After filming Treasure
Island, aboard the HMS Bounty,
Charlton Heston mused, “The three most magnificent things in the world are a
woman’s body, a racing thoroughbred, and a full rigged ship under sail.” Not the first Hollywood actor to be charmed
by her spell, Bounty enchanted many
screen legends, one serving as her savior, Marlon Brando. His insistence upon salvaging the ship
instead of allowing it to burn in the final scene was a decision that charted a
new course for the HMS Bounty: giving her a life beyond the
screen. Instead of being scuttled, Bounty sailed 30,000 miles around the
world to promote the 1964 Mutiny on the
Bounty movie. In 1965, she became a
permanent attraction in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Fast-forward to 1988; when media
mogul Ted Turner purchased the vast MGM library and gained a square rigged ship
in the deal. A sailing legend in his own
right, Turner refitted the ship and sailed her on both of the US coasts, the
Maritimes, and the Great Lakes in 1989-90 out of her home port of Miami, FL.
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| Bounty in Greenwich Bay |
While Bounty was sailing, the Fall River, MA Chamber of Commerce was
initiating a success story, one that would begin a new wave of good PR for the
city. Leaders launched a new festival, “Fall
River Celebrates America,” in 1987. The idea worked. Now how to expound on it? During one leadership gathering, a suggestion took
root: What if a tall ship could assist in promoting the city?
When opportunity knocked a
few years later, they were ready. Bounty visited Fall River’s 1991
festival. Turner was so impressed with
the city’s hospitality; he contacted the Fall River Chamber Foundation to test
the waters of interest in acquiring the ship.
A plan was hatched, a proposal submitted, and Tall Ship Captain Ernie
Cummings added credibility to the team. In
short order, Turner donated the ship to the Fall River Chamber Foundation. It was now their baby.
“What a prize! We were
thrilled! We owned the HMS Bounty, perhaps the most famous tall ship in the
world,” exclaimed Murray, the director of the new Tall Ship Bounty Foundation. The ship sailed from Miami, with Jay Bolton, Captain
of the Elissa, at the helm. Murray was aboard for that trip. “There was a
busker sitting on a bench playing the saxophone. Bounty
left Miami for the last time to the notes of “Auld Lang Syne” wafting over the
harbor.”
The ship visited several ports
on the way to her new home, arriving to crowds lining the banks of the Taunton
River, the approach to Fall River, on June 18, 1993. The tremendous reception initiated a tall ship
love affair that lasted eight years. The blitz generated hundreds of millions
of images across North America, promoting Fall River as Bounty’s homeport. The plan
worked better than they could have imagined, for it also gave them something
they didn’t figure on: the joys of sail training.
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| Bounty in Parade of Sail, Duluth, MN, Photo by Erin Short |
A fully rigged ship is not
sailed alone; teamwork is a requirement of survival in an uncompromising
environment. A ship can’t discriminate,
it goes where the winds and humans direct it; only a crew who makes the best
use of both resources will get somewhere.
Anyone venturing upon the sea is instantly accountable for his or her
actions. Mistakes are easily translated
into a loss of life, when “bad” can deteriorate to “deadly” with the force of
one wave.
When the English fleet was
mapping and conquering the seas in the age of sail, the notoriously brutal
discipline was a requirement. Captains
knew the majority of sailors had been shanghaied, taken from families and
forced into servitude. Captain Bligh’s discipline
was not unusual for his day; it was just the way things were. Sailors bonded
because the work was hard, the conditions and food deplorable and the discipline
harsh. Surviving a voyage at sea was a worthy achievement; it brought a man
into a rare fraternity, a brotherhood of the real “iron men.”
Aboard the HMS Bounty, the Fall River crew was a
family, sharing a bond of toil, hard work, effort, sweat and elbow grease, as sailors
of old. The difference was their choice to
participate in something greater than themselves.
Murray reminisces, “It was
something to see the volunteers come out to learn to sail, maintain and show
the ship. We developed sail training programs for the gifted and talented and
for youth-at-risk. “I will never forget
the sense of pride the cadets had when they took that first step onto the
footropes at 40, 60, 90 or 120 feet above the deck while the ship was underway.
The pride of accomplishment in
conquering their fear was life changing for them.”
“Some crew members met, fell
in love and married each other. One family adopted their daughter through
relationships in the Bounty community. Children were born and grew up while we
crewed on Bounty. When we faced
life’s difficulties, working on the ship provided a lifeline. We applied our
skills to maintain her, and we learned new skills. We all have a personal story
about “Our Bounty.”
When Bounty wasn’t sailing,
she wintered at Heritage Park, tied to a floating dock near a sea wall. The
dock had huge 20’ x 40’ aluminum framed fenders with protected corners. From September to January, there was no one
living aboard. One year, the fall
weather and winds kept pushing the ship against the metal pier. Water started coming in. A hole was discovered in the hull by the
fenders that led to a leak so bad that the Fall River Fire Department had to pump
out 5000 gallons of water a minute under the watchful eye of a USCG Marine
Safety Officer. Robin Walbridge helped
to save the ship from sinking at the dock.
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| Captain Robin in the Great Cabin |
When Bounty was acquired by Fall River, the hull was copper clad to keep
out the voracious toredo worms. Bounty went through two haul outs in a culmination
of paid shipwrights and volunteer hands working together. The 1994 haul out focused
on plank and hull work, a $250,000 undertaking.
The second, in 1998, at Kelly’s Shipyard in Fairhaven, MA, worked out to
a total of $400,000. The volunteer crew collectively
invested over $200,000 of man-hours into the project.
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| Hauling out, Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, Maine |
During the yard periods, the
copper clad patches were removed. The ship
was starting to show her age, with a telltale “hog” in the keel, evidence of
the ship’s working over time in the water.
Murray affirms, “During the second haul out, Robin Walbridge decided to
replace the copper with the new paint that reportedly had the same effect as
the copper. It was the latest thing.”
This is where the accounts
differ, as Joe Jackimovicz, yard manager at Boothbay Harbor Shipyard stated in
a prior interview, “the ship had not used marine grade anti-fouling paint.” Murray affirmed, that Walbridge used the new
paint, believing it has the same effect as the copper patches. The effectiveness of the paint was accessed
during that first haul out in August of 2001. “The hull was “riddled with wormholes and leaking
30,000 gallons an hour, 500 gallons a minute,” Jackimovicz affirmed.
If a boat is “a floating
hole one pours money into,” the HMS
Bounty certainly fit the bill. After
the extensive repairs, money and elbow grease, eventually, the realization came
that the Foundation could no longer keep the ship going. Robert Hansen bought the ship in March 16,
2001; and set a course for Boothbay, Maine, where Jackimovicz would haul out the
ship, the first of four times.
It was bittersweet, to hear
of Bounty’s adventures sailing with other
crew. “Our Bounty was doing what she should do, in a way that was a credit to us
all. She sailed the US Coasts,
Maritimes, and to Europe,” remembers Murray. It was time to be proud for what the ship was now
able to do: begin the task of reconfiguring into a sailing school vessel. It was time to release her, embrace new ideas
and savor the experience.
That
was a tall order. In the years since Bounty left Fall River, the museum has
fallen on hard times. The Fall River crew
is bonded in solidarity on a new goal: to preserve the ship’s legacy. Things looked impossible until new leadership,
and a wave of new members infused working capital that was matched by the bank. Now debt free, the museum also received a
grant that effectively secured funding to provide a permanent home for the
stories, memories, artifacts, and images of the Bounty and the people she touched. The museum will also honor
the United States Coast Guard’s heroic rescue of the HMS Bounty surviving crew with exhibit celebrating their heroism.
Now,
the goal can be accomplished without financial limits. Preserving the memories of the ship is a vastly
different objective from keeping the ship afloat. Experience is a willing teacher. As with sailing aboard the Bounty, the rewards will far outweigh
the toil. It’s a labor propelled by love
for a ship, and for the incredibly rich learning experiences she brought into
the lives of the Fall River crew.
This article is an excerpt from the upcoming book: HMS Bounty: A Star to Steer By.
