On this day in 1754, William Bligh was born. Following the famous mutiny on HMS Bounty, his name would become synonymous with harsh discipline bordering on tyranny. The mutiny on the Bounty would be only one of four mutinies that Bligh would live through before he retired as Vice Admiral. He was captain of ships that mutinied in the fleet-wide mutinies at both Spithead and the Noire in 1797. As the Governor of New South Wales, now Australia, he was arrested in the mutiny referred to as the “Rum Rebellion” in 1808. In courts marshall which followed the mutinies, Bligh was always exonerated.
If the Bounty had merely sunk instead of mutinied, Bligh would likely be remembered as one of the greatest navigators of the age. Following the mutiny, he sailed an overloaded 23′ open boat, with 18 loyal crew members, on a 47-day voyage across 3,618 nautical miles of the Pacific Ocean to Timor without charts or compass, equipped only with a quadrant and a pocket watch. A recent biography by maritime historian Rob Mundle, Bligh, Master Mariner, makes the case that there is a “lot more about Captain Bligh than the Bounty, mutiny and convicts.”
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