Alexander Martin Model Ship Gallery

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H.M.S. Bounty

In the year 1763 the H.M.S. Bounty at Spithead, England, where she was rebuilt and launched, looked no bigger than a longboat among the tall first rates and seventy-fours at anchor. She had been built by the merchant service at Hall three years before and purchased for 2000 pounds. Ninety feet long on deck with a beam of 24 feet, her burden was little more than 200 tons. Her name, Bethia, had been painted out and at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks she was rechristened the Bounty. She had been many months at Deptford, where the Admiralty had spent more than 4000 pounds in altering and refitting her. The great cabin aft was rigged as a garden, pots standing in racks and gutters running below to allow the water to be used on the bread fruit plants over and over again. The result was that Lieutenant Bligh and the Master, Mr. Fryer, were squeezed into two tiny cabins on either side of the ladderway. The ship was small, really very small. She carried cargoes of stores and articles to barter with the Indians. She was bluff heavy hulled and short masted. With her stout rigging she looked more like a whaling ship than an armed transport of His Majesty's Navy. She carried a pair of swivel guns mounted on stocks forward and six swivel and four pounders aft on the upper deck.

There is a wonderfully interesting story of the historic mutiny on the Bounty by Nordhoff and J.N. Hall published in 1932. They were midshipmen in His Majesty's Navy. It tells of the horrible treatment and confinements of the crew by Bligh. It was no wonder they decided on mutiny and to get rid of Bligh in a whale boat at his own responsibility.

The Bounty made quite a splash in history. She sailed to the South Pacific under the command of Lt. William Bligh, Royal Navy. Just before Christmas 1787 she sailed from Tahiti for the West Indies but before the end of April 1789 Captain Bligh and some of his crew found themselves adrift in an open boat. In this frail craft Captain Bligh made the most outstanding voyage in history.

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