HMS Bounty
The story of the mutiny on board H.M.S. Bounty is a famous one, as was the 1960 replica of the ship, built in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, at Smith and Rhuland for the 1962 movie starring Marlon Brando. I had a long history with Bounty, beginning when I was 11 as a kid visiting the ship, then working aboard as a tour guide while attending college. The rigger aboard showed me how to splice rope and got me interested in ship rigging as a career. I sailed for the summer of 1991 on Bounty up the east coast of the United States, from Miami to Boston and around New England. In 2003 for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3, I re-rigged Bounty, replacing most of her standing rigging with Dyneema-hearted Hempex, as well as replacing some spars, sails, and running rigging to better represent an 18th century vessel for the screen. Oh…and we also built a full-size copy for the kraken to break in half!
She was built on the same lines as the original, but was one-third larger to accommodate the 70mm movie cameras and track needed, as well as the movie crew for filming. The below-decks area was reportedly not fitted out for the movie, since all the scenes down there were filmed on stage, and the ship was supposed to be burned and sunk to film the end of the real Bounty. Supposedly Marlon Brando objected, and the studio used a 30 foot model (possibly an Angelman Sea Spirit hull!) instead, and decided to do a circumnavigation with her as publicity for the movie. At that point she was fitted with cabins, wood or fiberglass hanging knees to cover the steel ones used in her construction, and the reproduction cooking stove.
I first encountered Bounty as a kid of about 11 years, when my parents and I were moving from Mississippi to Sarasota, Florida; we stopped in St Petersburg, and my step father took me onboard Bounty; I still have a picture of me at her bow.
Later, in 1987, when I attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Bounty had been home-ported in Miami after Turner Broadcasting bought MGM Studios. Bounty was allegedly listed as her parts (“three masts, one wheel, 5 miles of rope”) so it was a while before Turner knew he owned a ship. I saw her at Bayside Marketplace (while looking for Sonny Crockett’s sailboat, St Vitus Dance) and begged for a job onboard. I was hired on the spot as a tour guide. On rare occasions, the ship was taken out for special events, first by Captain Hugh Boyd, then, after a housecleaning by TBS, by Captain John Rumsey. Hugh was from Nova Scotia, and had sailed with Bounty as a teenager after she was built to the South Seas for filming; he had been with her ever since. Rumsey was a sailing friend of Ted Turner’s.