Book review Book Review: "The Armed Transport BOUNTY (Anatomy of the Ship) by John McKay

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Book Review:
The Armed Transport BOUNTY
(Anatomy of the Ship)

by John McKay

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  • Hardcover: 120 pages
  • Publisher: Conway Maritime Press Ltd; 3rd Revised edition edition (10 Jan. 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0851778933
  • ISBN-13: 978-0851778938
  • Product Dimensions: 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm

SYNOPSIS:

Made eternally famous by the mutiny against Captain Bligh in 1789, Bounty was a small merchant ship purchased and converted into a naval transport to transplant breadfruit to the plantations of the West Indies. Thanks to good surviving documentation, this book can depict the ship when purchased as the mercantile Bethia and also as fitted out for her unusual naval employment. This revised edition features accurate, visually exciting and totally comprehensive drawings. In addition to these, a colour representation of Bounty on the jacket provides a useful painting guide, on the back of which is a beautifully folded large scale plan of the ship. The 'Anatomy of the Ship' series aims to provide the finest documentation of individual ships and ship types ever published What makes the series unique is a complete set of superbly executed line drawings, both the conventional type of plan as well as explanatory views, with fully descriptive keys. These are supported by technical details and a record of the ship's service history.

This Volume Features:

Full description of the ship, how she came to be purchased, and the history of her short naval service
Pictorial section emphasizing close-up photographs of the recent full-size replicas of the ship
Guide to the ship´s colour scheme on the book jacket
More than 300 perspective and 3-view drawings, with in-depth descriptive keys, of every detail of the ship – general arrangements, hull construction, fittings, decoration, masts and yards, rigging and armament including the launch in which Bligh made his epic voyage of over 3000 miles to safety in Timor
One large-scale plan on the reserve of extended fold-out jacket

The fold out plan
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About the Author

John McKay is an architectural draughtsman by profession, and this training undoubtedly helped with the production of a series of technical drawings for three volumes in Conway's Anatomy of the Ship series; on the Victory, the frigate Pandora and the armed transport Bounty. His book on the Victory took nearly five years to complete and involved more than 3,000 hours of work, but resulted in what remains perhaps the most comprehensive documentation of the ship to date. John lives near Vancouver, Canada.


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Contents:

INTRODUCTION
Ship´s history
Career summary
Hull Construction
Refit
Decoration
Steering gear
Ground tackle
Pumps
Boats
Crew and accomodation
Masts and yards
Sails
Rigging
Ordnance
The PHOTOGRAPHS
The DRAWINGS
  • General arrangements
  • Hull Construction
  • External Hull
  • Internal Hull
  • Fittings
  • Armament
  • Masts and Spars
  • Rigging
  • Sails
  • Boats

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more Look Inside photos you can find at the following post ...... to be continued .....
 
Further information about the HMS Bounty......

on wikipedia

HMS Bounty,
also known as HM Armed Vessel Bounty, was a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to British possessions in the West Indies. That mission was never completed due to a mutiny led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian. This incident is now popularly known as the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers later burned Bounty while she was moored at Pitcairn Island. An American adventurer rediscovered the remains of the Bounty in 1957; various parts of it have been salvaged since then.

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Origin and description
Bounty was originally the collier Bethia, built in 1784 at the Blaydes shipyard in Hull, Yorkshire in England. The Royal Navy purchased her for £1,950 on 23 May 1787 (equivalent to £209,000 in 2016), refit, and renamed her Bounty. The ship was relatively small at 215 tons, but had three masts and was full-rigged. After conversion for the breadfruit expedition, she was equipped with four 4-pounder (1.8 kg) cannon and ten swivel guns.

1787 breadfruit expedition
Main article: Mutiny on the Bounty
Preparations
The Royal Navy had purchased Bethia for a single mission in support of an experiment: the acquisition of breadfruit plants from Tahiti, and the transportation of those plants to the West Indies in the hope that they would grow well there and become a cheap source of food for slaves. Sir Joseph Banks had proposed the experiment and had recommended William Bligh as commander. Bligh in turn was promoted through a prize offered by the Royal Society of Arts.

In June 1787, the Bounty was refitted at Deptford. The great cabin was converted to house the potted breadfruit plants, and gratings were fitted to the upper deck. William Bligh was appointed Commanding Lieutenant of the Bounty on 16 August 1787 at the age of 33, after a career that included a tour as sailing master of James Cook's Resolution during Cook's third and final voyage (1776–80). The ship's complement was 46 men: a single commissioned officer (Bligh), 43 other Royal Navy personnel, and two civilian botanists.

more on wikipedia........

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on Three decks:

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on NMM


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HM sloop 'Bounty' was a small West Indiaman of 250 tons, previously called 'Bethia', and purchased by the Admiralty on the Thames for the voyage to the Pacific to obtain breadfruit for Britain's slave colonies in the Carribean. She was the smallest of several candidates for a voyage which the Admiralty only agreed to under pressure from the Royal Society and the king, and she was not chosen by Bligh (who was at sea and only appointed to command her on return) but by Sir Joseph Banks and the gardener who sailed with her to advise on plant collection. They considered her best suited to purpose: Bligh would probably not have done so, partly because she was small for a single-vessel expedition in practical terms but also because, on that ground, she was rated only as a sloop in which Bligh- then a lieutenant- was the only commissioned officer. Despite Bligh's requests for another lieutenant and a detachment of Marines to support his authority the Admiralty refused both - though both had been granted to Cook on is first Pacific voyage when he also was only a lieutenant - but in the larger 'Endeavour'. This was the start of the practical problems, none of Bligh's fault, which eventually contributed - with his undoubtedly mercurial temper - to the famous mutiny. It came to him as a shock, not least in being led by his favoured acting-lieutenant Fletcher Christian, who was officially a master's mate and who had sailed with him before. Christian appears to have been fairly volatile as well and, with various others, was certainly affected by the disorientating effects of a long stay in Tahiti - where he and they formed relationships with local women - and the consequent tensions between local conditions and naval discipline, especially on leaving. Shortly afterwards a small incident in which Bligh exploded over the alleged pilfering of coconuts brought on board as provisions caused Christian and others to crack. The mutiny was very rapidly arranged and Bligh and eighteen followers were cast adrift in the ship's launch without charts, very limited instrumentation and only meagre rations. They were given cutlasses but no guns. One man was killed by hostile islanders when they briefly landed on Tofoa but, thanks to Bligh's skills as a navigator and seaman, he and all the others reached the Dutch colony of Coupang on Timor safely on 14 June 1789. The journey in the heavily overloaded launch took forty-one days and covered over 3600 nautical miles: it remains the greatest open-boat survival voyage ever recorded. By comparison Shackleton's famous 800-mile Antarctic passage from Elephant Island to South Georgia in 1916 in a slightly larger boat was no less a feat of seamanship but was intentional, not overloaded, well planned, well equipped in navigational terms and area knowledge, and less than a quarter of the distance. After the incident on Tofoa, Bligh considered it too dangerous to try landing on other islands and though they passed safely through the warlike Fiji group (where ritual cannibalsim was active), their next landfall was on the north-east Australian coast


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Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the upper deck, lower deck and fore/aft platforms for HM Transport Bounty (1787), as fitted at Deptford Dockyard for transporting breadfruit plants. The plan was received by the Navy Board on 20 November 1787

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Lines & Profile (ZAZ6664)

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Lower deck plan (ZAZ6666)

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Deck (ZAZ6667)

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Scale: 1:48. A modern exhibition model of His Majesty’s Armed Vessel ‘Bounty’ (1787). A highly detailed plank on frame and fully rigged model, it is complete with scale figures and shows the vessel moored alongside a quay. Originally built as the merchantman ‘Bethia’, it was purchased by the navy in 1787. Under the supervision of the eminent botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, it was converted for use to transport breadfruit trees from the East Indies to the West Indies thus providing a cheap source of food for plantation slaves. Measuring 91 feet overall, 85 feet along the lower deck by 24 feet in the beam, and of 220 tons burthen, the ‘Bounty’ was under the command of Lt. William Bligh and set sail from Spithead on 23 December 1787, eventually arriving at Tahiti on 26 October 1788. However, it is the mutiny that took place on board during April 1789 that this ship is famously known for. The mutineers, led by Fletcher Christian, took over the ‘Bounty’ and cast Bligh and 18 of his crew adrift in the 23 foot launch. From May to September, Christian, now in command of the ‘Bounty’, searched for refuge in the South Seas, eventually finding Pitcairn Island on 15 January 1790.The ‘Bounty’ was being stripped when, to forestall any second thoughts and prevent discovery, Matthew Quintal set it on fire on 23rd. It burned to the waterline and sank in what became Bounty Bay, where its site is known and items have been retrieved since the 1930s.

I am looking forward to get more information by others about the ship ......
 
I overlaid some of the Drawings from the Book to the original Plan from the Bounty. There are mismatches especially the sheer of the railing. There are also mismatches in the Body-lines of the Hull.

Vergleich Plan AotS.png

I would consider this book to be great for reference but I encourage anyone to go back to the original Sources.
 
When you look at the Stern in the Book, it looks just like the Stern of the 1960s Bounty.

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When you look closely at the original Plan, you will see that the Stern looks quite different:

Stern original.png

Of course, its just shown from the Side, but it still shows enough for a quite faithful reconstruction.

Stern original.png

We can see that the decorational Arc around the Windows has a pointy End on the Top and that it comes down in a volute or snail. We also can see that the inner edge has a parallel line that devides the Arc into two pieces.
Using the crosswise Body-lines on the original Plan we can do a quite close reconstruction of what the stern actually looked like:

Stern original reconstruction.png

Now we mirror the lines and give them some Color and Details:

Stern original reconstruction detail.png

Except for the ornamentic that is not included in this drawing, I think that is very close to what Bounty's Stern actually looked like.
 
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When you look at the Stern in the Book, it looks just like the Stern of the 1960s Bounty.

View attachment 104074View attachment 104075

When you look closely at the original Plan, you will see that the Stern looks quite different:

View attachment 104076

Of course, its just shown from the Side, but it still shows enough for a quite faithful reconstruction.

View attachment 104077

We can see that the decorational Arc around the Windows has a pointy End on the Top and that it comes down in a volute or snail. We also can see that the inner edge has a parallel line that devides the Arc into two pieces.
Using the crosswise Body-lines on the original Plan we can do a quite close reconstruction of what the stern actually looked like:

View attachment 104078

Now we mirror the lines and give them some Color and Details:

View attachment 104079

Except for the ornamentic that is not included in this drawing, I thank that is very close to what Bounty's Stern actually looked like.
Very interesting comparison - thanks for sharing your work with us
 
I overlaid some of the Drawings from the Book to the original Plan from the Bounty. There are mismatches especially the sheer of the railing. There are also mismatches in the Body-lines of the Hull.

View attachment 104025

I would consider this book to be great for reference but I encourage anyone to go back to the original Sources.
Hi. Can it possible to share hull construction in 3d?
 
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