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ROSE's captain, Richard Bailey, was also driving her for the movie,
and is still active.  He's been captain on the last 3 boats I've been
on, and is the person who asked me to upgrade my 200T NC to OC, which
is the simple celnav exams.  In  order to take
SPIRIT OF SOUTH CAROLINA to Bermuda, we needed two mates with the OC ticket.

If I recall San Diego to Clipperton was several days, but not a full
week.  The boat just anchored off, although they did go fishing during
the day,
and we lightered everything ashorein a small boat.  There were a
couple of commercial fish collectors, since there's a local rare reef
fish
of interest for salt water aquariums.  They collected a number, but
the temperature change in the fish tank as we went north killed them.

Yep, the land crabs were ubiquitous.  Unintended consequences, some
naturalists decided the feral pigs were eating
a lot of booby eggs, so they killed all the pigs.  Apparently, the
pigs were mostly eating land crabs, and the crabs were eating the
eggs.
Without the preditation of the pigs, the crab population exploded.
The boobies are hanging on, but they were doing better with the pigs
around.

The BOUNTY sinking was a lot of years ago, and I've had a lot of life.
As I showed in my private email, my life before that was interesting,
too.
73, doug



On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 9:32 AM Frank Reed  wrote:
>
> Hi Doug.
>
> Thank you so much for filling us in on your story. Welcome aboard (again)!
>
> You wrote:
> "When the Patrick Obrian books became popular, of course there was an email 
discussion list, and someone on that list arranged for us to go sailing for a 
couple of weeks on "HMS" ROSE, a sorta replica of a British frigate from the 
US Revolutionary War era, that also happened to match pretty well the 
description of HMS SURPRISE in the books."
>
> And of course the former "HMS Rose" eventually became "HMS Surprise" 
especially for the film (sorry, I can't bring myself to capitalize vessel 
names). There are details on the transition on the Wikipedia page: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Surprise_(replica_ship). When you mentioned 
that "email discussion list", I thought I might have to "ping" Don Seltzer to 
get him in on this, but I see he's still reading NavList messages, and he has 
already replied. Like you, I found the amazingly active Patrick Obrian 
discussion group many years ago. And by "many" I mean back in 2003 or so, 
just before I found the NavList community.
>
> You mentioned you got to Clipperton by chartered fishing boat from San 
Diego. How long did that take? I'm guessing something like six days? I 
understand there's no viable "port" at Clipperton, so did your charter boat 
anchor off-shore and wait for you to finish? Or did they go fishing and come 
back?! How long were you on the island? And I have to ask, do the crabs bite? 
In one set of photos from the island, there is an encampment with what 
appears to be foot-tall "tin" walls around it. Did you have to set up 
barriers to keep them out??
>
> Thank you for telling the story of Bounty. That happened just a few month 
after I moved here to Conanicut Island, and of course the sinking was a topic 
of great discussion locally and in the Navlist community. I knew you were 
aboard, but I didn't want to ask you explicitly because of the tragedy of the 
incident.
>
> Glad to see you're enthusiastic about celestial navigation. The USCG exams 
are beastly things, frozen in 1980, but of course that's typical of licensing 
exams in many fields. :/ Perhaps we can get folkks talking about various 
celestial licensing exams here. I'll start a new thread on that. Feel free to 
jump in.
>
> Thanks again,
> Frank Reed
> Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
> Conanicut Island USA
>
> 

   

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