Tuesday, October 30, 2012

HMS Bounty replica lost off Cape Hattaras



HMS Bounty with sails raised. But we know, don't we; all that sail, calm water, even keel, 
what's wrong with this picture? (Photo from HMS Bounty facebook page)
UPDATE June 14, 2014: In its findings, the Coast Guard Board of Inquiry blamed the captain and the ship's onshore management for the disaster.  Here's the report from CNN.

 UPDATE FEB. 20, 2013:  Here's some new insight into the sinking written during the official Coast Guard inquiry.

 HMS Bounty went down Monday off Cape Hattaras, a place with history dating back to pirate times where ships have had their difficulties.  That reads like a headline that might have been published more than 200 years ago, but, of course it was not the original ship. It was a replica launched in 1962 for the movie that starred Trevor Howard as William Bligh and Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian in the 1960s.  This version also had been in a "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie along with participating in several tall ships gatherings.

The ship was sailing south attempting to avoid Hurricane Sandy and reach its home port in St. Petersburg, Florida.  On the group's facebook page there are chart positions showing the ship attempted to sail east of the storm and thus avoid the worst of it.  On the page the captain defends the decision. There are a few pictures of the seas the ship encountered.  Keep in mind a ship like this is built to withstand storms at sea and there was every reason to believe it could have handled conditions as they were predicted.  Generally among mariners a ship is considered safer on the open ocean than in a harbor during a severe storm.

There was some conjecture around the sinking but nothing solid so it is best to wait for a cause to come from an official inquiry.  One report did say the ship's engines failed so that could have been a contributing factor.  That is best left for the investigators.  No matter what is learned the ship is gone.


HMS Bounty founders off Cape Hattaras
(U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Whenever a ship goes down at sea it raises emotions among other sailors, some of relief that we weren't there and others of sadness at the loss of kindred spirits and in this case the loss of a grand ship as well.  The sight of a tall ship under full sail is one that will remain in your memory forever. Those ships are what the romance of the sea is all about, the stuff of fiction but also the stuff of the age of exploration, the stuff of great naval battles, the stuff of pirates and the stuff of the opening of the great trade routes on all the world's oceans.  When one goes down we all lose a bit of our heritage.  I know some of  my ancestors crossed the ocean in one and I expect most people can look back at their history and find a voyage under sail somewhere, some more romantic than others, to be sure.  What I mean there is  the most famous American settlers came over on the Mayflower, but then so did the Africans who were transferred as chattel to be slaves in the New World. But the latter can't be blamed on the ships themselves. The point is that Monday a piece of the great maritime heritage, even if it was a replica, went down off Cape Hattaras and that's a loss for us all.

All of it is not sad.  There is a grand story to go with the sinking. The Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members in seas of around 18 feet. Bligh didn't have that option when he sailed the ship's ancestral namesake.  The pilots who fly those helicopters and the rescue divers who fly with them are an amazing group of people.  An awful lot of Alaska mariners owe their lives to these guys. The same type of crew is who the "Deadliest Catch" guys call from the Bering Sea. The movie "The Guardian" gives them a good treatment.  Here is a link to the Coast Guard web site posting about the operation.  Not many words there to describe what actually happened, considering divers went into the water, in those waves, and one by one loaded crew members into a basket so they could be lifted to the helo hovering overhead.

As is often the case in a sinking, two crew members were lost.  The body of one was recovered, but at last report the captain was still missing. Claudene Christian, who grew up in Anchorage and graduated from West High School, was the one who died and whose body was recovered.  This is where the story takes a dramatic turn.  Does her name sound familiar?

It should.  You see, one person posting on the facebook page wrote that Claudene Christian was a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian known for instigating the mutiny on the original Bounty.


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Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

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