When seaman, pilot, explorer and professional adventurer Don McIntyre was still in his 20s, he recalls avidly following magazine stories in his home country of Australia chronicling the high-profile sailing adventure of a captain named R.W. Bligh-Ware.
Bligh-Ware was a direct descendant of the notorious "Mutiny on the Bounty" ship's captain William Bligh, and in 1983 he had tried to recreate Bligh's perilous 47 days sea after the mutiny with his own crew.
It was a fascinating journey, but it always bothered McIntyre that Bligh-Ware didn't try to sail exactly as his ancestor had. Bligh-Ware had taken plenty of food, ample charts and slept ashore at times. McIntyre vowed then that one day he'd recreate Blight's amazing journey — still one of the greatest trips in a an open long boat in maritime history — the way it should be, with little food or water and nothing but a sextant to guide him.
In the intervening decades, McIntyre, now 54, would go on to sail around the world and spend a year (with his wife, Maggie) living alone in a small hut in Antarctica. It wasn't until one day in 2007, when McIntyre was stalled in China, overseeing upgrades to an expedition boat that he finally decided the time was right to launch his own "Bounty" voyage — and do it his way.
BARRY PICKTHALLMike Perham, the world's youngest solo circumnavigator at 17, with Australian adventurer Don McIntyre. DOING IT RIGHT
"It stuck in the back of my mind. Eventually it wore me down to the point where I decided I'll have to do it myself and see what it's like," McIntyre said via telephone from his home in Hobart, Australia. "We're trying to get as close to the emotional and physical and psychological experience that Blight went through as possible. "
Next April, on what would be the 221th anniversary of the famous mutiny, McIntyre hopes to set sail with three other crew members in a small replica of a 18th Century whale boat to re-enact Bligh's journey again – but this time do it right. They'll try and do the journey with the same weight of food and water as Bligh and his 18 crew members had. The two major differences that will exist are a nod to the modern times: the boat will have up-to-date safety equipment and will be fully wired with a satellite computer link so that its voyagers can blog and keep a video diary of their adventures.
PERHAM SIGNS ON
Earlier this year, the voyage – which McIntyre hopes will raise thousands for a foundation that researches cures for the fatal motor-neuron disease ALS, known in the U.S. as Lou Gehrig's disease – got a bump of publicity when McIntyre announced his second-in-command would be Mike Perham. Perham is the teenage British sailing sensation who recently completed a solo around-the-world trip at the age of 17 and now holds the world record as the youngest circumnavigator.
"He's a very competent sailor and adventurer . . . I need to have someone on the boat who can take over if something happened," McIntyre said.
Perham said via telephone from his home in England that he became fascinated with McIntyre's plans when he spent several weeks living with the couple during his voyage when he was marooned in for boat repairs on his solo trip. He was immediately captivated by the idea of recreating the Bligh voyage and asked to be included.
"I just love a good adventure," Perham said. "I like going out there and having some fun."
In McIntyre, then, Perham had met a kindred spirit. The older man was born in Adelaide, in the southern part of Australia, and already spent half his lifetime sailing around the world, driving rally cars, scuba diving and searching for lost treasure in the Philippines. He is now semi-retired, having sold his boat business a half-dozen years ago, but still leads cruises to Antarctica.
"I always bring it back to on simple thing: I totally understand my own mortality," McIntyre explained. "I'm fully aware of that. So I'm fit and healthy and it's all about having fun... if you can do it, why not?"
He's always looked to the past for inspiration, citing adventurers as Bligh-Ware, early circumnavigator Robin Knox-Johnston and Arctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson as inspirations.
He tends to agree with the growing sentiment among some historians that Bligh – while he may have been thin-skinned and pompous – was not the evil figure that history has portrayed. McIntyre notes that after the mutiny, Bligh was honorably acquitted in court-martial proceedings and went on to have a lengthy – if still controversial – Naval career.
CHRIS BRAY / PPL / 2010 BOUNTY BOAT CHALLENGEPerham and McIntyre test the waters.THE REAL CAPTAIN BLIGH
The Bounty's mutiny remains one of the most chronicled in history – the subject of dozens books and several major motion pictures, including a 1962 version starring Marlon Brando and a 1984 film with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins as the aggrieved captain. One recent tome even went so far to suggest that Bligh and Fletcher Christian, who lead the mutiny, were lovers.
"It just goes to show that the myth and mystery of so many aspects of this story will go on for a long time to come," McIntyre said. "I think he was an incredible young man who went on to great things after that. He was much maligned."
Bligh, who was born in Cornwall, England, was a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy when he took over command of the H.M.S. Bounty in 1787. He navigated the cutter on a difficult and stormy trip to Tahiti to obtain breadfruit trees, because British officials hoped the starchy fruit could be fed to slaves. When they arrived in Tahiti, the crew had to live onshore about five months before the breadfruit trees were mature enough to be transported, a tropical idyll of liquor and native women that may have contributed to the crew's mutinous spirit on the next leg of the voyage.
On April 28, 1789, the Bounty was en route from Tahiti when Christian, the second in command, bound and gagged Bligh and lead a bloodless mutiny. The mutineers set the captain and 18 other crew adrift in a 23-foot long boat with four cutlasses, scant food and water and rudimentary navigational tools.
Thus began the journey that inspired this trip: Bligh managed to captain the boat 3,618 nautical miles before landing in Timor, losing only one crew member along the way dispute the terrible conditions on the open boat. (Others later died of fever later as they awaited transport back to the British Isles.)
THE MODERN-DAY ADVENTURE
McIntyre and his crew – including Perham and two others who have yet to be chosen – will board their 25-foot "Bounty Boat" (a small whaler similar to Bligh's longboat) in the same position 221 years to the day that Bligh was set afloat on April 28 next year. They'll sail first to Tonga, where Bligh and his crew had stopped in a failed attempt to find extra food and water, head westward across the top of the Figi Islands and then land, like Bligh, on Restoration Island in Australia. Then they'll sail north through the Great Barrier Reef and then through the Torres Strait to Timor.
If they're successful, it will be the first time anyone has sailed this trip like Bligh did, McIntyre says. During previous tries, such as Ware-Bligh's 1983 journey and another voyage in 1990, re-enactors used almanacs and charts for navigation, made unscheduled stops and did not follow the precise route.
PPL / BARRY PICKTHALLThe compass mounted on the mizzen mast aboard the Bounty Boat.McIntyre will have no charts or almanacs, modern timepieces or even toilet paper. (They'll use a bit of rope for that, McIntyre says.) They'll take a 18th Century octant and sextant, boat compass, two antique pocket watches, a log book and a magnifying glass.
A GPS system, locked away from the crew, will track the boat's movements for their followers on the website www.bountyboat.com. The satellite computer link will allow the crew's progress to be monitored – through blogs and video and audio feeds – by psychologists and oceanographers following the journey.
McIntyre and Perham both said that the hardest part of the recreation will be the sense of isolation – one of the legs is 26 days long – and the small rations. They'll each be allowed the same weight of food per day that Bligh and his crew had. They'll eat muselix, baked beans, tinned beef and some "hard tack" ship's biscuits– made only of flour and water – McIntyre started making and drying out months ago.
They're starting off allowing themselves the water ration Bligh's men had – 28 gallons of water, which is enough in modern times to last for two weeks. If they don't catch enough rainwater, McIntyre doesn't rule out breaking into the emergency water stores in the safety equipment if need be.
If they have to break out an emergency flashlight or water, "we'll tell people about it," he says. "We're not going to be silly to the extreme."
Still, McIntyre admits their journey is going to be a challenging but rewarding one.
"It's something you can't describe at the end of the day, the sense of achievement," McIntyre said. "It's going to be as horrible as it can get in the boat, but toward the end I'll be saying, 'I don't want it to finish.' I can guarantee that."
