Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

Bligh was a short, stout man with thick black hair, pale blue eyes, and a milky, almost albino complexion. But he knew what he was doing. He’d gone to sea at the age of sixteen as an ordinary seaman, but less than a year after he’d signed on he was given his warrant as a midshipman because he was bright, energetic, and earnest. He loved being in the navy, and he put every bit of his heart and soul into being the best officer he could be.

By the time Bligh had turned twenty-three his reputation was such that Captain James Cook tapped him to be the navigator for the famous South Pacific explorations of the fabled Tahiti and beyond. When the expedition was all over, Cook couldn’t write enough good things in the ship’s log about Bligh, and in fact the nautical charts that the young navigator drew from that expedition were so good, so precise, that many of them were still in use more than two centuries later.

Near the end of the expedition, Cook was killed by natives in the Hawaiian Islands, and it was Bligh who brought Cook’s ship, HMS Resolution, back to England, which was a pretty good bit of navigating for a man not yet twenty-five.

War broke out with France, and Bligh did a good job in the fleet, earning a promotion to lieutenant, got married to Elizabeth Bethman, was appointed master of HMS Cambridge, and got to know and become friends with Fletcher Christian, who taught him how to use the sextant and who, he wrote in his diary, treated him like a “brother.”

Then disaster struck in the form of peace. England cut its navy in half and Bligh, like just about every officer, had his pay cut in half. But his wife was rich and she had connections, so Bligh was given command of a merchant ship, the Britannia, which sailed to the West Indies and back on a regular schedule. Fletcher Christian also served aboard, and their friendship grew and solidified.

In 1787 Bligh was given command of the Bounty, technically HMAV (Her Majesty’s Armed Vessel) Bounty, for which he had to take another pay cut. Navy men were paid less than merchant marine officers. But he saw it as a chance for promotion. The deal was that if he made it back from the South Pacific in one piece he would be promoted to captain. And that was a big prize.

A lot of things were happening in the world at about that time. In Europe the French Revolution was getting off the ground, in America the Constitution was being voted on, and in England George III was being battered by the prestigious Royal Society to do something— anything—that would promote England scientifically or economically. The war with the colonies had been lost; it was time to get past it. England needed to save some serious face in the world arena. And Bligh, who needed to do the same for his own career, was just the man for the job.

The situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to Potulniy’s. He came from a naval background, and already as a sixteen-year-old he had been accepted to attend the Frunze Military Academy. He did his apprenticeship aboard a number of warships, and when the Storozhevoy’s keel was laid he was tapped to be the ship’s first commander.

That was a big opportunity for Potulniy to prove himself. A lot of things were happening in the world in 1974. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was at its height, the United States had beaten Russia to the moon, and already the seeds of the people’s discontent with Moscow were like brush fires, easy to spot but difficult to extinguish.

And there were a lot of similarities between Christian and Sablin. Both men had been born to well-to-do families; both knew what they wanted to do very early on—Christian went to sea at sixteen, and Sablin applied for and was accepted to the Frunze Military Academy at the same age. Both were about the same height and build, both had dark hair and complexions, and both men were described by friends as being mild, open, humane, generous, and sometimes a little conceited.

Bligh and his crew were to sail the Bounty down to Tahiti in the South Pacific via Cape Horn at the southern tip of the Americas to take on as many breadfruit plants as they could carry and bring them to the West Indies. The plantation owners wanted something cheap to feed their slaves, and breadfruit, which grew in Polynesia but not in the West Indies, was just the thing. This trip was just as much political as it was humanitarian. The plantation owners were a rich and therefore a powerful political faction, and the king wanted to appease them.

The Bounty had started her life as a coal ship named Bethia. And despite the bad luck associated with changing a ship’s name, as soon as the collier had been converted into a warship she got a new name. In effect Bligh and his crew were the first to sail the Bounty, as Potulniy and his crew were the first to sail the Storozhevoy.