Walter Lord pretty much states the case that despite the king of the ship motif for captains, J. Bruce Ismay used his position as President of the White Star line to circumvent this, becoming in essence a commodore or Admiral aboard. The court of inquiry was very much against Ismay, and only cleared him under immense political pressure.

The primary failing that Smith made was in not estimating his stopping and turning speed properly despite having been aboard for trials. However the engineer who built the boat was aboard and was quite happy with the speed that they were conducting themselves at.

In the end the loss of Titanic has been firmly placed at the door of misunderstanding of the nature of icebergs and ship design, and was not the fault of any one person to the level of criminal liability. Experts in ship handling revealed the cardinal rules of a captian, the ones they taught across the fleets and the countries, were flawed even if they seemed like common sense. Smith followed all the rules to the letter and was still sunk.

This question comes up regularly on Quora. Bligh continued to serve in Britain’s navy: he had been praised by Cook as a navigator and later on by Nelson as a commander. Bligh also enjoyed the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks who was on first name terms with King George.

Thus, William Bligh was well protected against accusers and given the onerous job of Governor of New South Wales which was just a clutch of small settlements around Sydney Town and up and down the East Coast of Australia. A military junta had bested Governor Hunter and Governor King. Bligh was sent to straighten things. In the end it was he and his daughter vs the NSW Corps. To the freed convicts and settlers of modest means he was a hero.

Bligh went on to become Vice Amiral. He became the Goernor for all of Australa. However there was a geat dela of dissession about his ability to govern. He was recalled and lived out the rest of his life back in Englland. As a Vice-Admiral he was retired very comfortabley

I experienced a sit-down strike on a supply ship. The major grievance was that the crew had not experienced a single day off in months.

A little background: this was near the end of the Carter presidency. Retaining good sailors was nearly impossible. Our ship's normal allowance was 300+, but we were making due with 185 instead. So, men were standing extra watches.

To make matters worse, our captain was the most junior four-striper in the Med. Consequently, he had no say in when we did underway replenishment. Since this was only a monthly, or less frequent, operation for them, they always chose Sunday. Sunday was usually our only day “off” at sea (i.e. no work beyond standing watch). This meant no days off at sea and no religious services, either. Our chaplain simply went TAD to every small boy in the 6th Fleet. They loved having an actual chaplain on-board.

Add to this that choice port visits like Israel were also scooped up by the more senior skippers, so even port visits were for work, like Naples or Palma de Majorca.

So, the Storekeepers staged a sit-down strike. Because I had a reputation for not being a dick, I was the only officer they were willing to deal with. In the end, that was the closest thing to a day off anyone got during that cruise. They ended up just going back to work.

Not in the least. He was employed as a privateer (not a free roving pirate) with letters of marque up until the end of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1604, and was then hired to bring settlers to Jamestown by the Virginia Company of London. Having accomplished that, Newport left the smallest of the vessels, Discovery, for the settlers’ use and returned to England with the Godspeed and the rented Susan Constant. He made a number of supply voyages to Jamestown, the last of which was in 1611.

After that, he accepted a commission in the British Navy, and in 1613 entered the service of the East India Company. He died in Java in 1617 during the course of his third voyage on behalf of the EIC, never having gone back to his privateering days.

A word about privateers and buccaneers is probably needed. Buccaneers/pirates normally raided for their own gain, attacking any worthwhile target—while privateers were hired by authorities to conduct raid against the enemy, the proceeds going to the country or association which hired them. It was not unusual for a privateer, once he was no longer needed as such due to a change in the political climate, to take to piracy, but in Newport’s case he left that part of his life behind and became a merchant captain.

Lieutenant William Bligh was the commanding officer of HMAV Bounty, which was seized in a crew mutiny on April 28, 1789 when it was enroute to the West Indies from Tahiti. The purpose of the voyage was to bring back breadfruit plants and take them to British-owned plantations in the West Indies to see if they could be used there as food for the slaves on those plantations. Slavery was still legal then in British-held territories although there was a growing anti-slavery movement.

Bligh was delayed in his departure from England and as a result was unable to get to the Pacific via Cape Horn - the terrible weather forced him to turn back after a month of battling storms that nearly sunk the ship on several occasions, and take a longer route via the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. When he got to Tahiti, they had to stay for 5 months to allow the breadfruit trees to be potted and grow sufficiently to survive the voyage.

During that stay, Bligh relaxed discipline for the sailors. Nearly all of them got Tahitian girlfriends and lived ashore as much as possible, where they grew quite used to the relaxed atmosphere, warm climate and leisure pursuits. To the point where one of his non-commissioned officers and two of his able-bodied seamen deserted shortly before they were due to sail. Bligh hunted them down, recaptured them and had them flogged; technically, within his authority as commander he could have had them hanged.

When the Bounty put to sea from Tahiti, crew morale was at a low. Bligh decided he needed to crack down hard and get people back into their sailor mindset they needed to survive the voyage home. Perhaps he cracked down too hard, because the crew mutinied in the morning of April 28, 1789 (about 4 weeks out from Tahiti), led by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian. Ironic, because Bligh and Christian had been longtime friends. Christian had requested a position on the Bounty - Bligh could only give him the position of Master’s Mate (equivalent to a Petty Officer First Class nowadays). However, during the voyage Bligh had named him Acting Lieutenant and second-in-command, essentially promoting him over Christian’s own superior Sailing Master John Fryar. Bligh and Fryar did not get along well and Bligh felt Fryar had undermined him when they were attempting to go around Cape Horn. Had they returned to England, Christian would almost certainly have received an officer’s commission with Bligh’s recommendation.

Since the Bounty was only rated as a cutter and not a warship, Bligh did not have a detachment of marines on board. Marines would serve as snipers from the rigging and lead the boarding parties during a sea battle, and also provide armed security for the commander and the officers. The absence of any marines on board was why the mutineers were able to seize the ship bloodlessly and easily.

Bligh and 18 of his crew were set adrift on the ship’s launch, which was so heavily loaded it only had about 7″ of freeboard. Several crew members who wanted to go with him had to stay on the ship because there was no room or the mutineers needed their skills to sail the ship. The men on the launch had less than a week’s worth of food and water. They had a compass, watch and sextant but no charts. Bligh tried landing on a nearby island to get more provisions, but they were chased off by hostile natives and one of his crew was killed. He then led the men on a perilous 3,600 mile voyage in an open boat to the nearest island where they might get help - the Dutch port of Coupang on the island of Timor in what is now Indonesia. Bligh had to navigate from memory. It took them nearly 7 weeks total; they were afloat for 4 weeks until landing on islands near the Great Barrier Reef, where they were able to get some more provisions. He got all of the men to Timor alive, but three of them were so weakened from it that they succumbed to disease before they could get back to England. Two others died on the voyage back to England. Even Bligh’s detractors commended him for his incredible feat of seamanship in getting his crew to Timor.

Bligh was exonerated at a court-martial and he made his report, including the list of those who he considered to be active mutineers and the 4 loyal crewmen he was forced to leave behind. He commanded a second expedition to Tahiti to acquire breadfruit and transport it to the West Indies, which succeeded. Ironically, the slaves considered the fruit to be tasteless and refused to eat it.

Christian and the mutineers took the Bounty back to Tahiti; there the loyal crewmen were let go to await the Royal Navy. Several mutineers opted to stay as well, even though they would almost certainly be arrested once the Navy showed up. He took 8 mutineers with him and abducted a number of Tahitians and set sail for some unknown island where they could avoid the long arm of the law. They settled on Pitcairn’s Island, an island that had been discovered in 1767 but was not charted. All but four of the mutineers were killed when the Tahitians revolted against them, including Christian, but the community survived and descendants of the mutineers and Tahitians live there to this day.

The remaining crew that stayed on Tahiti where they were arrested by the Royal Navy and sent back to England for trial. 4 of them were lost at sea when the ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. The Captain of the HMS Pandora made no distinction between ones named as mutineers and the four who had been identified as loyal. That captain also missed an opportunity to bag everyone when he sailed past Pitcairn’s Island without stopping. The attributes of cruelty and incompetence that unfairly clung to Bligh could be attributed to the commander of the Pandora.

At the court-martial, the 4 loyal crewmen were acquitted; 6 others were convicted and sentenced to death. Midshipman Peter Heywood and Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison were pardoned; another crewman William Muspratt was also reprieved on a technicality and later pardoned, while three other mutineers were hanged at the yardarm of the HMS Brunswick on October 28, 1792. Bligh was commanding the second breadfruit voyage at the time and did not testify in court although his account of the mutiny was read into the record.

Bligh was not the brutal, flog-happy tyrant he was portrayed to be - he probably had less men flogged than most British Navy commanders would have. He was very concerned about the health of his crew and made sure they had the best food they could provide, regular exercise, and having sailed with Captain Cook made sure they got plenty of limes and lemons to fight scurvy. The major faults of his were that he was somewhat thin-skinned and when he got angry he would upbraid his subordinates with harsh language, which made him not much different than a lot of military officers.

He continued in his naval career and commanded several ships-of-the-line, including HMS Director at the Battle of Camperdown, where he engaged 3 Dutch vessels and captured one which was carrying the Dutch admiral in command, while suffering only 7 casualties. He also served under Lord Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, in command of HMS Glatton, and received personal praise by Nelson for his courage and ship-handling. He was promoted to Rear Admiral and when he retired, to Vice Admiral. He died in 1817.

Christian’s family was of a higher social status than Bligh’s, so his family managed to set the narrative of Bligh as an evil tyrant. Peter Heywood was also of a higher status (one of the reasons he was pardoned) and he reinforced Bligh’s image as a cruel captain. The portrayal of Bligh by Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty cemented Bligh’s unjustly evil reputation in popular culture.

Heather Whipps writes that “It has been 400 years since English explorer Henry Hudson mapped the northeast coast of North America, leaving a wake of rivers and towns named in his honor, yet what happened to the famed explorer remains a mystery.”

“Hudson was never heard from again after a mutiny by his crew during a later voyage through northern Canada. That he died in the area in 1611 is a certainty, and he may have even been killed in cold blood, according to new research.“

“The anger among Hudson's crew over his decision to continue exploring after the harsh winter could have easily fueled a murderous mutiny, suggests Peter Mancall, a professor of history at the University of Southern California. "The full story of Hudson's saga reveals one of the darker chapters of the European age of discovery," said Mancall, who explores the 1610 voyage in his new book "Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson" (Basic Books; 2009).”

Hudson claims Manhattan

“Before the fatal voyage that took his life, Henry Hudson found great success as a navigator the way many men did during the Age of Exploration – by accident.“

“Hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a new passage to spice-rich Asia by way of the Arctic Ocean, Hudson was ultimately forced by impassable ice to seek another route south. Sailing into what would eventually be named the Hudson River in 1609, he did not find the Northwest Passagehe was looking for, but did manage to stake the first loose claim to the territory – including the island of Manhattan – on behalf of The Netherlands.“

“The value of the land he'd claimed for a foreign power wasn't lost on the rulers of his home country. Upon his return, England's royal council forbid Hudson from ever sailing under another flag, and he was sent back to the New World in 1610 aboard the English ship Discovery.“

“Hudson's objective was, once again, to find a northern passage to the Orient, but he would never return from that trip. The Discovery docked back in London in 1611 without having reached Asia, without the captain aboard and with just eight crew, all of whom were now subject to death by hanging for the murder.”

“Set adrift Some facts about the 1610-1611 voyage of the Discovery are certain.“

“Discovery plied the Canadian bay that also took Hudson's name in the summer of 1610, the captain believing that he'd possibly found the elusive northern passage to the Pacific. The ship was forced to ground itself for the winter, however, with Hudson ordering a return to the route the next spring, despite his crew's wish to return to England. When the ship took to the water again for its return trip in June, 1611, Hudson was not aboard.”

“On trial for Hudson's murder later that year, the remaining crew admitted to cutting the captain and a group of individuals still loyal to him loose on a small lifeboat, according to court documents.”

“None of the men was convicted of the murder or even punished for the mutiny, and historians generally believe their claims, too. But some physical evidence points to a more violent end for the captain, Mancall believes.”

“Mancall highlighted evidence that was found and documented after the ship docked in London: blood stains, most damningly, along with letters from another sailor mentioning the growing personal rift between captain and crew. A number of Hudson's possessions were also missing.“

Brought down by determination

“Since Hudson's body was never found, however, it will never be known for sure whether the captain was murdered or given a more subtle death sentence, set adrift in the harsh environment of northern Canada.“

“It was Hudson's steely nature to press on and meet his objective that led to his demise, whatever that may have been, historians agree.“

"Hudson was one of the most intrepid and important explorers of his age," said Mancall. "He was not a man who easily gave up."

Attribution

Mutiny or Murder: What Happened to Henry Hudson?

I just taught a class about all this, and I hope the person who asked this wasn’t in it. To begin with, Captain Cook was killed (not murdered) in Hawaii. At the time, he was trying to kidnap a Hawaiian king, and the king’s people were trying to rescue him. None of this had anything to do with the Mutiny on the Bounty, other than the fact that William Bligh (later captain of the bounty) happened to be a sailing master with Cook’s expedition. Having seen Cook murdered, he later lied about it to the King of Tahiti, who had heard rumors about Cook’s death. He told the Tahitian ruler that Cook was, in fact, alive. The Tahitians (who had probably been testing Bligh) already knew that Cook was dead, just as they also knew of the existence of Hawaii. What we’re not sure about, though, is whether or not the two Polynesian cultures were in regular contact. Our supposition is that they were not.

USS Somers (1842) - Wikipedia

The brig USS Somers went on its first major post-commissioning cruise in the fall of 1842 with a number of inexperienced trainees on board. On 26 November, a crew member told the captain, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, that Midshipman Philip Spencer, son of the US Secretary of War, was organizing a mutiny to take over the ship and turn it into a pirate vessel. Spencer was arrested, and suspicion grew when some rigging was damaged the next day. Spencer maintained that he was just joking. Several men were put in irons. Mackenzie held meetings with senior people he trusted, and on 1 December, Spencer and two others were hanged at sea. Somers arrived in New York on 14 December, and Mackenzie was cleared by a court of inquiry and a court martial.

First of all, the term “mutiny” does not mean the ship has been taken over. A mutiny is when any 2 or more members of a military unit — be it on a ship or a company of soldiers on land — conspire together to suborn discipline and proper order in the unit. By that definition, a fight between 2 or more people is considered a mutiny and may be prosecuted as such under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In the highly extreme and unlikely case that a mutiny has managed to get to the point where the CO loses control of his ship, then said CO will do whatever is required to regain that control. The specific actions being determined by the resources he has available to make the attempt.

There’s a lot wrong with this question.

For a start, Captain Cook wasn’t “murdered by the Tahitians” at all. Cook died in Hawaii, which is still part of Polynesia, just a long way from Tahiti. The situation was that something had been stolen from one of his ships, so Cook and his men kidnapped (or attempted to kidnap) the son of one of the local rulers. In retaliation, he was captured and killed.

The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred later. The captain here was Bligh, and the mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian. While the mutineers did indeed return to Tahiti, where the Bounty had been for a while, they didn’t stay there forever - they made their way to Pitcairn Island eventually.

For his part, Bligh wasn’t “murdered by the Tahitians”, or anyone else for that matter. He and his loyalists were but into a small boat and sailed off, eventually making their way back to the UK.

The only Royal Navy ship to experience mutiny was light cruiser Ulysses, one of Dido-class cruisers. She was part of naval escort of the Arctic convoys bound for Murmansk. Her crew mutinied because they were subjected to harsh conditions and pushed beyond the limits of endurance. There are no written sources on the mutiny, as only her last voyage with convoy FR-77, the aftermath of mutiny, has been well documented. But not in Royal Nay Archives but in the novel HMS Ulysses written by Alistair MacLean, who personally served as a seaman on Arctic convoys on improved Dido class cruiser HMS Royalist. So, he was familiar with the condition on Arctic route and was able to realistically describe the last voyage of fictive cruiser HMS Ulysses.

Once a ship had sunk, the crew were “off articles” immediately and also off pay. They ceased to be “crew”. It’s why the master was needed to leave the ship if possible, he had the log book and noted the time of the sinking and the position. It was needed to determine the outstanding pay to the survivors. This was the norm up until WW2 when the ship owners were shamed into paying survivors for the complete voyage, hence ZACS infamous newspaper cartoon that stated “the price of petrol is increased by 2d”

So, once wrecked and off pay and articles, they are not subject to any orders or disciplines. also onshore they are just scavengers and beachcombers, just the same as the ship wreckers of the US outer banks and the Cornish ship wreckers in the UK.

Per Wikipedia:

The mutiny on the Bounty occurred aboard a British Royal Navy ship on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the commanding officer, William Bligh. The sailors were attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific Island, and repelled by the alleged cruelty of their Commander (Bligh was not a Captain on the Bounty, at the time, he was a Lieutenant, he became Captain on the second breadfruit trip, on the HMS Providence).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty

In the maritime world, the captain has been the top decision maker on a ship. THe responsibility for the ship and its contents and passengers are in his hands. He is the only person in the world (especially at that time in 1912) who has immediate decision making capability for the ship and the conditions it encounters.

Thus he is considered the person most responsible for making critical decisions that resulted in the sinking of the ship that day, and the loss of life. The command structure is set up so that the crew will obey his command. The Captain has the last say whether it is safe to proceed, or whether the crossing should be stopped or done with greater caution when conditions are, to him, unsafe.

On that fateful day, despite ice warnings, he continued to sail at high speed in the dark through an area where other captains opted to slow and even stop.

Anything that your little mind can come up with; and launch it into the Mass Media.

Seeing as how his remains would have been absorbed into the local ecology(USA= turned into fish-food); starting 110 years ago, in 1912….

NB Contrary to the Hollywood-land fiction of 1997 Titanic the movie; his Mate, Chief Officer Henry Tingle Wilde, also an Officer in (Lieutenant?) Royal Naval Reserve (USA=US Navy Reserve) did NOT act the coward: he stayed at his post, getting all the Lifeboats away - there being none left, he went down with the ship; as did the Chief Engineer and all his Engine-Room Officers.

There was no Black Box in the Wheel-house then; no recordings of R/T ** conversations; no written Log-Book survived… all we have is the formal W/T traffic, to and from RMS Titanic, as recorded by other ship’s W/T operators, by hand, in their Logs; oh, and by the Marconi W/T Shore Station at Cape Race, Newfoundland… 1904–1965.

** R/T = Marine Radio Telephony (USA=Voice Radio) had not yet been invented

But, you could also try the Ouija Board:

Hope this helps….