The open-boat voyage to Timor

William Bligh · 1789 CE · Earth

The open-boat voyage to Timor — William Bligh · 1789 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Bring eighteen men, cast adrift in a 7-metre launch, to the nearest European settlement alive.

Historical context

The Bounty was carrying breadfruit seedlings from Tahiti to feed the enslaved workers of the West Indies when Fletcher Christian took the ship on 28 April 1789. Bligh was put into the ship’s launch with eighteen men, no chart of the seas ahead and, by his own reckoning, provisions for five days, and brought all but one of them alive to the Dutch settlement at Kupang on Timor.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Cast adrift off Tofua

    28 April 1789

    At dawn on 28 April 1789 Fletcher Christian puts Bligh and eighteen men into the launch with five days’ food.

  2. Stones on the beach

    1789 CE

    Landing on Tofua for water and breadfruit, the castaways are attacked; Bligh judged that the islanders struck once they knew the boat carried no firearms.

  3. Chased through Fiji

    May 1789

    Threading unknown islands in early May, the launch is chased by two large sailing canoes until the last of them gives up two miles astern.

  4. Coconut shells and pistol balls

    1789 CE

    Bligh weighs every ration on scales made from a coconut shell and its twin, balanced against a pistol ball of known weight.

  5. A gap in the reef

    28 May 1789

    On 28 May the boat finds a gap in the surf of the Great Barrier Reef and slips into smooth water inside.

  6. Restoration Island

    29 May 1789

    On 29 May, in Bligh’s journal, the crew land on an island of oysters and wild berries, and next morning eat a hot stew, their first cooked meal in weeks.

  7. Through the Torres Strait

    June 1789

    In the first days of June the launch works west through the reefs and islands of the strait into the Arafura Sea.

  8. Timor, 14 June

    14 June 1789

    On 14 June, 47 days after the mutiny, the launch anchors off Kupang under a small jack Bligh had made from the boat’s signal flags; by his log it had run 3,618 nautical miles from Tofua to the first sight of Timor.

Outcome

Reached Kupang on Timor on 14 June 1789, 47 days after the mutiny, having run 3,618 nautical miles by the log from Tofua to Timor, with the loss of one man on Tofua; four more died at Kupang and Batavia, one on the passage home, and the surgeon was never heard of again, so that twelve of the nineteen saw England.

William Bligh

British naval officer who, cast adrift after the mutiny on the Bounty, navigated an open boat 3,600 nautical miles to Timor.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring