Photo of the sinking sailing ship Bounty...

The end of the Bounty...

The crew member who died was a Fletcher Christian descendant   The Captain is missing and presumed dead.  RIP

The story of the real Bounty (the ship that just went down was a replica) is an interesting story of human psychology and morality   Captain Bligh, by the standards of the day, while a difficult senior officer was not the monster depicted in popular culture.  The mutineers were mostly wrong and ended up escaping but not having a happy ending on Pitcairn Island.  While Captain Bligh's  survival in the life boat is one of the most amazing stories of seamanship and survival ever recorded.

Bligh's brilliance as a navigator was confirmed after the mutiny. Most stories and movies ignore Bligh and his loyal crewmen after the Bounty sails over the horizon. What Bligh did next is still considered a legendary feat of seamanship. He directed a voyage of over 3,600 miles in a small, overloaded open boat with no maps or compass, arriving at the island of Timor in 47 days. One man was killed when the boat's crew came under attack, but none was lost to starvation or disease.

The attack was Fijian cannibals that tried to kill Bligh and the survivors.   

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