For almost 480 years, Hurst Castle has stood sentry over the western Solent, its brooding walls witness to many a historic ship that has passed through the Hurst Narrows, arguably the most famous of them all, HMS Bounty.

Originally a collier by the name of Bethia, the 215-ton Bounty was built in 1784 at Kingston upon Hull, but within three years she had been snapped up by the Royal Navy for £1,950. Her future role, to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti as a possible source of cheap food for slaves in the West Indies, was a far cry from her industrial beginnings.

After weeks of frustrating hold ups, William Bligh finally set sail from Spithead on 23 December 1787, with a crew of 45 men. The three-masted vessel under his command, equipped with four four-pounder cannons and ten swivel guns, must have looked quite a sight in full sail as she passed the castle, but it’s unlikely that Bligh had time for such niceties. His relief at finally weighing anchor may well have been tempered with concern for conditions on his cramped ship, which had been refitted for the mission, and about what lay ahead.  His concerns were more than justified.  Attempting to round Cape Horn, he and his crew battled torrential rain and heavy seas for 30 days before conceding defeat and changing course for the Cape of Good Hope.  With a refit in southern Africa, it was to be a full ten months before they arrived in Tahiti.

Life in the South Pacific may sound pretty idyllic, and certainly the crew enjoyed some of their time ashore, but faith in their captain was waning fast.  By the time that the Bounty left the island with her cargo of breadfruit on 6 April 1789, the mood was already sour, and within barely three weeks, under the leadership of the master’s mate, Fletcher Christian, it had turned mutinous.  Taken by surprise, Bligh was cast adrift with 18 men.  That he made it back to England is a credit to his seamanship.  The rest of the crew, however, returned to Tahiti on board the Bounty before finally making their home on Pitcairn Island.  And there, having removed everything of value from the ship, they set it alight.

Although random relics of the ship were removed during subsequent expeditions, the wreck itself lies slowly rotting in the shallow waters off Pitcairn Island, where it remained undiscovered until 1957.  It was to be another 41 years before the last of the ship’s four- pounders was recovered by archaeologists from James Cook University.

A splendid model of HMS Bounty has been kindly loaned to the Friends of Hurst Castle by the family of the late Fred Mann, who spent two years building his scale replica to the finest detail.