Share via

The story of Captain William Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty is one of high drama, but documents held by the University of Cambridge show that the captain interrupted the mutiny to try to save the ship’s chronometer.

Bligh’s concern for K2, the time-keeping device that allowed the crew to determine their longitude, is conveyed in a pair of letters put online by the university in a new digital archive.

Although he and his loyalists were to be cast adrift in a small launch, Bligh and his clerk John Samuel insisted that they should be allowed to take the