NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The sinking of the modern day Bounty
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2014 Feb 12, 22:22 -0500
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2014 Feb 12, 22:22 -0500
They did a pretty fair job. Calling it a movie prop is misleading; it was sailed from Nova Scotia to Tahiti and back for the filming. It had a 52 year lifespan, much longer than most ships of that era. And ships of that era were generally hauled out of the water every ten years or less to strip off and replace the entire outer sheathing of planking and decking. The Bounty, in contrast, was neglected for decades, and only a few times had any extensive hull overhauls.Has anyone addressed the fact that it was built as a movie prop by shipwrights who were far removed from the original methods (which might have been better or worse than today- I don't know).
Despite the neglect, the basic structure held up remarkably well in the final voyage. The ship was essentially intact when it finally sank. Those 1960 Lunenberg shipwrights were a competent group.
Don Seltzer
