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William Bligh, for four years Master of the Resolution under Captain Cook, had absorbed few of Cook's great qualities. Though skilled in the arts of navigation and seamanship, Bligh demonstrated a near obsession with paltry matters: too hastily provoked, he antagonized the officers and crew of HMS Bounty with frequent uncontrolled outbursts of temper.
The 23 weeks spent at Tahiti proved time enough for his men to learn to talk with the Tahitians - and especially with the dark, beautiful native girls. The deep attachments formed made it doubly difficult for the crew to readjust to the spartan life aboard the Bounty.
The discoverer of Tahiti, Captain Samuel Wallis, stayed there only five weeks on his visit in HMS Dolphin in 1767; and even in that short time, discipline deteriorated. Even James Cook, as commander superior in every way to Bligh, had trouble when he put into the island for three months in 1767.
Until two mutineers - Quintal and Sumner - burst into his cabin on the morning of April 28 1789, Master of the Bounty John Fryer had entertained no suspicion of the crew's mutinous state. He usually slept with two loaded pistols by his side; on this day, however, they were locked away in his cabin cupboard.
Having ascertained the meaning of the intrusion, Fryer reacted sharply. Although his dislike of Bligh had increased with the passage of the voyage, he knew where his duty lay. He warned the two men confronting him that they could hang for their action.
There had been countless disagreements between Fryer and his captain; and the former had been outraged by Bligh's promotion of his one-time favourite, Fletcher Christian, over Fryer himself. Now, however, brought up on deck where loyal crew members were being forced into an open boat, he tried to reason with Christian, acknowledged ringleader of the mutineers. With the apparent agreement of Bligh, he even tried to stay on board, but Christian - fearing, perhaps, a last-minute attack from Fryer and the so far uncommitted members of the crew - refused and ordered the Master into the launch.
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