In 1787, William Bligh undertook a voyage to collect breadfruit and transport it to the Caribbean where, if successful, its cultivation was intended to provide a staple food source for enslaved people working on plantations in the West Indies. The project was initiated by Sir Joseph Banks, who, along with the owners of the plantations, had petitioned George III for an expedition to be outfitted.
The Admiralty converted a requisitioned merchant ship, Bethia, for the voyage. Renamed Bounty, it was armed with guns and part of its living quarters set aside for 700 plants.
The voyage to Tahiti, which set sail from Deptford in October 1787, was poorly organised. Bounty was far too small for the journey and the cramped conditions below deck saw tensions run high among the crew. The expedition faced numerous delays and Bounty did not reach Tahiti until the following October.

Soon after his arrival in Tahiti, the Ship’s Master, Fletcher Christian, began a sexual relationship with a Tahitian woman he named ‘Isabella’ and several other members of the crew pursued similar relationships with other women. The island was viewed by Europeans as a paradise and misleading stories of Tahitian promiscuity (arising from misinterpretations of Tahitian culture) were popularised in published accounts of Pacific voyages. Visiting sailors often traded iron goods such as nails in return for sex with Tahitian women, introducing sexually transmitted diseases among the population. Initially, Bligh had little opposition to such behaviour but became irritated once it began to impact on the collecting of breadfruit plants and the undertaking of necessary repairs to the ship.

Bounty left Tahiti in April 1789 and soon Christian led a mutiny, during which Bligh and loyal crew members were set adrift. The mutineers then sought to return to Tahiti where they arrived on 22 September. Divisions led to sixteen of the men leaving Bounty on its arrival, hoping to settle on the island. Christian, meanwhile, abducted a group of 20 Tahitians (mainly women and including ‘Isabella’) and set sail once more. While Bligh and his men miraculously made it back to Britain in 1790 (see RCIN 1142197), nothing more was heard of Christian and the mutineers until 1808, when the American whaler Topaz visited the remote island of Pitcairn and encountered the last surviving mutineer, John Adams (1767-1829).

Adams was found living with nine of the women remaining from those taken by the crew and 19 of their children. He and another of the mutineers, Ned Young, had used the Bible taken from Bounty to teach literacy and the Christian faith to the community. Adams, being perceived to have redeemed himself, was later granted a pardon for his participation in the mutiny. However, despite the peaceful scene reported in 1808, for much of the preceding decade, the community on Pitcairn faced violence. The crew viewed the Tahitians as their property and the fourteen women taken by the men were raped and sexually assaulted. Tensions between the mutineers themselves and between the mutineers and the Tahitians were rampant and many men from both groups were killed in violent clashes.

The story of the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ was romanticised in the nineteenth and twentieth century and the violence, rape and abduction of Tahitians was regularly ignored in published accounts. Books (and later films) instead focused on the ship, portraying Bligh as a tyrant, with Christian and the mutineers swashbuckling heroes.

This account of the mutiny and its subsequent history was published in 1884 by the Australian judge Alfred McFarland (1824-1901). It also describes the 1856 decision to transport a group of Pitcairn islanders to Norfolk Island in order to establish a permanent civilian settlement there, the island having previously been home to a penal colony. McFarland dedicated the book to the settlers of Norfolk Island.