The ship The Bounty was commanded by Captain Bligh. In 1787 some of the crew, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied against Bligh’s cruel discipline and set him and 18 sailors adrift in a small boat.
This tiny boat crossed 5,793km (3,600 miles) of open sea and landed safely in the East Indies. In 1805 Bligh was made governor of New South Wales and he planted Australia’s first apple trees.
Bligh had visited Van Diemen’s Land in 1777 when he was a navigation officer on Captain James Cook’s Resolution. He returned to the island in the Bounty in 1788 on a voyage that had been intended to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies. The ship had called at the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and the apple trees planted were most likely acquired there.
Blight’s visit on the Bounty occurred on the voyage which ended in the famous mutiny. He navigated a longboat to Timor and continued his naval service.
Four years later Bligh returned to Adventure Bay, again on his way to Tahiti. He recorded in his log that one of the first apple trees that he had planted had survived. The others had been destroyed by fire. He described the fruit of the surviving tree as green and slightly bitter.
Bligh became Governor of New South Wales in 1806. However, he seemed to attract mutiny and was deposed by the New South Wales Corps in 1808.
Credit : Australian Food Time
Picture Credit : Google
