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
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,