Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film) to return to Britain and testify to Bligh's wrongdoing and asks his men to sail with him. To prevent this possibility the men set the ship on fire and Christian is fatally burned while trying to save it. Following the success of 1935's "Mutiny on the Bounty", director Frank Lloyd announced plans in 1940 to make a sequel which focused on Captain Bligh in later life, to star Spencer Tracy or Charles Laughton. No film resulted. In 1945 Casey Wilson wrote a script for "Christian of the Bounty", which was to star Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and focus on
Mutiny on the Bounty for himself, his clerk Samuel, and his servant John Smith, and sailed on 16 October 1789. Four of the remainder—the master's mate Elphinstone, the quartermaster Peter Linkletter, the butcher Robert Lamb and the assistant surgeon Thomas Ledward—all died either in Batavia or on their journeys home. After the departure of Bligh's launch, Christian divided the personal effects of the departed loyalists among the remaining crew and threw the breadfruit plants into the sea. He recognised that Bligh could conceivably survive to report the mutiny, and that anyway the non-return of "Bounty" would occasion a search mission, with Tahiti as its