When the wind gets its dander up, and begins blowing a gale of more than ten knots belligerently against the port beam, while the captain is attempting to delicately manouevre his gleaming sailboat into a narrow slip with a full cargo of family aboard, the pressure is on. This is not the time for children to want something to eat. This is not the time for spouses to ask which thing the captain intends for them to grab. This is not the time for onlookers from the dock to stand and watch, awestruck as the captain twists and turns the boat nearly 360 degrees within the narrow confines of the slip because he has suddenly lost steerageway. And, certainly, if he accidently lets slip a few choice words, or fumbles with a winch handle causing it to skitter off the boat in a long, slow arc into the water, this is not the time to suddenly evoke the grand master's name, Bligh! Or is it? Captain William Bligh was one of the greatest navigators ever to plot a course. He sailed with Captain Cook through the Pacific in the late 1700s as his navigator. He used his phenominal skill with the navigational tools of that time to chart the nether regions of the new, wild Pacific frontier. A frontier that was anything but pacific. After Captain Cook's untimely death - some say Bligh may have helped cause it, but that's another article - William Bligh was given his own command of the sailing ship Bounty. The Bounty was not commissioned to make discoveries in the Pacific, however, but to ship breadfruit plants back from Tahiti for the slave colonies in the Carribbean. Not necessarily a noble cause, but a captaincy nonetheless. Of course, we all know how the story goes: Bligh beats his crew, humiliates them with screaming frenzies of verbal abuse, throws winch handles into the ocean, denies his children snacks, screams at his wife while she attempts to raise the anchor, etc. Or, does he? I'll not elucidate the finer points of Bligh's great trek across the Pacific with a small boatfull of men following the mutiny on the Bounty, as this can be read with great pleasure in the book "Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare" by John Toohey. However, had it not been for Bligh's tenacity, navigational ability, incredible care for the men in his charge, and sound judgement in the presence of enormous physical and mental hardship, all the men who were evicted with him from the Bounty into a small open boat would have died before ever seeing land again. Of course, one may argue that had it not been for Bligh's other, less endearing characteristics, none of the men evicted with Bligh from the Bounty would have been evicted in the first place. The point, however, is that Captain William Bligh was a man of great courage and mental strength whose primary goal was always to see his crew safely through their voyage. I would be quite surprised to find that all the other Captain Bligh's sailing their small craft through the world's ocean's today didn't have the same ultimte goal in mind. Captain Bligh? He's one of my heros. Now, Captain Vancouver? That's another insult entirely!
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