The Legendary Jolly Boat Lifeboat...
In April 1789, the HMS Bounty left Tahiti and while passing through Endeavour Channel, a number of the crew staged a mutiny. Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal crew members were forced by the mutineers into one of the three small lifeboats and were cast adrift. The Jolly Boat, powered by a sail and with four men rowing at a time, covered 3,600 miles until they reached the safety of Timor.
Historical Background of the Jolly Boat
A coal-carrying merchant ship, named the Bethia operating on the coast of England, was purchased by the Admiralty, renamed the Bounty, and re-commissioned in 1787 for a special mission. She was to sail halfway around the world to Tahiti, collect sapling breadfruit trees and transport them to the West Indies. Owners of the burgeoning British plantations there needed a cheap source of food for the workers. To lead the mission, the Admiralty picked 33-year-old Lt. William Bligh, who had been the sailing master on the HMS Resolution, on Captain Cook's last voyage of discovery.
After trying for 30 days to make it westward around Cape Horn, as he had been ordered, Bligh turned about and headed East; around the Cape of Good Hope, across the whole width of the Indian Ocean, then Northeast into the Pacific, arriving in Tahiti after a l0 month voyage. Bligh and the crew set about collecting the more than 1,000 breadfruit plants they were to take to the Caribbean. They spent five months in Tahiti, during which time Bligh allowed a number of the crew to live ashore, to care for the potted breadfruit plants. Without the discipline and rigid schedule of the sea, the men went native. Three crewmen deserted, hoping to spend their days in this tropical paradise; but were recaptured by Bligh and flogged.
Three weeks out of Tahiti, enroute to the West Indies with the breadfruit plants, Master's Mate (Acting Lieutenant) Fletcher Christian, angered and humiliated over the continual abuse from Captain Bligh took the ship. Of the 44 men on board, 31 sided with Bligh. Of the 31, 18 were forced by the mutineers into one of the three small lifeboats, called the Jolly Boat, and were cast adrift with Bligh. The mutineers, numbering about half of the remaining 25 crewmen, but in command of the Bounty secured all the firearms aboard and sailed the ship to the island of Tubuai. After an unsuccessful three month effort to settle on the island, they returned to Tahiti, put 16 of the crew ashore, some loyal to Bligh, some mutineers. Fletcher Christian and eight Bounty crew, accompanied by six Tahitian men and twelve women, one with a baby, sailed away in the Bounty hoping to hide forever from the long arm of the British law.
Bligh having no charts navigated the Jolly Boat 3,600 nautical miles to safety in 41 days using only a sextant and a pocket watch. Only one man died on the voyage - stoned to death by angry natives on the first island they tried to land on. The Jolly Boat lifeboat voyage was a feat of navigation unparalleled to this day.
The mutineers eventually settled on Pitcairn Island, an isolated rock in the Pacific that was misplaced on British charts. They burned the ship in what is now called Bounty Bay and weren't discovered for 18 years. After all but two of the fifteen men that settled on Pitcairn had been killed in bloody murders, Midshipman Edward Young and Able Bodied Seaman John Adams began building a society based on the ship's bible. Edward Young died in 1800 - leaving John Adams the sole survivor. Today their descendants still live there in a moralistic community, clinging to their tiny rock...
The HMS Bounty in Tahiti - 1789