NavList:

William Hawes, you wrote:
"I'm also not sure it is totally factually correct. Nevertheless a bit of an interesting read."

It's a nice write-up and really quite accurate, both in the events and the analysis. Perhaps the only thing "wrong" with the article is the suggestion that the story is new. All of this has been widely known for decades. It sounds like the researcher referenced in the article is studying some relatively minor details of Bligh's testimony upon his return from the Pacific. That doesn't make much of a story, so the author of the article re-told the backstory.

Bligh also very much depended on lunars for longitude. He shot them quite regularly. They could have managed without the chronometer. But the high-quality sextant required for lunars was in fact the first victim of the impending mutiny. Bligh noted with anger in his logbook just a few days before the mutiny that someone had stolen the screw that held the index arm in place during fine adjustment. Without that screw, the instrument was rendered effectively useless. It would have been a clever tactic if it had worked. If those very young men led by Fletcher Christian (the group hopelessly in love with their Tahitian girlfriends) had managed to convince Bligh that navigating back to England was impossible or at least a great risk, then Bligh himself might have "seen the light" and agreed to stay in that paradise while awaiting "rescue" which would come some years later --an eternity in paradise terms. But Bligh was not a young man, and he had been to Tahiti before. It did not seduce him. He immensely enjoyed being treated like a king in Tahiti, but he took his responsibilities to his command seriously. Those breadfruit trees were the stuff of empire!

Personally, I would have chosen the island paradise. Let someone else worry about empire!

Frank Reed
ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA (it's a sorta island paradise!)

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