William Bligh (1754-1817) was an English naval captain whose presence on more than thirty ships has been recorded in history. But mostly best known for his voyage on HMS Bounty, he had a career fraught with controversy. At 7 Bligh went to sea as a cabin boy and in 1770 joined the Royal Navy. Between 1776 and 1780 he was master of the HMS Resolution on James Cook‘s third voyage. In 1787 the British government dispatched Bligh to Tahiti with the Bounty to collect breadfruit plants in order to provide cheap food for West Indian slaves. The voyage to Tahiti was difficult. After trying unsuccessfully for a month to go west by rounding South America, Bounty was finally defeated by the notoriously stormy weather and opposite winds and forced to take the longer way to the east around the southern tip of Africa. That delay caused a further delay in Tahiti, as Bligh had to wait five months for the breadfruit plants to mature sufficiently to be potted in soil and transported. The sailors on the HMS Bounty found Tahiti to be a paradise. Nice nature, beautiful women, delicious food and the hospitality of the islands natives causes a mutiny against captain Bligh. Reluctant to leave Tahiti, the crew, led by Fletcher Christian, fired the Captain Bligh and 18 crew who were still loyal to him and threw them from the ship on a boat with some initial supplies without any maps. However, Bilgh carried out a great feat by sailing more than 3,500 nautical miles for forty-seven days until arriving at port of Kupang city in Timor island, losing only one of his eighteen loyal sailors. Finally in 1790, he sailed again to Tahiti and successfully introduced breadfruit plants into the West Indies. Between 1795 and 1802 Capt. Bligh saw action against the French at Camperdown and at Copenhagen, where he was commended by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. Contributions to navigation and natural history resulted in his election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1801. Bligh arrived in 1806 with instructions to end the trading monopoly enjoyed by officers of the New South Wales Corps. In 1811 William Bligh returned to England. The following year, his wife Elizabeth died after 31 years of marriage. Before Bligh retired, he was promoted to Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral in 1814. After retiring from active service, he lived with his daughters on a country estate in Kent. His youngest daughter, Anne, born in 1791, was mentally disabled, never learned to speak and also suffered from epilepsy. Unlike some members of his social class at the time, Bligh had a very close relationship with his disabled daughter and took her for walks in a wheelchair until he finally died in 1817. Manuscript of the notebook from William Bligh is still available for at the National Library of Australia. There are many books, documentary and films related to the true story of the Bounty. “Mutiny on the Bounty” is a 1962 American Technicolor epic historical drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard and Richard Harris.