1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift, and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly before setting sail for Pitcairn Island. The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred in the Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of HMS
Bounty from the captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and eighteen loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The reasons behind the mutiny are still debated. Bligh and his adrift crew stopped for supplies on Tofua, where a crew member was killed. Bligh navigated more than 4,000 miles in the launch to reach safety. He then began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island.
Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. A five-month layover in Tahiti, during which many of the men lived ashore and formed relationships with native Polynesians, led those men to be less amenable to naval discipline. Relations between Bligh and his crew deteriorated after he reportedly began handing out increasingly harsh punishments, criticism, and abuse, with Christian being a particular target. After three weeks back at sea, Christian and others forced Bligh from the ship. Twenty-five men remained on board afterwards, including loyalists held against their will, and others for whom there was no room in the launch. After Bligh reached England in April 1790, the Admiralty dispatched HMS
Pandora to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured in Tahiti and imprisoned on board Pandora, which then searched without success for Christian's party that had hidden on Pitcairn Island. After turning back towards England,
Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, with the loss of 31 crew and four
Bounty prisoners. The ten surviving detainees reached England in June 1792 and were court-martialed; four were acquitted, three were pardoned, and three were hanged. Christian's group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time only one mutineer, John Adams, remained alive. His fellow mutineers, including Christian, were dead, killed either by one another or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams. Descendants of the mutineers and their accompanying Tahitians have lived on Pitcairn into the 21st century.
