Captain Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty from Hordern House

- by Michael Stillman

Next we have a couple of documents signed by the two major players in this event while onboard the Bounty. Item 18 is a fragment of a manuscript document signed by Captain Bligh on December 29, 1787. This was only a few days after they had departed, but already bad weather had caused damage to the ship. Repairs had to be undertaken even as the ship made its journey south and west to still more difficult meteorological challenges ahead. Hordern House notes that documents signed by Bligh on the Bounty very rarely come to market. AU $117,500 (US $86,044). Item 59 is a partial document signed by the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian. The document was signed on April 16, 1788, while the Bounty was making its unsuccessful attempt to navigate its way around Cape Horn. The following day, Bligh determined the Horn was impassible and headed east to take the long route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. This document is also signed by John Fryer and William Elphinstone, two crewmen who remained loyal to Bligh and made the 3,600 mile escape with him. Christian's Bounty signatures are noted to be "exceptionally rare." AU $128,500 (US $94,022).

The British were determined to bring the Bounty home and try the mutineers, so in 1790 they authorized the mission described by ship's surgeon George Hamilton in A Voyage round the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora, published in 1793. The mission could hardly be called a great success, though 14 of the mutineers were captured (actually, a few were not mutineers, but loyal seamen who had to stay with the Bounty as there was insufficient room on Bligh's long boat). The Pandora discovered the 14 still on Tahiti, but attempts to locate where Christian and the others, along with the Bounty, had gone were unsuccessful. They had run to isolated Pitcairn Island, and sunk the Bounty so it would not be spotted. Pitcairn would not be visited until 1808, by which time Christian and all but one of the mutineers had died, though their wives and children survived. Pandora Captain Edward Edwards had placed the prisoners in a cage, known as "Pandora's Box." After months of unsuccessful searching for the others, Edwards ran his ship onto a reef on the return voyage. As the ship sank, Edwards was content to let the boxed prisoners go down with it, but a mate onboard threw them a key, allowing ten to escape. Eventually, the ten were returned to England for trial, and three were executed, but 50-plus sailors from the Pandora lost their lives on this miserable voyage. Item 41. AU $17,250 (US $12,519).

You may reach Hordern House at +61 (0) 2 9356 4411 or books@hordern.com. Their website is found at www.hordern.com.