Mutiny on the Bounty

In 1787, a small British ship left England. Its name was the Bounty. The ship had a special job. It went to the island of Tahiti, far away in the Pacific Ocean, to collect young fruit plants. Then it had to take the plants to islands in the Caribbean.

The captain was William Bligh. He was a very good sailor, but he was hard on his crew. He often shouted at his men and gave them tough punishments. His second-in-command was a young officer called Fletcher Christian. At first, Bligh and Christian were friends.

The ship stayed at Tahiti for almost five months. The weather was warm and life was easy. The men liked the island very much, and some of them fell in love there. When Bligh said it was time to leave, the men were sad. They did not want to go back to hard work on the ship.

Three weeks after Tahiti, there was big trouble on the ship. Captain Bligh was angry a lot. He said bad things about his officers in front of the other men. One day he told Christian that Christian was a thief, because some coconuts were missing. This was not fair, and Christian was very unhappy.

Early one morning in April 1789, Christian and some men took the ship's guns. They went into the captain's room and woke him up. They tied his hands and took him up to the deck. "The ship is ours now," they told him. This was a mutiny — and mutiny was a very serious crime.

The men did not kill Bligh. Instead, they put him in a small open boat. Eighteen other men who liked Bligh went with him. The crew gave them a little food, some water and a compass. Then they cut the rope. The Bounty sailed away, and Bligh's small boat was alone on the huge ocean, very far from any help.

Now there were two stories. Captain Bligh was a brilliant sailor. In the tiny boat, with almost no maps, he kept his men alive on the sea for forty-seven days. He sailed nearly 6,700 kilometres and reached land safely. Only one man died. It was one of the most amazing small-boat journeys in history. Later, Bligh went home to England.

The mutineers knew the navy would look for them. They went back to Tahiti. Some men stayed there. Later, a navy ship found them and took them to England. Three of them were hanged for the mutiny.

But Fletcher Christian and a small group did not stay. They wanted a place where no one could find them. They found a tiny, remote island called Pitcairn. They landed there and burned the Bounty so no ship would see it. Life on the island was hard and often violent, and Christian died a few years later. But some people lived. Eighteen years later, a ship found their children still on the island. Their families live on Pitcairn even today.