Bounty (1978 ship)

Bounty[2] (popularly HMAV Bounty)[FN 1] was built in 1977/78 for the movie The Bounty starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. The ship launched on 16 December 1978[3] and was decommissioned in 2017.

This article is about the replica ship. For the original ship, see HMS Bounty. Not to be confused with Bounty (1960 ship). For other uses, see Bounty (disambiguation).
Bounty
History
OwnerHKR International[1]
OperatorHong Kong Resort Company [1]
BuilderOceania Marine (Whangarei, New Zealand) [2]
Laid down1977
Launched16 December 1978[3]
Decommissioned1 August 2017
HomeportDiscovery Bay (Lantau Island), New Territories, Hong Kong,[1]
Identification
StatusUnknown, presumed to be in Thailand
General characteristics
Tonnage247 [2]
Displacement387 tonnes
Length
  • 42 m (138 ft) (LOA)
  • 30 m (98 ft) (on deck)
Beam7 m (23 ft)
Height33 m (108 ft)
Decks3
Sail planSail area 900 m2 (9,700 sq ft)

Design and construction

For the filming of The Bounty, a replica of William Bligh's ship, HMS Bounty was required. The Bounty replica was built by Whangarei Engineering Company at Whangarei, New Zealand during 1978 and 1979.[4] The ship was designed to externally conform to the original Bounty.[5] The replica is 40.5 metres (133 ft) in length overall, with a beam of 8.5 metres (28 ft) and a draught of 3.8 metres (12 ft).[6]

To reflect the international legacy of the Mutiny on the Bounty, materials for the ship were sourced from across the British Commonwealth.[5] The hull was fabricated from Australian steel, which was carvel-clad in New Zealand iroko.[5] The decking is New Zealand tanekaha.[5] The masts and spars were made of Canadian pine, with sails made from Scottish flax, and blocks of English ash and elm.[5] The sail plan was of a barque: some sources describe the layout as a full-rigged ship, but the ship lacks a topgallant on the mizzen-mast.[5] The ship's mast height is 29 metres (95 ft), with a sail area of 650 square metres (7,000 sq ft).[6] Auxiliary propulsion is provided by two 415-horsepower (309 kW) turbocharged Kelvin 8-cylinder diesel engines, which can propel the ship at 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph).[6]

History

The film The Bounty was completed and released in 1984.[5] Bounty was laid up in Los Angeles until 1986, when Bounty Voyages purchased the ship.[5] She was sailed to Vancouver, refitted, then sailed to Australia.[5] From here, she proceeded to England via the Suez Canal to join the First Fleet Re-enactment Voyage: a historical re-enactment for the Australian Bicentenary.[5] She left England for Australia in May 1987, and sailed with the fleet via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Mauritius, and Fremantle before arriving in Sydney on Australia Day (26 January) 1988.[7] Bounty was originally to be flagship of the re-creation voyage (due to the ship's similarities to HMS Sirius, flagship of the original First Fleet), but the fleet commodore instead selected Søren Larsen for the role.[8]

For many years she served the tourist excursion market from Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia, before being sold to real estate conglomerate HKR International Limited in October 2007.

The company gave The Bounty an additional name in Chinese, 濟民號 [9] (Cantonese Jyutping: Zaimanhou ; Mandarin Pinyin: Jiminhao ; English: Bounty) after company founder Cha Chi Ming. For the following decade, the ship was used as a tourist attraction in Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, where it was used for harbour cruises, charters, day excursions, weddings and corporate retreats .[10] With no publicity or explanation, HKRI decommissioned The Bounty on 1 August 2017.[11] And the company did not disclose the ship's fate.

But the ship has been spotted in Phra Samut Chedi, at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand. It was rechristened The Bounty (เดอะ บาวน์ตี้).[12]

Google shows the ship clearly both aerially (dated 2022) and from 'Street View' (dated Oct 2020) from boats travelling up the Chao Phraya River.

See also

Footnotes
  1. The ship is not entitled to the use of the prefix 'HMAV' as it has never been commissioned into the Royal Navy. Here 'HMAV' is treated as part of the popular name, and not as a ship prefix.

Citations
  1. "European Tall Ship Replica The Bounty". Hong Kong Resort Company. Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2012-10-30.
  2. "BOUNTY - 1001049 - SAILING VESSEL". Maritime Connector. Retrieved 2012-10-30.
  3. "Whangārei and the Bounty". nzherald.co.nz. 15 December 2018. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  4. Clarke & Iggulden, Sailing Home, pp. 1, 16
  5. Clarke & Iggulden, Sailing Home, p. 1
  6. Clarke & Iggulden, Sailing Home, p. 16
  7. King, The First Fleet. p. 89-90
  8. King, Australia's First Fleet, pp. 121-2
  9. "The Bounty" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-02.
  10. D′Eon, Geoff (2018). Bounty: The Greatest Sea Story of Them All. Formac. p. 153. ISBN 9781459505445.
  11. "The Bounty web site". www.thebounty.hk. Retrieved 2019-01-20.
  12. "The HMAV Bounty relocated to Thailand".

References
  • Clarke, Malcolm; Iggulden, David (1988). Sailing Home: a pictorial record of the First Fleet Re-enactment voyage. North Ryde, NSW: Angus and Robertson. ISBN 0207159653. OCLC 21041747.
  • King, Jonathan (1987). Australia's First Fleet: the voyage and the re-enactment, 1788/1988. North Sydney, NSW and Waterloo, NSW: Robertsbridge Limited and Fairfax Magazines. ISBN 0947178163. OCLC 23869501.
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