20. Mid-1700s - early 1900s
Maritime Exploration
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20. Mid-1700s - early 1900s Maritime Exploration |
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Hawaiian Islands The first Europeans to see the Hawaiian Islands are believed to have
been a Spanish expedition led by Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542. No subsequent European contact is known before
James Cook in 1778. Tahiti
The first Europeans known to have seen
the island of Tahiti may have been a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in 1605. An
expedition led by Spanish explorer Juan Fernández visited in 1576 and 1577.The British explorer Samuel Wallis visited the
island in 1767. Easter Island The first Europeans known to have visited the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui were led by Dutch explorer Jacob
Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722. A expedition
led by Don Felipe Gonzalez de Ahedo visited in 1770. English
Captain James Cook arrived on Easter in 1774. ----------------
The Father of Australia Episode # 6 of the documentary series The Earth's Garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlVX_1PNm6c
William Hodges The Art of Exploration
Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ab7wSi_pVo -------- Captain Cook The Man Behind the Legend Timewatch documentary (2009) (57:31) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ApP0jr5Wg Death of Captain Cook, a painting by George Carter in 1783. The death of Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii
(c. 1790) The Death of Cook, a water colour by John Cleverly the Younger in 1794. Unfinished painting by Johann Zoffany,
Death of Captain Cook, 14 February 1779 (c. 1795). ------------------------
The Bethia, a cargo ship 91 feet long with three
masts, was built in Yorkshire in 1784 to carry coal. The Royal Navy
purchased the ship in 1787 for an expedition to fetch breadfruit in Tahiti. Four canons and ten swivel guns were added. The cutter (smallest
warship) was renamed HMS Bounty. or HMAV Bounty - His Majesty's Armed Vessel
Bounty. The Royal Society sponsored the voyage and its president, the botanist Joseph Banks, organised it. Fletcher Christian (1764 - 1793). No sketches of Christian are known to exist. Christian,
descended from a once wealthy family on the Isle of Man, sailed with Bligh twice to the West Indies. He joined the Bounty
as a Master's Mate. A
third of the Bounty was sealed off for the breadfruit. There were no marines on board to maintain order. The Voyage from England to Otaheite Bligh's sailing orders were to reach Otaheite by rounding Cape Horn. The Bounty sailed from London on 15 October 1787 and, after
long delays, cleared Spithead on 23 December. The
Bounty stopped in the Canary Islands for five days. Bligh promoted
Christian to Acting Lieutenant, or second in command, on 2 March 1788. The ship reached Cape Horn on 2 April 1788. Storms prevented passage and on 17 April the Bounty turned about and sailed east.
The
Bounty reached the Cape of Good Hope on 24 May and, after five weeks ashore, set sail on 1 July. The Bounty
sailed across the Indian Ocean and south of Australia to Tasmania, arriving on 21 August. One able seaman
died on the way from Tasmania to Otaheite through the poor medical practice of the ship's
surgeon. The Bounty reached Matavai Bay of Otaheite on 26 October -
after ten months at sea - and spent the next five months on the island, cultivating and loading breadfruit
onto the ship. Otaheite HMS Bounty
in Matavai Bay off Tahiti in October 1788. The ship's surgeon died on
Tahiti. The ship departed Tahiti on 5 April 1789. On 22 April,
the Bounty stopped in the Friendly Islands (Tongan Islands) to fetch wood and water. The natives were hostile. Mutiny on the Bounty In the early morning of 28 April,
Christian led 12 men in seizing the Bounty. Christian and several men entered Bligh's cabin and brought him on deck.
A launch was lowered into the sea and Bligh was forced to get into it. More
men wanted to go with Bligh in the launch than stay on board the Bounty with the mutineers. The launch could
hold only 19 men so several men who wanted to go with Bligh had to remain on board with the mutineers. The mutineers also
detained some Bligh loyalists, whose skills they required. Bligh was allowed to take his personal papers, the ship's documents, a sextant, compass, nautical tables,
and a tool box. Bligh was given five days of food. Four
cutlasses. No muskets. Christian kept Bly's maps. Twenty-five
men remained with the Bounty, though not all were mutineers. The
launch was cut adrift in the late morning and Bligh and 18 men set sail for the island of Tofua, about
30 miles away. Tofua could be spotted on the horizon by its active volcano. Bligh intended to sail to
the port of Kopang on the island of Timor in the Dutch East Indies. Bligh, standing
in the launch, is cast off from the Bounty on 28 April 1789. Painting by Robert Dodd in 1790. The mutineers
tossed the breadfruit off the ship and into the sea. Fletcher Christian The Bounty, under the command of Christian, sailed to the
island of Tubuai, about 400 miles south of Otaheite, and arrived around the end of May 1789. The natives on Tubuai were hostile. The Bounty
returned to Tahiti in June, collected about thirty native men and women, and returned to Tubuai. A fort was
built on Tubuai and called Fort George (or Fort Saint George). The natives remained hostile
and eventually scores
of natives were killed and many wounded in a battle with Christian and his men. Most of the
men on Tubuai wanted to return to Tahiti to wait for a ship to take them home to England. The Bounty
sailed to Tahiti and in late September sixteen men went ashore. Of the sixteen men who stayed on Tahiti, eventually one murdered another and was in turn killed by the
natives, leaving fourteen. The Bounty then departed Tahiti to search
for an island to settle. On board were nine mutineers and twenty Polynesians. The mutineers: Fletcher Christian, master's mate; Edward (Ned) Young, honourary
midshipman; John Mills, gunner's mate; William Brown, assistant gardener (botanist); William McCoy, able seaman; Matthew Quintal, able seaman; Isaac
Martin, able seaman; John Williams, able seaman: and
Alexander Smith, able seaman. Of the twenty Polynesians
there were six men, thirteen women and a young girl. Five of the Polynesian men were from Tahiti and one was from Tubuai.
One of the Polynesian women was Fletcher Christian's wife, Maimiti, daughter of a local chief on Tahiti. Bligh's voyage to Kopang Bligh reached the island of Tofua later on 28 April, the day of the mutiny. The natives were hostile. Bligh
and his crew just got away on 2 May. But one sailor was killed by the natives as Bligh and the crew pushed off from shore. Bligh sailed for Kopang. He went through the Fijian Islands without stopping
and headed for the Great Barrier Reef. Bligh
landed on an island off the northeast tip of Australia (Cape York) on 29 May and gathered food. Aborigines appeared as
Bligh set off the next day, on 30 May. The
launch reached the island of Timor on 13 June 1789, after six weeks at sea, and sailed into Kopang the
next day, 14 June 1789. Bligh
sailed some 3,600 nautical miles from the point of the mutiny to Kopang. The botanist died in Kopang. Bligh
and the surviving crew went to Batavia (Java). The ship's cook died on Batavia. Bligh left for England with his clerk and his servant on 16 October.
Four more men died, on Batavia or during
the voyage back to England. Bligh reached
England on 14 March 1790. There was a court-martial in October 1790. Bligh was acquitted. Bligh
was promoted to post-captain. HMS
Pandora In the following month, November 1790, the Navy sent a frigate, the
HMS Pandora, under Captain Edward Edwards, to Tahiti to arrest the mutineers and return them to England for trial. The Pandora
reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791, rounded up the fourteen sailors, locked them in a cage (called 'Pandora's Box') on deck, and set
sail on 8 May. Edwards searched for the
Bounty. He sailed to Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Palmerston, the Fijian Islands and other islands. In August, the
Pandora abandoned the search and sailed for the Dutch East Indies. The Pandora
struck the Great Barrier Reef on 29 August and sank on the following day, 30 August. Four of the Bounty's men, locked
up in the cage, and thirty-one of Pandora's crew drowned. HMS Pandora on the Great Barrier Reef on 29 August 1791. An etching
by Robert Batty (1789 - 1848) from an original sketch by Peter Heywood, honourary midshipman on the HMS Bounty (1772
– 1831). The ten men from the Bounty were held on a Dutch ship, taken
to Cape Town, transferred to a British
ship and arrived in Portsmouth on 19 June 1792. They were held on a ship in the harbour. The court-martial was held on a ship in Portsmouth from 12 to 18
September 1792. Four men were acquitted. Six were judged guilty of mutiny and sentenced to hang. Two received
royal pardons. One filed a petition, received a pardon and was released in February 1793. Three men were hanged from the yard arms of a warship in Portsmouth on 29 October 1792. Pitcairn Island A British sloop first sighted the island in 1767 and
gave it the name Pitcairn, after the first crew member to see the island. The captain of the ship incorrectly charted the island, some 200 miles west of its correct position. James Cook could not find the island in 1773. The above sketch is of Pitcairn Island in 1814. Mayhew Folger of Nantucket On the following day, 6 February, Folger headed for shore
in a small boat. A boat with three men rowed out from
the island and Folger was greeted by 17-year-old Thursday October Christian, the first of the two sons of Fletcher Christian.
On the island, Folger found the last surviving Bounty mutineer.
nineteen years after the mutiny, with nine Polynesian women and 19 children. (Alexander Smith) John Adams, an able seaman from England, sailed on the Bounty as Alexander Smith
(England, 1767 - Pitcairn, 1829). On 15 January 1790, Pitcairn Island
was sighted, some 200 nautical miles off its charted position. All went ashore. The Bounty was unloaded, stripped bare and set afire on 23 January 1790. The ship sank
close to shore. By 1808, when Folger visited the island, all
six of the Polynesian men and four of the thirteen Polynesian women had died. The other mutineers - Christian,
Mills, Martin, Williams, Brown, McCoy, Quintal and Young
- were dead. Just when and how the mutineers and Polynesians died was
never entirely certain - whether by natural causes, illness, accident, fighting or murder. Visitors
passed on different accounts from Adams. There was also a later account by one of the Polynesian women translated into English.
It is generally accepted that Brown, Christian, McCoy, Mills and Williams were killed by the Polynesian
men on 20 September 1993. McCoy and Quintal died in 1799 - Quintal was killed by Adams and Young in
a fight. Young died in illness in 1800. Adams died of natural causes on Pitcairn in 1829.
The Captain from Nantucket and the Mutiny on the Bounty The Mutiny Aboard HMAV Bounty 28 April 1789 Maritime Great
Britain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERROkthuADc Episode from the documentary series History's Mysteries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hadb57vmhsY The True Story of Mutiny on the Bounty Episode from the
documentary series Sea Tales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iFnTjlz7MM The voyage of the Bounty and
Bligh's boat 1741 - 1788? Lithograph by Antoine Maurin, c.1835,
Le trajet de La Pérouse 1785 -
1788 Easter Island 1786 L'Astrolabe and La Boussole in Maui in 1787. Lapérouse A lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TBNHqZFXxg Franck Ferrand Au
cœur de l'Histoire Avec Dominique LE BRUN, navigateur, et Jean-Christophe
GALIPAUD, archéologue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBFcjfqAy8I L'expédition
Lapérouse Au-delà d’un naufrage (Beyond a shipwreck) Documentaire |
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