a gun and threatened to shoot the colonists. Three Englishmen conspired and killed the alcoholic Quintal. One more sailor McCoy- began to happily drink the remaining ownerless stocks of moonshine, climbed to swim drunk and naturally drowned. The third rebel Young died of asthma. The de facto king of Pitcairn and the husband of all women was the last rebel: John Adams. In short, it ended up like a thriller Agatha Christie"Ten Little Indians": there were nine Englishmen, but one survived. The Americans told John that the majority of the Bounty rebels had returned, won their case against Captain Bligh in court, were amnestied, and he could sail with them to London without fear of the gallows. Adams flatly refused, stayed on the island and died in 1829.

In 1838, tiny Pitcairn was declared a colony of Great Britain, and still remains its only "overseas territory" in the Pacific Ocean. In 1886, the entire population converted to Adventism (thanks to a fanatical preacher who sailed from the sea) and there they unanimously slaughtered pigs brought from Tahiti, because pigs have the status of “unclean animals” among Adventists. Pitcairn (with a population of 49) now has its own currency, the Pitcairn dollar, which is minted exclusively for numismatists, and a postage stamp, which is also printed only for philatelists. 80 percent of the island's income is tourism, since people from neighboring countries willingly come here for one day: buy a souvenir and swim in the sea. In general, here is a direct illustration of what hot islanders and stealing coconuts can lead to. It's especially pitiful fallen victim religions of pigs, but no one took them into account when romanticizing the story of the Bounty.

Bounty history. Sex, moonshine and breadfruit. The whole truth about the mutiny on the ship "Bounty. Bounty in world culture