The Bounty Sails Again

By Frank Ryland

A new captain paces the deck of the Bounty as it sails around p Matavai Bay, Papeete, where Captain Bligh spent five months r 2 years ago, just before the mutiny.

FE is Captain Ellsworth Coggins, L from Halifax, Nova Scotia, at’s where MGM studios last year I a replica of Bligh’s famous unty built at a cost of more than (ialf million dollars.

Captain Coggins and his crew 3cked a year or two off Captain gh’s time in getting the Bounty m the Atlantic to Tahiti. They through the Panama Canal to hiti in their 480 ton ship in a tter of 33 days.

Hie voyage, with its crew of 21 nadians and one American, was wentful save for a minor fire »ard, said Captain Coggins. Then, an apparent after thought, “and a iple of 70 miles-per-hour breezes”. )n a visit from Sydney in April, was invited aboard the Bounty - n it was tied up at the Papeete erfront after its daily sail outside reef for shooting scenes off Point ms. )n deck I stepped back into the ti century on a ship contain -400,000 board feet of timber, t is the real thing, with masts

that carry the beauty of 10,000 square feet of canvas. 10 Miles of Rope There is 10 miles of various ropes aboard, nearly 200 double and single rigging blocks, and hundreds of belaying pins. In fancy, one might hear Bligh bark: “You’ll hang for this Mr. Christian”.

Captain Coggins invited me down below.

We descended a dozen steps down the companionway—and entered the 20th century!

Above decks had been the beauty of tall masts and rigging and the nostalgia of a bygone day, but below, all the efficiency and tinsel of Holly wood.

All the cabins are air-conditioned!

There is radio and radar, and all the latest navigational aids.

Still further below are two 200 hp diesel engines that move the new Bounty along at about 10 knots, sail or no sail.

Of course there have been the

times—for the film’s sake—when the vessel has had to be purposely becalmed.

Then cursing British salts have had to lower the boats, and bend their backs as they pretended to pull the Bounty out of the doldrums.

Down below in the skipper’s com fortable cabin there is only one picture on the walls.

It is a framed picture of His Majesty’s ship Bounty in full sail.

Captain Coggins, a former com mander in the Canadian Royal Navy, is serving 12 months on the Bounty.

He is looking forward to returning home shortly to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

"Monotonous"

“It gets very monotonous here,” he said.

“There’s very little entertainment, and the crew are bored most of the time.”

He recalled that the night before they had screened movies down below.

I asked him what the film was.

“Mutiny on the Bounty,” he replied with a smile. “The original one—

There's a new captain in the "Bounty"—and a new "Bounty", too. Captain Ellsworth Coggins (above) is successor to Bligh and Christian in MGM's specially built "Bounty", seen here under sail. —Studio Mackenzie

with Charles Laughton as Bligh, and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian.”

Captain Coggins felt that Bligh had been painted as too much of a villian.

“He was really a fine captain, and the mutiny was inevitable—it would have happened under anybody else,” he told me.

“I have read Bligh’s logs, and read most that has been written about him.

“I have a great admiration for Bligh. I think he did the best he could, and that he even had con sideration for his men in the circum stances.”

The Bounty is such a surprise as it ties up each evening at Papeete that there are always swarms of visitors ready and willing to clamber up the single board gangway and look her over. One gathers that they are something of a trial for those aboard, because of the questions they ask.

Most of Captain Coggins’ crew come from Nova Scotia.

None of them has been allowed to have a haircut for five months, hence their long hair.

The Bounty is dwarfed when the New Zealand liner Ruahine is tied up alongside. Still more when the big French vessel Tahitien is berthed.

Perhaps a stranger contrast still is to be seen every Saturday morning, as TEAL’s incoming Electra circles over the Bounty, before gliding in for a landing on the new 11,000 feet strip where 172 years ago, Captain Bligh anchored in Matavai Bay.