Complement of HMS Bounty in the ship's launch, while 25, a mixture of mutineers and detainees, remained on board under Fletcher Christian. Bligh led his loyalists to safety in the open boat, and ultimately back to England. The mutineers divided—most settled on Tahiti, where they were captured by in 1791 and returned to England for trial, while Christian and eight others evaded discovery on Pitcairn Island. The Admiralty rated "Bounty" as a cutter, the smallest category of warship—this meant that she was commanded not by a captain but by a lieutenant, with no other commissioned officers aboard, and without the usual detachment of Royal
Mutiny on the Bounty the six Tahitian men were all dead, killed either by the widows of the murdered mutineers or by each other. Two of the four surviving mutineers, Young and Adams, assumed leadership and secured a tenuous calm, which was disrupted by the drunkenness of McCoy and Quintal's after the former distilled an alcoholic beverage from a local plant. Some of the women attempted to leave the island in a makeshift boat but could not launch it successfully. Life continued uneasily until McCoy's suicide in 1798. A year later, after Quintal threatened fresh murder and mayhem, Adams and Young killed him and