Bounty (1978 ship)
Bounty is an enlarged reconstruction of the original 1787 Royal Navy sailing ship, built in Whangarei, New Zealand in 1978 for the movie The Bounty starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. The ship launched on 16 December 1978 and was decommissioned in 2017. Its current location is unknown.
Design and construction
For the filming of The Bounty, a replica of William Bligh's ship, was required. The Bounty replica was built by Whangarei Engineering Company at Whangarei, New Zealand during 1978 and 1979. The ship was designed to externally conform to the original Bounty. The replica is in length overall, with a beam of and a draught of.History
Post filming
The film The Bounty was completed and released in 1984. Bounty was laid up in Los Angeles until 1986, when Bounty Voyages purchased the ship. She was sailed to Vancouver, refitted, then sailed to Australia. From here, she proceeded to England via the Suez Canal to join the First Fleet Re-enactment Voyage: a historical re-enactment for the Australian Bicentenary. She left England for Australia in May 1987, and sailed with the fleet via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Mauritius, and Fremantle before arriving in Sydney on Australia Day 1988. Bounty was originally to be flagship of the re-creation voyage, but the fleet commodore instead selected Søren Larsen for the role.For many years she served the tourist excursion market from Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia, before being sold to real estate conglomerate HKR International Limited in October 2007.
The company gave Bounty an additional name in Chinese, 濟民號 after company founder Cha Chi Ming.
For the following decade, the ship was used as a tourist attraction in Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, where it was used for harbour cruises, charters, day excursions, weddings and corporate retreats
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With no publicity or explanation, HKRI decommissioned Bounty on 1 August 2017. The fate of the ship was left undisclosed.
Following this, the ship has been spotted in Phra Samut Chedi, at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand. It was rechristened Bounty.
Google shows the ship clearly both aerially and from 'Street View' from boats travelling up the Chao Phraya River.