The " Mutiny on the Bounty " is one of the most far-famed story in marine history . The colored story state of a autocratic British naval captain , William Bligh , who is subvert by half his crew and condemn to sure death in an overcrowded lifeboat with stingy rations . But thanks to some brilliant seamanship and disciplined rationing , Bligh and his 18 firm sailors survived 48 days crossing 3,618 nautical miles ( about 4,163 miles or 6,700 kilometers ) of storm - ravaged sea to make it to bring and safely return to England .
The saga of the HMS Bounty has been the national of three major move flick , all of which portray Bligh as the poorly - tempered villain , and Fletcher Christian , the dashing mutineer , as the hero . ( A smolder Marlon Brando play Christian in the 1962 version ; Mel Gibson did the purity in 1984 . ) But nearly lose among the sensational contingent of the mutiny and Bligh ’s heaven-sent journeying home is the reason why the Bounty had sailed midway around the globe in the first place : breadfruit .
Breadfruitis a tropical superfood , with each spiky , football - sized fruit packing loads of starchy calories as well as some protein , calcium and minerals . It can be eaten roasted , fried , moil or even grate into flour . A single breadfruit tree can bring about 250 fruits per time of year andremains generative for 50 class .
But why did breadfruit weigh a lick to the Royal Navy in the late 1700s ? Because the British Empire , which had recently lose 13 troublemaking colonies in North America , was rethink its strategy for glean maximal profit from its far - throw away territorial possessions . fire by Enlightenment thinkers like Carl Linnaeus , the first rightful plant scientist , Britain was lay itself as a ball-shaped clearinghouse for food crops and other plants that could be deracinate from their aboriginal soils and put to work elsewhere in the empire .
The architect of this " botanical empire " was Joseph Banks , a wealthy British landowner and plant scientist who accompanied ( and helped fund ) Captain James Cook on his first explorative voyage to the Pacific in 1769 aboard the HMS Endeavor . bank discovered rafts of new works metal money in his two - year journey with Cook , including the Artocarpus communis , which grow on the Polynesian island of Tahiti .
At the same time , Britain was ramping upsugarcaneproduction at its plantations in the Caribbean , primarily in Jamaica . The Plantation were operate on slave trade union movement ship in from Africa , and feeding the slave , which numbered in the hundreds of thousands , was becoming more and more difficult .
Back in England after his adventures with Cook , Banks conceived of an ambitious plan to transfer the fecund breadfruit tree trees all the way from Tahiti toJamaicaas a nutrient - ample food beginning for the slaves . And bank knew just the man to do it , a proven seaman who wait on under Captain Cook on his third ocean trip to the Pacific , the 33 - year - erstwhile Lieutenant William Bligh .
John McAleeris a history professor at the University of Southampton , and former curator of majestic and nautical history at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich , England . He state that Banks ’s 18th - 100 visual sense of a networked empire that spanned the Pacific and Atlantic and Indian oceans marked the start of the globalized creation .
In the 1790s , McAleer says , Britain was importing 20 million pounds ( 9 million kilograms ) of tea from China , which was n’t a British colony like India , but still a worthful trading pardner . Banks , in his botanical splendour , see a way to shuffle around Britain ’s global resources to " embrocate the imperial system . "
" If you could get breadfruit from the Pacific to the Caribbean , you could make those slaves sour harder and produce more dough and more cotton , and then sell that and make more money to be brought to India and China to be exchange for tea leaf in Canton , " says McAleer , co - author of " Captain Cook and the Pacific : Art , Exploration and Empire " with Nigel Rigby .
The mutiny almost spoiled Banks ’s plan . When Bligh ’s crew ditched him on the way back from Tahiti , they also dumped the breadfruit saplings into the beverage . fantastically , when Bligh miraculously made it back to England , he bear a second appointment to go after the unredeemed breadfruit . This time it was successful , and Bligh finally arrived in Jamaica in 1793 with afloating nurserycontaining 678 surviving Artocarpus communis tree .
Irony of all satire , the enslaved citizenry on the sugar orchard hated the nearly tasteless Artocarpus altilis andfed it to the pigs . Still , Bligh ’s Artocarpus communis tree flourished in the Caribbean , and eventually , after some culinary experimenting , it became a raw material of the Jamaican dieting . Today the tree grows insome 90 countries .
