Bligh's open boat crossed 3,618 nautical miles after mutiny
On this day · 28 April 1789
Cast adrift by Fletcher Christian in 1789, Bligh reached Timor in 47 days, while the mutineers' fates split four ways.
The mutiny on HMS Bounty broke out on 28 April 1789 in the South Pacific near Tonga, when master’s mate Fletcher Christian and 18 mutineers seized the ship and set Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 loyal men adrift in an open boat. Bligh then navigated that boat 3,618 nautical miles to Timor.
The Bounty had spent five months at Tahiti waiting for the right season to collect breadfruit plants for the West Indies, and the crew had lived ashore, taken Tahitian partners and acquired tattoos. It was also an overcrowded ship with no marines aboard to back the captain’s authority. Three weeks after leaving Tahiti, discipline collapsed.
The boat was 23 feet long and dangerously overloaded. With a compass, a sextant, a quadrant and two books of navigational tables, Bligh stopped at Tofua for supplies and then sailed 47 days west to Timor. That distance, about 6,700 km, is roughly London to Delhi.
What became of everyone else took decades to emerge:
| Group | Who | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Bligh’s launch | Bligh and 18 men | Reached Timor; Bligh returned to England to report the mutiny |
| Pitcairn settlers | Christian, 8 mutineers, 6 Tahitian men, 12 Tahitian women | Landed 15 January 1790, burned the ship; Christian and all the Tahitian men were later killed |
| Men on Tahiti | 14 seized by HMS Pandora in 1791 | 4 drowned when Pandora sank on the Great Barrier Reef |
| Court-martial | The 10 survivors | 4 acquitted, 3 hanged, 2 pardoned, 1 freed on a technicality |
The Pitcairn colony stayed hidden until 1808, when an American sealing captain, Mayhew Folger, stumbled on it and found women, children and one surviving mutineer, John Adams. Britain paid little attention while it fought Napoleon; Royal Navy ships rediscovered the island only in 1814. Adams died in 1829, and the island’s capital, Adamstown, is named after him.
Bligh was no stranger to trouble: by History.com’s count he faced three mutinies in his career. Pitcairn, now a British overseas territory, has just a few dozen residents, all but a handful descended from the mutineers and their Tahitian companions.
Sources & references
5 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 4 independent sources.
