Good Bye to Bounty

Tall ship Bounty was lost in Hurricane Sandy off the coast of Cape Hatteras today.  While there are many unanswered questions why she sailed into one of the largest storms we've seen on the Atlantic in years, thoughts now must go out to the 2 missing crew (including the Captain) and their families.

"Bounty was commissioned by the MGM film studio for the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty. This vessel was built to the original ship's drawings from files in the British Admiralty archives, and in the traditional manner in a shipyard in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Length was doubled and tonnage was increased.

Bounty was scheduled to be burned at the end of the film, however Marlon Brando threatened to walk off the set in protest, so MGM kept the vessel in service. After filming and a worldwide promotional tour, MGM berthed the ship in St. Petersburg, Florida as a permanent tourist attraction, where she stayed until the mid-1980s. In 1986 Ted Turner acquired the MGM film library and Bounty with it. The ship was used for promotional and entertaining activities, and was used during the filming of Treasure Island with Charlton Heston in 1989.

In 1993, Turner donated the ship to the Fall River Chamber Foundation, which established the Tall Ship Bounty Foundation to operate the ship as an educational venture. In February 2001 Bounty was purchased from the Foundation by the HMS Bounty Organization LLC."