Vice-Admiral William Bligh (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. The mutiny on HMS Bounty occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command; after being set adrift in Bountys launch by the mutineers, Bligh and his loyal men all reached Timor alive, after a journey of . Bligh's logbooks documenting the mutiny were inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register on 26 February 2021. Seventeen years after the Bounty mutiny, on 13 August 1806, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. His actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26 January 1808 by the New South Wales Corps and deposed from his command, an act which the British Foreign Office later declared to be illegal. He died in London on 7 December 1817. Early life William Bligh was born on 9 September 1754, but it is not clear where. It is likely that he was born in Plymouth, Devon, as he was baptised at St Andrew's Church on Royal Parade in Plymouth on 4 October 1754, where Bligh's father, Francis (1721–1780), was serving as a customs officer. Bligh's ancestral home of Tinten Manor in St Tudy, near Bodmin, Cornwall, is also a possibility. Bligh's mother, Jane Pearce (née Balsam; 1713–1768), was a widow who married Francis at the age of 40. Bligh was signed for the Royal Navy at age seven, at a time when it was common to sign on a "young gentleman" simply to gain, or at least record, the experience at sea required for a commission. In 1770, at age 16, he joined HMS Hunter as an able seaman, the term used because there was no vacancy for a midshipman. He became a midshipman early in the following year. In September 1771, Bligh was transferred to and remained on the ship for three years. In 1776, Bligh was selected by Captain James Cook (1728–1779), for the position of sailing master of and accompanied Cook in July 1776 on Cook's third voyage to the Pacific Ocean, during which Cook was killed and was succeeded by Captain Charles Clerke, who was dying from tuberculosis. Due to his weakened state, Clerke placed Bligh in