The Tahiti Mystique   Let me get right to the bottom line. I’m glad I went to (Greater) Tahiti. But why is there such a mystique about the place? For a vacationer, it has lots of beaches, palm trees, and scuba diving, but then so do lots of islands, in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. For a non-vacationing traveler, there are some places of interest, but other islands have similar ones. It does have Polynesian culture—but then so do Samoa and Hawai’i. Actually, the island of Tahiti itself is not particularly interesting, something I had known in advance. Ra’iatea has a special Polynesian cultural monument, but not too many visitors were as eager to see it as I was. Bora Bora and Moorea are very interesting geographically, and beautiful. But why does Tahiti have such a mystique? Nice as it is, it’s frankly not that much better than lots of other places.

I think my point is best made by a film trailer that we’ll look at later of a Brando film from 1962. In the loud, bombastic style of that era, the announcer talks about “Tahiti—for generations the dream island of the Western world !!!” This is of course Hollywood hype as it was done in those years, but it does beg the question: why Tahiti? Why not Samoa, Hawai’i, or for that matter, Tonga or the Cook Islands? Better yet, if you want to limit yourself to French Polynesia, why not Bora Bora? Why is Tahiti the “dream island”?

I’m convinced I have the answer: public relations. But I don’t mean what you think, modern paid advertising. Tahiti has been very lucky historically as being the recipient of “natural PR”, that is, real historic events are connected with it which have not only brought it into the public eye and kept it there, but have done so in an extremely favorable light as the far-off destination of choice, where you can leave Western civilization behind you. The two premier historic events involve Paul Gauguin and the HMS Bounty. Both are interesting in and of themselves, as well as because of the interest they generated in Tahiti, and deserve further discussion before getting to discussing Tahiti itself.

Paul Gauguin   A deep knowledge of art is not necessary to know that the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) is associated with Tahiti. That he moved there to get away from Europe is well known, and most of his paintings involve pictures of Tahitian life. If his signature deep colors and heavy brush strokes don’t indicate his primitive style, pictures of Tahitian women or of Tahitian natural scenes will give it away that you’re looking at a Gauguin. Deux Tahitiennes / Two Tahitian Women (1899), one of his best-known paintings, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (you may have to click on the image to size it): Gauguin: Deux Tahitiennes, and Femme au fruit / Woman Holding a Fruit (1893) is in the Hermitage: Gauguin: Femme au fruit. This is surely a primitive representation of Eve, but, instead of an apple, I’m quite certain that that’s a breadfruit she’s holding, which we’ll talk about shortly.

Gauguin is pronounced: go.GÆ [ng], with æ as in mæt and nasalized, although many English speakers will instead add an N and say: go.GÆN.

I must admit from the outset that, even with as many of his paintings as I’ve seen, I’m not thrilled by his work. For me it’s too heavy, too dark, too primitive. My tastes run to the domestic scenes of Vermeer and landscapes by Ruysdael, the portraits of Gainsborough and John Singer Sargent, the impressionism of Monet and Renoir.

Gauguin was a post-impressionist. Like the impressionists, they continued using vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes, and real-life subject matter, but they went on to emphasize geometric forms to distort objects for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colors. To me, some outstanding post-impressionists were Van Gogh and Seurat, and as I teenager I had a Toulouse-Lautrec poster on my wall, but the darkness of Cézanne and Gauguin are not entirely to my taste. Still, Gauguin is a leading post-impressionist.

But it’s his story that we’re concerned with in our discussion of Tahiti, and it’s not a particularly pretty one. He was married, with five children, and worked in Paris and Copenhagen as a stockbroker. He tired of that existence and started painting. He then became frustrated with both his job and lack of recognition as an artist.

Just as some hippies in a later generation decided to leave their life in the West and go to India to find a guru and acquire a more simple life, Gauguin, too, wanted to leave European civilization and “everything that was artificial and conventional.” He wanted to “live on fish and fruit” and paint in his increasingly primitive style, and he sailed to the tropics.

So he went to Tahiti, right? Wrong, but it’s important to note that wherever he did go, French was spoken. He apparently did not want to leave civilization to the extent that he would leave the francophone world, and in 1887 he went to Panama.

You say that French is not spoken in Panama? Well, it was in the area where the French were attempting to (unsuccessfully) build the Panama Canal. As it turns out, he worked two weeks on the canal, then left. But he stayed in the tropics, and in a francophone area to boot, by going later in that same year, 1887, to Martinique in the French Caribbean. He lived in a hut there and produced a number of works, but then went back to France.

Finally in 1891, he decided to try the Pacific. How do you suppose he decided which Pacific islands to go to? The French-speaking ones, of course, and it was then that he settled in Tahiti. He settled in an area on the west coast, down from Papeete, seeking “a primitive and unspoiled life” with “natural harmony and simplicity”. But it has to be pointed out here that Gauguin was a pedophile. While one image will come to mind when you think of Michael Jackson, Gauguin was instead interested in young girls. In his years in Tahiti he lived with a series of 13 and 14-year old girls, producing at least one child. The authorities and missionaries tried to alter his lifestyle to no avail.

He stayed in Tahiti itself for a decade, from 1891 to 1901, and then that was apparently not simple and remote enough for him, so he moved out to the Marquesas, also in French Polynesia, for three years, 1901-1903, maintaining the same lifestyle. Alcohol and a dissipated life weakened him, and he died there of syphilis in 1903 at age 54. In a sense, you can say that Gauguin’s Polynesian sojourn was an early form of pedophile sex tourism.

It may be said that Gauguin held an idealized, “exoticized view” of the Tahitians. Perhaps that’s part of the image that has impressed the Western world so much about Tahiti.

Also, do keep in mind that, while Gauguin chose Tahiti, Robert Louis Stevenson chose Samoa. Talking about RLS again reminds me of something I didn’t mention when we were touring Valima in Apia, because I didn’t think it significant at the time. There was a picture of a lighthouse on the wall, along with Stevenson’s family. It was at this point that I learned that his father, Thomas Stevenson, was a leading lighthouse engineer. More research now shows that that was the family profession, since Thomas’s father and grandfather were also lighthouse engineers. But there was suddenly more significance when I was touring Tahiti and the driver stopped at the lighthouse at Pointe Vénus on the north shore. She pointed out that this lighthouse was designed by Thomas Stevenson. Further research shows that Robert at age 16 worked in his father’s office in Edinburgh in the summer of 1866 when the lighthouse was being designed, and then, when he was halfway around the world in Tahiti in 1888 with his mother, emotionally visited the lighthouse his father had designed. In any case, what goes around, comes around. Stevenson experienced both Tahiti and Samoa, and chose Samoa.

Before we leave the arts, we should mention once again W. Somerset Maugham, who we discussed in American Samoa regarding his novella “Rain” of 1921. Apparently Maugham often deals with how Westerners fare way off in the Pacific. He is typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on them by their isolation, which was readily apparent with Sadie Thompson and Davidson. Two years earlier, in 1919, Maugham wrote the novella “The Moon and Sixpence”, which fictionalized the life of Gauguin. Maugham writes about a middle-class English (not French) stockbroker named Strickland, who abandons his wife and children to become an artist, first in Paris, then in Tahiti. I’ve often wondered about the unusual title. I read now that some believe that it was taken from a review a critic wrote of a different work, but one in which the protagonist is described as “so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet.” Food for thought.

HMS Bounty   Put together a list of famous voyages made by famous ships. Not just famous voyages on their own, such as what most explorers did, such as Magellan, since their ships aren’t well-known, and not just famous ships, such as the Lusitania, known for being torpedoed before WWI, but not associated with a particular voyage. We’re talking about connecting Famous Voyage X made by Famous Ship Y. In these terms, the list is not that long. There may be more, but this is what I get:

Considering all four historic events, we find immediately that the first three have something in common: all three involved transatlantic crossings, and all westbound, at that, specifically crossing the much-traveled North Atlantic route from Europe to North America.

But the Bounty? Wasn’t that somewhere else, far off? The South Pacific, perhaps? Could it have involved Tahiti? Aha.

That is the case, and explains why the first two film versions of the story were made in Australia, a silent version in 1916 and a talkie in 1932, the events having taken place almost in Australia’s “back yard”. Captain Bligh (pronounced “Bly”) was also later associated with Australia, but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

How about people associated with the above four voyages? In addition to Columbus, volumes have been written about the passengers on the Titanic, and the Mayflower passengers are well known, to the point that it’s a badge of distinction for Americans who can trace their ancestry to a relative who “came over on the Mayflower”, that phrase having become a part of the language. And as for the Bounty, most of us know Captain (William) Bligh and Fletcher Christian.

When I went to Tahiti, I had no thoughts whatsoever about the Bounty, but learned a lot while there, as well as in subsequent research. I want to discuss what I learned in the same way. I had seen on TV years ago bits of pieces of the famous 1935 filmed version of the story with the magnificent Charles Laughton, and the little I knew was essentially based on that: Laughton as Bligh

Perhaps the reader is as vague about the story as I was, and also has similar opinions about the individuals involved as I had. The story has usually been told with a bias toward the mutineers and against Bligh, although today, different thinking tends to apply. It comes to this: while common belief is that Bligh was a tyrant, and caused misery on the ship, his image should not be quite so negative; and that Christian was a wise hero and was right to take matters into his own hands should also be taken with a grain of salt. Things are rarely as black-and-white as they are portrayed.

BREADFRUIT It all starts with breadfruit (remember the Gauguin painting), sort of a starchy melon native to the Malay Peninsula, but which also grows in Tahiti, Hawai’i, and elsewhere in the Pacific and Asia, and, thanks to Bligh, now also grows in the Caribbean. I was told in Tahiti that you can’t starve on the islands, since, even if you have no money, you can go pick a breadfruit and eat well. Each breadfruit is about the size of a cantaloupe, and grows on rather normal looking trees that can reach 20m (66ft). Breadfruit is one of the highest-yielding food plants, and a single tree can yield up to 200 breadfruit. However, the trees produce only at certain times of the year, a point significant to our story. When breadfruit is cooked, I understand it has the taste of a potato, or of fresh-baked bread, hence the name.

There have been numerous scientific expeditions made from Britain to the Pacific, and that’s also the case with the Bounty, which was to go on a botanical mission to the Pacific in 1789. The advantages of breadfruit had been recognized, and breadfruit plants were to be brought to the Caribbean, Jamaica in particular, as a cheap source of food to feed slaves there.

THE VOYAGE The Bounty, a relatively small three-masted ship, had been built in 1784 as a coal-carrying cargo ship under another name. The Royal Navy modified and refitted it in 1787 for its special breadfruit mission, and renamed it. I speculate that they may have chosen the name Bounty because the ship was bringing a new, plentiful source of food to the Caribbean, but that’s only my guess. An area of the ship was converted to house the potted breadfruit plants, and gratings were fitted to the upper deck. This illustration, which is from Bligh’s own 1792 account of the voyage and mutiny called “A Voyage to the South Sea”, shows how the plant pots were fitted and stowed on the ship: Breadfruit on the Bounty

Lieutenant William Bligh was chosen for his experience, including having been navigator on Captain Cook’s third and final voyage in 1776-1779 (2008/25, Kealakakua Bay, Hawai’i). Although not mentioned in earlier portrayals, it turns out that Bligh not only had known and sailed with Christian in the past, they had been rather good friends. Bligh also promoted Christian en route to Acting Lieutenant. Earlier portrayals downplayed that Christian was essentially second in command, and tried to portray him as more of a man of the people, making the mutiny something like a management-labor dispute. Recent researchers have pointed out that Bligh was not at all the epitome of abusive sailing captains, and was relatively lenient compared to others.

The Bounty sailed down to the South Atlantic in 1787 and tried to round Cape Horn in South America. They kept on trying for one full month before giving up. It would seem to me that this time delay is what set their whole schedule wrong and caused them to spend more time in Tahiti (remember, breadfruit trees produce only at certain times), which eventually was the basis for the mutiny, however, that is just my contention.

We discussed in NZ about the three areas that reach south toward Antarctica, and the route of the Bounty involved all three. After unsuccessfully attempting Cape Horn in South America, they turned east and went via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope across the Indian Ocean. They kept south of Australia at Tasmania, and swung around New Zealand northbound to Tahiti. This makes me reflect on two things. The same day I was going southbound along the coast on the TranzCoastal, the Queen Victoria was going south, as well, but I didn’t see it. But out to sea in that same area, over two centuries earlier, the Bounty had sailed those same waters, northbound. Also, I connected from NZ to Tahiti by plane, while the Bounty sailed that route.

The Bounty reached Tahiti in October 1788 after ten months at sea. They stayed in Tahiti for five months, collecting and preparing 1,015 plants. However, Bligh allowed the crew to live ashore and care for the plants, which could have been his big mistake. I suspect without the earlier delay they might not have stayed there so long, and without being allowed to live on shore, the crew wouldn’t have developed connections to the Tahitian lifestyle to the extent they did. They socialized with the Tahitians and learned their customs and culture. Many had liaisons with Tahitian women, and Fletcher Christian married a daughter of a chief. You can imagine 18C British social restrictions on daily life, imagine the hardships of the sailor’s life, and imagine the world they found in Tahiti. Use this as a comparison: US college kids on spring break—but moreso.

THE MUTINY The Bounty sailed from Tahiti on 4 April 1789. They were going to backtrack westbound, but going north of Australia instead of south of it. They got as far as the Tonga area, having sailed 2100 km (1305 mi) from Tahiti in 24 days, when the mutiny broke out on 28 April 1789. There was little struggle. Of the 42 men other than Bligh and Christian, 18 joined Christian, 2 were neutral, and 22 were loyal to Bligh.

Was it labor overthrowing management? If so, did they have a right to do so? Just what was it that they wanted? Nowadays, researchers think differently. There is no indication that Bligh, although a hard man, was any stricter than other naval commanders, and there is no indication that the mutineers wanted anything else than to break away from the strictures of British life in general and a sailor’s life in particular and go live a simple life, having enjoyed the freedom and sexual license of Tahiti.

Both men having September birthdays, Bligh, often portrayed as a middle-aged man, in April was still only 34 (he died at 63), and Christian was still only 24 (he died at 29).

BLIGH Bligh and his men were put into a launch with supplies, but no charts, only a sextant and a pocket watch, and were set adrift. (Was this just?) They were seemingly doomed, but Bligh’s navigational skills saved them. They sailed through Fiji, as I mentioned when I was there, but were afraid to stop because they feared hostility and cannibalism. Then their little open launch sailed between Australia and New Guinea, and arrived in the Dutch East Indies after 47 days, having covered 6701km (1305 mi). It is considered one of the greatest open-boat voyages of all time.

Back in London in 1790, Bligh went before a court martial inquiry, which wanted to investigate his part in losing command of the Bounty. This is a point that is often left out of the story. Bligh was acquitted by the court of any responsibility in the matter. As a matter of fact, he was later promoted from lieutenant to captain.

The breadfruit story doesn’t end there. They continued to have enough confidence in Bligh that in 1791 they had him do the whole thing over again in order to complete the mission. Captain Bligh now commanded the HMS Providence (he had only been Lieutenant Bligh on the Bounty, so any reference to him as Captain Bligh there is inaccurate), which went back to Tahiti on the second breadfruit voyage. He collected 2,126 breadfruit plants and other botanical specimens, and brought them all to the West Indies. As it turned out, the slaves didn’t care for the breadfruit at the time, but since then it’s become a staple.

I said Bligh had an Australian connection, although it’s not a good one. In 1805, Bligh was made the fourth Governor of New South Wales, which, at the time, was much larger than it is today. The British Government might have appointed him because of his reputation as a hard man, one who could maintain order. But his style of governing gave rise to problems with his subordinates (sound familiar?). After continued turmoil Governor Bligh was overthrown in 1808. The aftermath lasted a couple of more years, and delayed Bligh’s promotion to Vice Admiral. An Australian historian has referred to this as “Captain Bligh’s Other Mutiny”. So go figure.

Bligh died in 1817 and is buried in Lambeth, in London. His tomb is appropriately topped by a breadfruit.

CHRISTIAN Christian and the mutineers went back to Tahiti, where they left some crew members, but he remained deeply concerned about being caught. When they left, they apparently shanghaied six Tahitian men to join the eight remaining men. They took eleven women, including Christian’s wife and tried their luck in Fiji and the Cook Islands, but then kept on moving. In early 1790 they rediscovered tiny Pitcairn Island, lying east of Tahiti toward Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Pitcairn been misplaced on the Royal Navy’s charts, and they felt they would be safe there. They unloaded livestock and provisions, and to prevent detection and also to prevent anyone from leaving, they burned the Bounty in what is now known as Bounty Bay.

The new colony started well, with a good climate and plenty of food, water and land. However, conditions deteriorated and the colony fell into anarchy. Some Britons treated the Polynesians as servants, and in 1793 a conflict broke out between the Britons and Polynesians, almost as a race war, and everything collapsed. Christian and four mutineers were killed, as well as all six Polynesian men. Later, survivors built a still and brewed an alcoholic beverage from a local plant, and more chaos followed, one man dying after a drunken fall. Two men killed a third after he threatened to kill the whole community. In 1800, one of these two died from asthma., and it’s impressive to note that this was the first death on the island due to natural causes.

Finally, normalcy returned. This last man brought peace back to Pitcairn island, along with nine Tahitian women and a couple of dozen children.

In 1808, an American ship finally visited the island with its tiny surviving community. When word reached the British Admiralty, that surviving man was granted amnesty. In 1838, Pitcairn was incorporated into the British Empire. In 1856, the British Government granted Norfolk Island to the Pitcairners, since the original island was getting too small for the population. Norfolk Island is an Australian territory located near Australia and New Zealand, and is noted, aside from its Pitcairner population, for the Norfolk Island pine. Pitcairn today is a British Overseas Territory with a population of about 50.

Fletcher Christian was survived by his wife and three children. His elder son is the ancestor of almost everybody surnamed Christian on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, as well as many descendants who emigrated to Australia and New Zealand.

It is believed that Fletcher Christian was indeed killed in that uprising, yet many conflicting stories have arisen about him: that he died of natural causes, was a suicide, went insane, or was murdered. However, rumors have persisted for over two centuries that he faked his death and in actuality found his way back to England.

Even if that is not the case, rumors can take on a life of their own, which gives rise to one of the most intriguing possibilities coming out of this story. Many scholars believe that, not Christian’s return, but the RUMORS of Christian’s return to England helped inspire the title character in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” of 1798 (2006/15).

When I was in Fiji in the museum in Suva I was looking for a relic that I’d read was there, but that I couldn’t find. I asked, since the area was under reconstruction, and was pointed to an object lying unceremoniously on the floor with a bunch of other artifacts. It was about the size of a person, and did indeed turn out to be the burned rudder of the Bounty, found at some point and brought back from Pitcairn Island. It was this rudder that inspired a man in 1957 to go to Pitcairn and dive to find the wreck, which he did.

Only two men commanded HMS Bounty, William Bligh and Fletcher Christian. The mutiny helped burnish the image of Tahiti as a distant place to go to lead a carefree life, but the reality of Pitcairn Island was really quite different.

Bounty Portrayals   The story has intrigued for over two centuries. Here are some selected highlights.

THE 19C In 1816 “Pitcairn’s Island” opened in the Drury Lane Theater in London.

In 1823 Lord Byron (2008/15 “Staubbachfall”) told the story in “The Island”. These selected lines show clearly whose side he’s on:

In 1879 Jules Verne wrote “Les révoltés de la Bounty” (The Mutineers of the Bounty). French Wikipedia tells more about it than English Wikipedia, and indicates that Verne, after starting in medias res with the mutiny and without any background, concentrates on Bligh and leaves only the last couple of chapters to Christian and Pitcairn. This seems to indicate where his sympathies might have lay.

THE EARLY 20C Already mentioned were these two films, both made in Australia: the 1916 silent first, later followed by the 1933 talkie, which preceded the famous Hollywood version by two years. It was called “In the Wake of the Bounty” and not only did it star Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian, it was his screen debut. When Flynn became famous in Hollywood for playing pirates a few years later he told people about this film, but few believed him. Flynn, from Hobart, Tasmania, filmed it in a Sydney studio, but often claimed he made it on location in the South Pacific, for effect.

THE NOVEL The real turning point about the Bounty in the 20C was the publication of the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. An indication of the novel’s importance to Tahiti is the fact that you can today visit the James Norman Hall Museum there, his former home.

The best-selling novel appeared in three parts. In 1932 the event was described in “Mutiny on the Bounty”, in 1933 the Bligh afterstory appeared in “Men Against the Sea”, and in 1934 the Christian afterstory appeared as “Pitcairn’s Island.” In 1936 the three novels appeared together in “The Bounty Trilogy”. Still and all, it must be remembered that the novel is historical fiction, in other words, fiction based on historical events. Given that, one has to be careful about being biased toward either Bligh or Christian.

THE 1935 FILM The most famous filmed version is the classic 1935 black-and-white one starring Charles Laughton as Bligh (picture shown earlier) and Clark Gable as Christian. It was one of the biggest hits of its time, and won the Oscar for Best Film that year. It leaned on the novel and used its name, “Mutiny on the Bounty”. It portrayed Bligh as an abusive villain. It had many inaccuracies, not being based on history but on a novel which had already taken historical license. Various brutalities supposedly caused by Bligh were fiction. The mutineers are shown killing some loyal crewmen during the takeover, and that never happened—there were no deaths during the mutiny.

But one thing was quite accurately done. Sailors of the period had to be clean-shaven, so Clark Gable had to grudgingly shave off his signature moustache for the role: Gable as Christian

During the 1930’s there were many authentic wooden sailing vessels still available for the filmmakers to use, so no ship needed to be purpose-built. Having read how small a ship the Bounty was, I suspect this depiction in the film is accurate: 1935 “Bounty”. That’s Laughton in white as Bligh at the back of the launch.

In the final scene Gable as Christian gives a rousing speech about establishing a perfect society on Pitcairn as the fruit of the mutiny. Given what really happened on Pitcairn, it is unknown if the filmmakers realized the irony of inserting that speech. More likely, Christian was hopeful for the future, but couldn’t really have been that self-assured.

Here’s the rather florid trailer, typical of the time, on YouTube: 1935 Film Trailer

THE 1962 FILM In 1962 the first color version came out, also based on the novel and also using the name “Mutiny on the Bounty”. It starred Marlon Brando as Christian and Trevor Howard as Bligh. It shares some inaccuracies with the 1935 film, and presumably with the novel on which both films are based, such as showing Bligh and Christian meeting on the Bounty for the first time, while they had actually sailed together before, and portraying Christian as resolute and heroic while in reality he was indecisive and prone to nerves. But this version also shows Bligh as a much older man, and has Christian dying while trying to save the Bounty from burning. The film was a financial and critical failure, and is generally considered the least accurate of the filmed versions.

For this film, they had to purpose-build a replica of the Bounty, called the Bounty II which was supposed to be actually burned at the end of the film. To his credit, Brando refused to continue filming if that was going to be done, so a second replica was built that was actually burned. The original replica survives today, and sails for hire.

Here is the somewhat pompous trailer on YouTube. Listen for that quote mentioned earlier on Tahiti, and also hear it described as “the land that has always represented escape from civilization”. This, actually, has become true in people’s minds, even though Tahiti isn’t really much different from other Polynesian islands: 1962 Film Trailer. You may want to pause the video at 0:25 to inspect the route map of the Bounty.

THE 1984 FILM The last film made was the one in 1984. It starred Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh. As indicated by the different name--it was simply called “The Bounty”--it was not based on the best-selling novel from the 1930’s, but instead on a 1972 book called “Captain Bligh and Mr Christian”. It’s a revisionist telling of the story. Just as the film “Dances With Wolves” is revisionist in portraying Native Americans sympathetically and not as the savages of traditional Westerns, “The Bounty” and the novel IT is based on are revisionist in the attempt to tell a more accurate story based on scholarly documentation. This film is therefore considered by far the most accurate portrayal and the one closest to historic events, with some scenes coming directly from Bligh’s log. It is more sympathetic to Bligh, and portrays the youthful indecisiveness of Christian. It showed they had been friends and had sailed together earlier, which makes the turn of events even more compelling as their relationship deteriorates. It not only shows the inquiry into Bligh’s having lost the Bounty, it starts and ends with it, Bligh telling the whole story as a flashback. Bligh is not only acquitted for the loss, he is commended for the voyage in the open launch.

Mel Gibson describes Bligh as stubborn and not suffering fools, but brilliant. He describes Christian as a young lad who behaves like one, making this serious mistake the first time he tries to rebel. He was an opportunist who set people adrift without real justification.

Also considered to play Bligh was Oliver Reed, and to play Christian, Christopher Reeve and Sting. The replica of the Bounty that was purpose-built for this film is called the Bounty III. It was on display for many years in Sydney and is now in Hong Kong.

This film, too, does have some historical errors. The most serious one is the plot device that the mutiny was triggered because Bligh, on leaving Tahiti, wanted to attempt again going around Cape Horn and end up circumnavigating the globe. In reality, Bligh had strict orders to safeguard the breadfruit plants as much as possible, since they were the whole point of the mission, and return westward around the Cape of Good Hope. Besides the dangerous rough seas at Cape Horn, the Antarctic temperatures would have been detrimental to the plants.

There is also an anachronism of interest. Abel Tasman used two Dutch provinces to name the regions on either side of the Tasman Sea, New Zealand and New Holland. Although Australia is referred to by name in this film, it wasn’t until 1824 that New Holland was officially renamed Australia.

When I was on the ship in Tahiti, they had a screening of “The Bounty” on board. I’m glad I saw it while there, given its closeness to the historic events. But I noticed a very obvious inaccuracy. Here is the end of the film on YouTube; see if you spot it (the last third of the clip is credits): 1984 Exoneration & Finale

Here’s the inaccuracy: the word “lieutenant” in British usage is pronounced lef-tenant, and in American usage is loo-tenant. As British as the story is and as British as most cast members were, it’s surprising that they uniformly say loo-tenant. It can’t be an accident. The director must have made a conscious decision to do it. But why? Didn’t he have any faith in Americans understanding the word? I wonder how much they had to twist Sir Lawrence Olivier’s arm (as the judge) to modify his normal way of saying it.

The dual events in the 1930’s of both the best-selling novel coming out and the classic film winning the Oscar were very beneficial to Tahiti, its reputation, and its ability to attract visitors, and the two later films kept on reviving interest periodically.

Summation   In discussing Paul Gauguin and the Bounty, other than the fact that they’re both interesting stories, the point I’ve tried to make is that there is a lot of history promoting Tahiti as THE place to go to escape civilization. Tahiti (and its nearby islands) is very nice, but the image is larger than reality. Samoa, Hawai’i and other places are just as nice and can be just as remote. Visit them all.