Mutiny on the Bounty: Tahiti to Pitcairn

Bounty reached Tahiti on 26 October 1788 and stayed five months. The paramount chief Tynah, who remembered Bligh from Cook's voyage fifteen years earlier, greeted him warmly. At Point Venus the crew set up a nursery and collected 1015 breadfruit plants. Christian formed a close relationship with a Polynesian woman named Mauatua, to whom he gave the name "Isabella". Bounty sailed on 4 April 1789.

In the early hours of 28 April 1789, Bounty lay about 30 nautical miles south of Tofua when Christian seized the ship. Three men took hold of Bligh and tied his hands. Nineteen men were crowded into a 23-foot launch with only seven inches of freeboard. Bligh's party landed on Tofua, where quartermaster John Norton was stoned to death. The island is now considered uninhabited.

Location precision: The mutiny happened at sea about 30 nautical miles south of Tofua; the pin marks the island itself.

After the Great Barrier Reef was sighted on 28 May, Bligh found a navigable gap and sailed the launch into a calm lagoon. He named the first Australian island he reached Restoration Island, because the oysters and native fruits they found greatly restored their spirits, and the date was Oak Apple Day, the anniversary of the restoration of King Charles II in 1660.

Visitor guidance: The island is a national park reached by private boat only.

On 14 June 1789 Bligh landed at Kupang after 41 days and 3,618 nautical miles from the Tonga Islands. The launch sailed into the harbour under a makeshift Union Jack. Bligh reported the mutiny to the authorities and wrote to his wife: "Know then, my own Dear Betsey, I have lost the Bounty". Kupang had been a port and trading post through the Portuguese and Dutch colonial eras.

Location precision: The sources name the harbour and town but not an exact landing spot, so this stop is left unpinned.

Christian rediscovered Pitcairn on 15 January 1790, 188 nautical miles east of its recorded position, and Bounty was set ablaze and destroyed on 23 January. Later John Adams used the ship's Bible to teach literacy and Christianity on the island. Today many of its roughly 40 inhabitants descend from the mutineers, and the only access is a small pier on Bounty Bay.

Location precision: The pin marks the island as a whole, not the exact spot where the ship burned.