HMS Bounty Chinese name "". HMS Bounty HMS "Bounty, also known as HM Armed Vessel "Bounty, was a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to British possessions in the West Indies. That mission was never completed due to a mutiny led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian. This incident is now popularly known as the mutiny on the "Bounty". The mutineers later burned "Bounty" while she was moored at Pitcairn Island. An American adventurer rediscovered the
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