Evaluating Maude’s and Hooker’s HMS Bounty Tracks after Leaving Tahiti on September 22, 1789

Evaluating Maude’s and Hooker’s HMS Bounty Tracks after Leaving Tahiti on September 22, 1789

This study compares Henry E. Maude's "In search of a home: From mutiny to Pitcairn Island" with Brian N. Hooker's “Down with Bligh, Hurrah for Tahiti." Maude's article appeared in The Journal of the Polynesian Society (1958) and later revised for Of Islands & Men (1968). Maude claimed the HMAV Bounty sailed westward from Tahiti-Tetiaroa-Moorea in September 1879 before curving southeast to Pitcairn Island. Whereas in Mercator's World (2001) Hooker has the mutineers contemplating a northeast sail towards the Marquesas Islands but decided instead to stand southeast to mysterious islands labeled on a Henry Roberts’ chart as “Isles said to be dic.d by the Spaniards 1773.” While Maude's JPS article has been cited thirty-three times, Hooker's magazine piece has none except for a reference on James R. Galloway’s Fateful Voyage – The Mutiny on the Bounty, a website linking transcribed entries from the logbook of the Bounty and related documents to Google Earth images. It is curious that Galloway adapted Hooker’s trajectory minus the quest for the Spanish Isles. Instead, Galloway envisioned that Christian, master’s mate and chief mutineer, steered the Bounty northeast to the southern group of the Marquesas Islands. Did Galloway intentionally ignore Hooker’s search for the supposed Spanish Isles (32 o S, 128 o W), a 1,539 nm (2,850 km, 1,771 mi) voyage from Tahiti? Or was this omission a simple misreading of Hooker’s “Down with Bligh”? Therefore, it is important for Bounty/Pitcairn scholars to ascertain which of these tracks is more or less worthwhile. 

Donald Patrick Albert is a professor of geography in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Dr. Albert took geography degrees from Salem State College (BS), Appalachian State University (MA), and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PhD). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research now in its 15th year. Dr. Albert’s research spans across the subfields of medical geography and geography education, and since 2018, historical geography involving the Bounty/Pitcairn Island saga. These latter studies are available from Scholarly Works @ SHSU  under the title Pitcairn Islands Research Station. Dr. Albert is a director-at-large for Pitcairn Islands Study
Group and a contributor to its publication, The Pitcairn Log. He collects Bounty/Pitcairn memorabilia including books, carvings, and stamps. Don Albert is originally from historic Salem, Massachusetts, which incidentally has connections to the Bounty/Pitcairn Island story.  Dr Albert is the inaugural recipient of the RGSSA's Library Research Fellowship.