November 2, 2012\u2014Hidden in the National Geographic archives for more than 50 years, film captured by photographer Luis Marden shows the H.M.S. Bounty's maiden voyage to Tahiti in 1960. A replica of the infamously mutinous 18th-century vessel of the same name, the Bounty starred alongside Marlon Brando in 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty.
On Monday the ship sank off North Carolina while trying to avoid Hurricane Sandy. One crew member died, and the ship's captain remains missing.
", "is_us_only": "false", "title": "Exclusive H.M.S. Bounty Video: Sandy Casualty's 1960 Debut", "url": "http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/history-archaeology-news/hms-bounty-exclusive-vin/", "country_code_deny_list": [], "allowUserEmbed": "True", "related": { "link": [ { "url": "http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/pictures/121030-hms-bounty-sinks-science-nation-sandy-weather/", "name": "H.M.S. Bounty Sinks: Rescue and Rich Legacy in Pictures" }, { "url": "http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1957/12/pitcairn-island/marden-text", "name": "Classic National Geographic: \"I Found the Bones of the Bounty\" (1957)" } ] }, "credit": "National Geographic", "smil": "http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/data/xml/hms-bounty-exclusive-vin.smil", "country_code_allow_list": [], "HTML5src": "/video/player/media-mp4/hms-bounty-exclusive-vin/mp4/variant-playlist.m3u8", "still": "http://video.nationalgeographic.com/exposure/core_media/ngphoto/image/60855_0_460x344.jpg", "transcript": "A dramatic U.S. Coast Guard rescue saved the lives of 14 crewmembers of the H.M.S. Bounty.
The 52-year-old replica ship took on water off the North Carolina coast after suffering mechanical problems while trying to maneuver around Hurricane Sandy.
One crewmember died, and the captain remains missing.
The Bounty was the first sailing ship ever built specifically for the making of a movie- MGM Studios' Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando. It was used in other, more recent films, including a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
This never-before-released film of the Bounty was captured by National Geographic photographer Luis Marden in 1960, on assignment for National Geographic Magazine.
Marden wrote in a lecture presentation that the building of the ship in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, was a big deal, because the skilled ship rights there had not had a chance to work on a wooden ship of this magnitude for years. In fact, this was the biggest sailing ship ever built in Lunenburg.\u00a0 The masts were constructed from logs of Douglas Fir.
The ship was 30 feet longer than the original \"Bounty\" to accommodate modern engines, generators and other machinery.
In August of 1960, the Bounty slid into the sea, complete with a celebration from the townsfolk.
Marden was on board for its maiden voyage to Tahiti later that year for the movie filming, but he was only allowed aboard if he signed on as a crewmember. And at a salary of 25 cents a month, he agreed.
He even nailed into the hull a bronze sheathing nail, from the original Bounty. It was Marden in 1957 who discovered its remains off Pitcairn Island, where the ship was grounded and burned by the mutineers.
On the first voyage of the replica, Marden, no stranger to sailing, went out on the bowsprit and looked back toward the ship to film the \"spread of canvases- all square sails.
Below deck, he filmed the kitchen that helped feed the crew, and what he said was space near the bunks for games of cribbage.
Marden, who later became chief of the National Geographic foreign editorial staff, filmed the ship sailing into the sunset. He described it here as sailing southwest as they reached the longitude of the Marquesas.\u00a0 The stern cabin is ablaze with lights... the captain's quarters.
Upon landing in Tahiti, in the same spot Captain Bligh had anchored nearly two hundred years before, the crew was greeted, Marden said, by some five-thousand people, many on outrigger canoes, some with sails.
During the movie filming in coming days, Marden captured about 3 seconds of Marlon Brando between movie takes.
The Bounty's maiden voyage was a triumphant beginning for a ship with a tragic demise nearly 52 years later.
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