William Bligh
Naval officer, explorer and colonial administrator William Bligh (1754 – 1817) is best known for the infamous mutiny on HMS Bounty, which saw him cast adrift with eighteen others, five days’ food and some navigational instruments in a six-metre launch on 28 April 1789. After an epic 6,700-kilometre voyage, which all but one survived, the boat reached Timor on 14 June.
While the reasons for the mutiny have been the subject of ongoing debate, Bligh's competence as a seaman rather than a commander or leader seems unquestioned.
After joining the Royal Navy in 1770, Bligh spent six years as a midshipman and served as the Resolution's sailing master on James Cook’s third and final voyage to the South Seas (1776–79). He then entered the merchant marine, captaining ships operating in the West Indies before rejoining the Royal Navy to take the ill-farted Bounty on an expedition to gather breadfruit plants in Tahiti and transport them to the West Indies to feed slaves on Caribbean plantations.
Administrative delays and other factors delayed the Bounty's departure until December and ruled out a passage around Cape Horn. Travelling via the Cape of Good Hope, the ship arrived in Tahiti in October 1788 and was forced to stay there for five months so the breadfruit cuttings would set. The mutiny occurred three and a half weeks after the Bounty left Tahiti on 4 April 1789.
The castaways' epic voyage to Timor was characterised by (in Greg Dening's words) "extreme hardship, brilliant navigation, and mutual hatred, as the launch party blamed one another for the mutiny and their plight". Travelling home from Timor via Batavia, Bligh arrived in England in March 1790. In the meantime, the Bounty had left several mutineers in Tahiti and sailed on to Pitcairn Island, where the remaining crew members remained undiscovered until 1808.
Bligh returned to sea to complete the breadfruit mission in the Providence in 1791. While he accomplished his mission and made valuable observations at Tasmania's Adventure Bay, Tahiti, and Torres Strait, the trial and execution of the three Bounty mutineers that Pandora's Captain Edwards had arrested in Tahiti saw accusations about his command and character unanswered.
Despite his notoriety due to the mutiny, Bligh received several other commands and was appointed Governor of New South Wales in August 1806. His orders to clean up the New South Wales Corps' rum trade prompted the Rum Rebellion on 26 January 1808. In the meantime, despite a court-martial for abusive language in 1805 (he was acquitted), he seems to have retained the Admiralty's confidence. He had impressed Lord Nelson at the Battle of Camperdown (1797). He performed well at the Battle of Copenhagen (1805). Still, his promotions to rear admiral of the Blue (backdated to July 1810) and vice-admiral (June 1814) resulted from his seniority as a post-captain rather than official favour. Bligh was elected to the Royal Society in 1801. While his courage, seamanship, navigational skills, and intelligence seem undeniable, Bligh’s reputation is tainted by a fatal inability to control his relationships with his subordinates. He died in London on 7 December 1817.
Sources:
Greg Dening, William Bligh: English admiral, Encyclopedia Britannica
A. G. L. Shaw, William Bligh (1754–1817), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, 1966
Wikipedia
