Bounty Islands Solander Islands. Captain William Bligh discovered the Bounty Islands en route from Spithead to Tahiti in 1788 and named them after his ship, HMS "Bounty", just months before the famous mutiny. The location of the islands were only roughly marked on charts. In early 1866 Commander W. H. Norman of HMCS Victoria was tasked with determining more accurately their position. He reported them as being latitude 47ˈ50 South and longitude 179ˈ00 East. Captain George Palmer, during the search for the "Matoaka" placed the islands at 47ˈ46ˈ24 South 178ˈ56ˈ45 East. Palmer also annexed the islands for New Zealand. During the 19th
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) a Best Picture Oscar and has come to be re-evaluated by some critics. In 1984 Mel Gibson played Christian opposite Anthony Hopkins as Bligh in a film (based not upon the Nordhoff-Hall novels but on an historical work by Richard Hough) called "The Bounty". This latest version, which gives a far more sympathetic view of Bligh, is considered to be the closest to historical events. The 1935 version was itself not the first film account of the mutiny. In 1933 an Australian film entitled "In the Wake of the Bounty", with the then-unknown Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian, was released,