Vol. 64, No. 1 Spring 2019 80


2.


aſt er the Bounty mutiny is a myth-laden object. Here, ship modeling can help advance our research. In this instance, a model of that boat could help us to better understand the context of the event; consider the reality of nineteen (later eighteen) men voyaging that far in an open 23-foot boat while still surveying coastlines and islands as they went!


And while the description on the package and website of the company connect this boat to that very journey, the boat is the wrong one. Bligh and his men were put into Bounty’s launch, not its jolly boat. T e jolly boat had such a worm-eaten bottom that not even the mutineers dared set adriſt their former shipmates in such a wreck of a boat.


Bligh’s journal of the boat’s


journey is readily


available in reprint; there is easy access to detailed description of the boat and how it was modifi ed under way to make room for the many people on it. T e reprinted journal even includes the draſt from which the launch had been built: the launch was three feet longer than the jolly boat, rigged with two short masts instead of one, and so on. It featured a windlass and davit to assist with handling the ship’s anchors. T ese were thrown overboard right at the beginning of the boat’s journey, but were part of the launch’s design. T ere is a full-scale reconstruction of the boat at the Exeter Maritime Museum in England, but information is even more readily available: the line-drawings for both launch and jolly boat are included in John McKay’s T e Armed Transport Bounty, published in the Anatomy of the Ship-series


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