The world in the Age of RevolutionSociety and economy

Mutiny on the Bounty

Part of the crew of the British ship Bounty, returning from Tahiti with breadfruit seedlings, seized the vessel under the leadership of Fletcher Christian and cast its commander, William Bligh, adrift in an open launch with 18 loyal sailors. The map shows the route of Bligh’s launch to Timor.

Date: 28 April 1789exact date
Place: Open sea south of Tofuaapproximate locationtoday: Tonga · Southeast Asia and Oceania
Route: Site of the mutiny → Tofua Island → Bligh Water (Fiji) → Banks Islands → Restoration Island (Great Barrier Reef) → Cape York → Kupang (Timor)
Participants: Kingdom of Great Britain, William Bligh, Fletcher Christian
Threads: The world in the Age of Revolution

The expedition was to carry breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies as cheap food for slaves on the plantations. After five months on Tahiti discipline had slackened, Bligh’s constant fault-finding had embittered the officers, and at dawn on 28 April 1789 Christian started a mutiny.

Bligh navigated the overloaded launch more than 6,500 km — through the Fiji islands, along the Great Barrier Reef and through the Torres Strait — to the Dutch port of Kupang on Timor, which the sailors reached on 14 June, having lost only one man, killed on Tofua. The mutineers, after stays on Tubuai and Tahiti, took refuge on remote Pitcairn Island, where their descendants still live; the frigate Pandora, sent after them, seized fourteen sailors on Tahiti but was herself wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef.

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