PANDORA’S BOX – THE DAFFODIL EFFECT &The BOUNTY MUTINEERS & THE BOTANY BAY ESCAPEES
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012‘On 17th March 1790, a small paragraph appeared in the Times announcing that William Bligh, fresh from his remarkable voyage across the Pacific, was expected in London later that afternoon. He had arrived in Portsmouth three days earlier’. John Toohey, Captain Bligh’s Portable Nightmare, 1998
1790 – Portsmouth, March: Eager to give testimony to the Admiralty and put his side of the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ story Captain William Bligh RN arrived in England on the 14th March 1790.
The small paragraph became a story of blazing headlines. The ‘daffodil effect’ there was much more than Bligh’s side to that story.
1789 – 28 April, mid-ocean: A year earlier, at gun-point in the early hours of the morning, Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, Captain Bligh’s second-in-command on HMS Bounty,forced his commander with eighteen (18) fellow crew off the ship and into a small oared cutter.
Despite having little food and water, scorched by sun and wind, they survived forty-eight (48) days in the open boat.
Bligh made the lives of his fellow castaways a misery as they rowed and nudged their drifting craft towards land.
It must be said however, without Bligh’s excellent celestial navigating skills, none might have survived the 3600 miles (6400km) voyage to Dutch West Timor.
Only one (1) crewman John Norton did not make it to Timor. He was stoned to death when the group landed on Tofra Island to collect water.