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HMS Bounty featured in Weather Channel special tonight

If you missed the premiere of the Weather Channel special about the United States Coast Guard’s rescue of the crew of the H.M.S. Bounty during Superstorm Sandy, get ready for it to replay again tonight at 8 p.m. 

The show takes viewers “into the heart of the storm with Coast Guard helicopters, racing against time” to rescue the crew of the tall ship, which sunk 90 miles offshore of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The Bounty, which counted Greenport among its home ports, visited the harbor during last summer’s tall ships event.

HMS Bounty was inspired by the original Bounty, a royal British naval vessel best known for the 1789 mutiny led by Fletcher Christian and several others. The mutiny ended badly for commanding officer William Bligh and those loyal to him, who were set afloat in a small boat in the South Pacific 1,300 miles west of Tahiti.

Aside from captain Robin Walbridge, who sunk along with the Bounty, crew member Claudene Christian, who claimed ancestry to the famous Fletcher Christian, also perished as a result of the incident.

H.M.S. Bounty was built in Nova Scotia in 1960 for the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty,” starring Marlon Brando, and afterward traveled the seas as a teaching vessel.

The ship called St. Petersburg, Fla., home as a tourist attraction until MGM studios sold its film library, and the Bounty, to Ted Turner in 1986. During Mr. Turner’s ownership the ship appeared in the Charlton Heston film “Treasure Island” in 1989.

In 1993 Mr. Turner donated the Bounty to the Fall River Chamber Foundation in Massachusetts. That group sold the Bounty in 2001 to the HMS Bounty Organization, which operates sail training programs, an at-sea summer camp and dockside education program.

HMS Bounty also appeared in several documentaries and made an appearance as the Edinburgh trader in the 2006 film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with Johnny Depp.

 

For more information about tonight’s special on the Weather Channel, including Coast Guard video of the rescue,  click here:

http://www.weather.com/tv/tvshows/coast-guard-hms-bounty-rescue/main