Pirates, city match up

“We’re extremely excited about having a tall ship in our harbor,” said St. Augustine City Manager John Regan. “And it will be a nice sort of kickoff for our upcoming Maritime Heritage events.”

Regan said he looked forward to taking his family aboard the ship.

“Mutineers and pirates are the perfect combination, especially for St. Augustine, where centuries ago tall ships sailed in and pirates pillaged,” said Pat Croce, pirate historian and founder of The Pirate Museum.

The current Bounty, at 180 feet overall, is a bit bigger than the original, Simonin said.

“She was built one third larger to accommodate the cameras and film crew for the movie,” she said. “But she is a faithful replica in every other way, constructed of wood using the original plans for the ship from British Naval records, just up-sized proportionally.”

The replica was built in Lundenberg, Nova Scotia, and it was the first three-masted sailing vessel to be launched there since the 1880s. According to the Internet Movie Database, 400,000 feet of lumber were used, 10,000 square yards of canvas were sewn by hand and 10 miles of rope were rigged for the reconstructed version of HMS The Bounty. After construction, the ship then sailed the 7,000 miles from Nova Scotia to Tahiti for filming.

The Bounty later appeared at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It was afterward berthed in St. Petersburg, Fla., until 2008. For most of those years, the ship was still owned by MGM. The current owner, Robert Hansen, purchased the Bounty in 2001.

The HMS Bounty is now commanded by Robin Walbridge, 63, who has served as the ship’s captain for more than 20 years, Simonin said. She carries a crew of anywhere from 18-20 paid crew members, including a ship’s engineer/carpenter and a chef.

“Most of the current crew are college-aged,” Simonin said. “In order to support her, we keep the ship moving as much as we can, moving from port to port for tours. It’s not as easy for very many people beyond their 20s to pack up and walk away from the ‘real world’ and live that life.”

During the winter months Bounty is docked in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, and travels most of the spring and summer. In the summer of 2007, the Bounty sailed to Britain and visited several ports across Europe.

Another difference between the current Bounty and the original is the addition of two 375 horsepower John Deere diesel engines.

“We try not to use the engines, whenever we can,” Simonin said. “We enjoy teaching young people the art of square rig sailing, and, of course, it saves a lot of money on fuel.”