Tomorrow morning, sometime around 0800, the tall ship Bounty should be arriving off the St. Augustine Inlet and preparing to sail into Matanzas Bay. She is a replica of the well-known British naval vessel which saw the infamous mutiny against Captain Bligh in 1789. Drawing 13 feet of water, she will have to wait for the high tide in order to enter the harbor and cross under the Bridge of Lions and dock at the City Marina, where the public can tour her decks on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
From the St. Augustine Record:
The HMS Bounty, a replica of one of the most famous ships in the world, was built for the 1962 MGM movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. The Bounty has also appeared in several other motion pictures over the years, including “Treasure Island,” and two of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies starring Johnny Depp.
The Bounty, which has just begun its 2012 East Coast tour, will come through the St. Augustine Inlet, possibly as early as Wednesday, and tie up at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina, where she will be available to the public for tours Friday through Sunday.
While LAMP and the Lighthouse did not play a role in this ship’s visit, we are pleased to welcome the Bounty and her crew to our nation’s oldest port. The original Bounty dated to the late 1700s (built in 1784, and burned by the mutineers in 1790), a similar time period to the Storm Wreck LAMP is currently excavating. The original ship was armed with four 4-pounder cannons, the same size as the long gun recovered from the Storm Wreck and undergoing electrolysis in the courtyard. She also had ten swivel guns, like the one recovered from the 1764 Industry wreck on display in the Keeper’s House basement, and ship’s boats similar to the yawl that we are building at the Boatworks. The replica of the Bounty was built larger than the original by about 1/3, in order to accommodate the movie’s film crew. Thus the original ship was 90 feet, 10 inches long on deck, compared to the replica which measures 120 feet on deck.
If you are in St. Augustine this weekend, you may wish to come tour the ship on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Tickets are reportedly $10 for adults and $5 for children, on sale at the City Marina. If you are visiting the Lighthouse tomorrow, you should be sure to watch the ship coming in from the ocean and make her way across our harbor from the tower, the best view in town!