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Who were the Bounty mutineers?
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The descendants of the Bounty mutineers include the modern-day Pitcairn Islanders as well as a little less than half of the population of Norfolk Island. Their common ancestors were the nine surviving mutineers from the mutiny on HMS Bounty which occurred in the south Pacific Ocean in 1789.
Aug 24, 2013 · Tom Christian, known as the Voice of Pitcairn for his half-century-long role in keeping his tiny South Pacific island, famed as the refuge of the Bounty mutineers, connected to the world, died...
Mar 5, 2022 · Published March 5, 2022. Updated March 5, 2022, 5:39 p.m. ET. Pitcairn Island, located between New Zealand and Hawaii, was settled by the British crew of the HMS Bounty after their infamous...
- Overview
- The Bounty sets sail to Tahiti
- Mutiny breaks out
- The mutiny’s aftermath
The British naval crew’s rebellion is legendary. But here’s what happened afterward—from marooned mutineers to court-martials.
On April 28, 1789, the men aboard the H.M.S. Bounty, a British naval vessel commanded by Captain William Bligh, mounted a legendary mutiny. Having spent several idyllic months on the island of Tahiti, the men wanted to build a permanent settlement in the South Pacific.
Idyllic islands. An epic journey. A rebellious crew. When the H.M.S. Bounty set sail from England in November 1787, its captain and crew could never have anticipated that their peaceful voyage would end with court-martials, marooned mutineers, and generations of settlers on a far-flung island in the South Pacific.
Now famous for its mutiny, the Bounty has become a big-screen legend, spawning five feature films in the 20th century alone. But the ship’s voyage, and it's unforeseen consequences, were very real.
The Bounty was a vessel of Britain’s Royal Navy, but its mission was peaceful. Veteran captain William Bligh had been tasked with a voyage to gather breadfruit, a tropical fruit related to the fig that the British crown thought would make cheap, nutritious rations for the enslaved workers at sugar plantations in the British West Indies.
Carrying a crew of 46, including two botanists, the ship had no commissioned officers except for Bligh and sailed alone, lacking the protection of other British vessels. But Bligh anticipated a peaceful journey to Tahiti, which had been visited by Captain James Cook in 1769 and was viewed by British mariners as a breadfruit-laden paradise.
In October 1788, after a storm-tossed journey spanning 10 months and 27,000 miles, the Bounty finally reached Tahiti. It was as idyllic as the Bounty’s crew had been told it would be, and they took full advantage of it. They were welcomed by the Tahitians, who traded with them and even took them into their homes. They also formed attachments to the island’s women, who sold sexual favors in exchange for items like nails.
By day, the crew gathered breadfruit and tended the plants; by night, they reveled. Over the course of five months on the island, more than 40 percent of the men were treated for sexually transmitted diseases that had been imported to Tahiti years before by English and French explorers.
Left: Portrait of Thursday October Christian, son of mutineer Fletcher Christian. The mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island, where they fathered a number of children with native women. Their descendants still live on the island today.
Engraving by Valerie Jackson Harris Collection, Bridgeman Images
When the Bounty set sail again on April 1, 1789, the seeds of mutiny had already been planted. The men had experienced Tahiti as a paradise, and Bligh, who was widely known as a strict disciplinarian, was frustrated by his crew’s lack of discipline. The captain was “fault-finding, insulting, petty and condescending” on the journey, writes Bounty expert and author Sven Wahlroos, and “seems to have relished humiliating all his officers.” He singled out his master’s mate Fletcher Christian, scapegoating and punishing him in front of the crew. On April 27, he accused Christian of stealing from the Bounty’s stash of coconuts and punished the entire crew for the theft.
Though historians still argue about the true cause of the mutiny, they agree that for Christian, his captain’s accusation was the final straw. On April 28, a group of mutineers led by Christian armed themselves with the Bounty’s muskets and burst into Bligh’s cabin, taking him prisoner. “I have been in hell for weeks past with you,” Christian reportedly told Bligh.
Chaos ensued and the ship’s crew split into two factions, one loyal to Bligh, the other determined to desert. The 23 mutineers put the captain and 18 other men on a boat, gave them some rations and a sextant to help them navigate, and set the boat adrift. The Bounty was under rebel command.
Left: The British Navy found 10 of the H.M.S. Bounty crew members and charged them with mutiny in a court-martial.
Photograph by Bonhams, Bridgeman Images
Right: In 1940, the infamous mutiny inspired the Bounty Trilogy, a series of novels written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.
At home, Bligh was court-martialed and acquitted of responsibility for the loss of the ship. H.M.S. Pandora then set sail from England on a mission to capture the mutineers. When the crew arrived in Tahiti in March 1791, they captured the 14 surviving mutineers whom Christian had abandoned. But the Pandora ran into a disaster of its own when it foundered on the Great Barrier Reef, and four of the shackled captives drowned.
In September 1792, the 10 men who had been brought back to England faced court-martial. Under English law, any man who remained on the ship was guilty of mutiny regardless of whether he had actively participated. Four were acquitted, and six sentenced to death by hanging. Three of those six were ultimately pardoned, but the other three mutineers—Thomas Burkett, John Millward, and Thomas Ellison—were hanged on October 29, 1794.
By this time, the remaining mutineers and their Tahitian captives had found a safe haven on Pitcairn Island, a far-flung island in the southern Pacific. The verdant, uninhabited island seemed like a potential paradise, and the mutineers soon burned the Bounty and set up a permanent colony there.
But the tensions that had marred their voyage persisted on the island. The Tahitians the mutineers had taken captive resented the English men’s abuse of the women, whom they treated as sexual possessions. One of the Tahitian women, Tevarua, is thought to have killed herself in response to her ongoing mistreatment. In September 1793, the Tahitian men killed four of the eight mutineers, including Christian. Within the next decade, all but one of the remaining mutineers, John Adams, died.
In the years that followed, the mutineers’ descendants set down roots on Pitcairn Island, though they abandoned and returned to the island multiple times in search of supplies and more productive land. Those descendants still live on the tiny island, which is a British Overseas Territory with a population of around 50. In 1957, National Geographic Explorer Luis Marden found what remained of the Bounty off the island’s east coast.
Today, the story of the Bounty is remembered for its infamous place in Britain’s colonial history as much as its adventure and drama. Between disease, the arrival of Christian missionaries, and the sexual exploitation of women, historian Diana Preston told National Geographic in 2017, European explorers “effectively destroyed all the things that people had found exotic and attractive about Tahitian culture.”
His fellow mutineers, including Christian, were dead, killed either by one another or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams; descendants of the mutineers and their accompanying Tahitians live on Pitcairn into the 21st century.
Aug 5, 2020 · All but a handful–a pastor, the schoolteacher, and others–are direct descendants of the mutineers. The only way to reach the island is by ship, but storms and Pitcairn's dangerous harbor have sometimes prevented landings.
Pitcairn Island was settled by the descendants of the mutineers who commandeered the HMS Bounty in 1789. Today, the community on Pitcairn consists of around 50 people who have fascinating...
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