Skip to footer

The story behind the HMS Bounty, sunk by Sandy off N.C. coast

Early Monday morning, two US Coast Guard helicopters rescued 14 crew members of the HMS Bounty, ensnared by hurricane Sandy. But the Coast Guard is still searching for two missing crew.

|
Mark Duncan/AP/File
In this file photo, the tall ship HMS Bounty sails on Lake Erie off Cleveland.

| Washington

Hurricane Sandy has already claimed a well-known victim, as the massive storm has sunk the tall ship HMS Bounty off the coast of North Carolina.

Two US Coast Guard helicopters rescued 14 of the ship’s 16 crew members early Monday morning. The Coast Guard is still searching for the two missing crew, a service spokesman said.

The ship issued a distress call at 6:30, Eastern time, on Sunday evening, according to the website of the HMS Bounty Organization. At that time it lost power, and pumps were thus unable to keep up with water rising in the ship. The vessel was taking on two feet of water per hour, according to the Associated Press.

Bounty Organization officials contacted the Coast Guard, which sent a C-130 aircraft to track the distressed vessel at its location, approximately 90 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. By 4:30 a.m., the situation was so bad that the captain ordered the ship abandoned, according to the website. The Coast Guard says its helicopters pulled 14 survivors from lifeboats by 6:30 a.m. Monday.

In 1789, the original HMS Bounty played a role in the one of the most famous stories in maritime history. A small three-masted sailing vessel sent by Britain’s Royal Navy to the Pacific on a supply expedition, the Bounty was roiled by tension between its crew and Capt. William Bligh.

After landing in Tahiti and taking on a cargo of breadfruit, the Bounty set sail for the West Indies. It never reached that destination. Instead, mate Fletcher Christian led the men in a mutiny against what history has long portrayed as the abuses of Bligh. Bligh and his loyalists were allowed to sail off in a longboat. They reached safety at the Dutch-owned port of Kupang after an arduous journey.

Christian and his followers ended up on Pitcairn Island. They burned the Bounty there and settled on the island with the ship’s livestock, other provisions, and some Tahitian natives.

Passing ships did not discover the enclave until after the turn of the century. At that time only one of the mutineers, and a number of Tahitian women, remained alive.

The ship that sank Monday was a replica of the original Bounty, built for the 1962 “Mutiny on the Bounty” movie, which starred Marlon Brando as Christian. It was constructed from original Royal Navy plans, but was made one-third larger to accommodate cameras and other filming equipment.

Over the years it has starred in a number of sailing movies, including the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film series, in which it was the pirate ship Black Pearl.

Tracie Simonin, director of the HMS Bounty Organization, said that the ship left Connecticut last week bound for Florida and was in contact with the National Hurricane Center as it tried to skirt the massive storm barreling up the East Coast.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The story behind the HMS Bounty, sunk by Sandy off N.C. coast
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/1029/The-story-behind-the-HMS-Bounty-sunk-by-Sandy-off-N.C.-coast
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe