DOTD For Tuesday, April 28, 2026

This One's For All The People Who've Just Had Enough

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is Mutineers’ Grog inspired by the anniversary of the real-life ‘Mutiny on The Bounty’ which happened on this date, April 28, 1789.

And yes - we’ve done grog drinks before, like Trader Vic’s Grog, or the Navy Grog, But this is a bit different.

Mutiny On The HMS Bounty

The ‘Mutiny on The Bounty’ wasn’t just a 1960s movie, but a real life naval mutiny, one of the most famous of its kind.

The short version of the story? Three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty was seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate - effectively, the highest level enlisted man on the ship. Captain William Bligh, a notoriously cruel and abusive captain and 18 of his loyal supporters were set adrift in a small, open boat on the ocean, while the mutineers took the Bounty and set a course for a small island south of Tahiti, where the could get away from the monstrous captain - and evade responsibility for their crime of mutiny.

The complete version of the story is a bit longer.

In December 1787, the HMS Bounty left England for the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific, where it was to collect a cargo of breadfruit saplings to transport to the West Indies. There, the breadfruit would serve as food for enslaved passengers. After a 10-month journey, the Bounty arrived in Tahiti in October 1788. It had been a long and difficult voyage and discipline had been a problem. The Bounty was overcrowded and there were no marines on board to enforce the captain’s authority. To make things worse, when they reached Tahiti, it was the wrong season to collect the breadfruit, so they were forced to stay on the island for more than five months.

On the island of Tahiti, the crew enjoyed an idyllic life, reveling in the comfortable climate, lush surroundings, and the hospitality of the native Tahitians. Fletcher Christian even fell in love with a Tahitian woman named Mauatua. It was a much more comfortable life than they could ever expect to return to back in Britain. Still, they had a job to do, as Captain Bligh insisted.

On April 4, 1789, the Bounty departed Tahiti with its store of breadfruit saplings. On April 28, twenty-three days out to sea and 1300 miles from Tahiti, Christian and his men woke Bligh in the middle of the night, pointed a bayonet at him and forced him on deck. No blood was shed; instead the mutineers ordered Bligh and 18 of his loyal followers to board the Bounty’s launch, a small boat most often used to ferry people and supplies from ship to shore.

Of the 42 men onboard, apart from Bligh and Christian, 18 joined the mutiny, two were passive, and 22 were loyal to Bligh, though four of them were forced to stay aboard the ship to keep it operational.

Bligh was an oppressive commander and insulted & abused those under him. His monstrous nature would eventually cause a total of three mutinies in his career. By setting Bligh & 18 of his men adrift in an overcrowded 23-foot-long boat in the middle of the Pacific, Christian and his conspirators thought they had handed Bligh a death sentence they felt he and those loyal to him deserved.

They were wrong.

Bligh may have been an a-hole, but he was also a skilled navigator. Armed with a magnetic compass, a 10-inch sextant, a quadrant, and two books containing mathematical, astronomical, and geographical information, he and his 18 men managed to navigate their tiny dinghy west across the Pacific.

They headed first for the island of Tofua to replenish their meager supplies, then went on for a further 47 days to the island of Timor, south-east Asia, a voyage of 3618 nautical miles in a tiny boat. Once recovered, the men returned to England to report the mutiny. Bligh returned to England, and soon sailed again to Tahiti, from where he successfully transported the breadfruit trees to the West Indies, as he was initially contracted to do.

Meanwhile, Christian and his men attempted to establish themselves on the island of Tubuai. Unsuccessful in their colonizing effort, the Bounty sailed north to Tahiti, and 16 crewmen decided to stay there, despite the risk of capture by British authorities. Christian and 8 others, together with six Tahitian men, a dozen Tahitian women, and a child, decided to search the South Pacific for a safe haven. In January 1790, the Bounty settled to Pitcairn Island, an isolated and uninhabited volcanic island more than 1,000 miles east of Tahiti. The mutineers who remained on Tahiti were captured and taken back to England where three were hanged. A British ship searched for Christian and the others but did not find them.

In 1808, an American whaling vessel was drawn to Pitcairn by smoke from a cooking fire. The Americans discovered a community of children and women led by John Adams, the sole survivor of the original nine mutineers. According to Adams, after settling on Pitcairn, the colonists had stripped and burned the Bounty, and internal strife and sickness had led to the death of Fletcher and all the men but Adams. In 1825, a British ship arrived and formally granted Adams amnesty, and he served as patriarch of the Pitcairn community until his death in 1829.

In 1831, the Pitcairn islanders were resettled on Tahiti, but unsatisfied with life there, they soon returned to the main Pitcairn island community of Adamstown. In 1838, the Pitcairn Islands, which also includes three nearby uninhabited islands, was incorporated into the British Empire. By 1855, Pitcairn’s population had grown to nearly 200, and the two-square-mile island could not sustain its residents.

In 1856, the islanders were removed to Norfolk Island, a former penal colony nearly 4,000 miles to the west. However, less than two years later, 17 of the islanders returned to Pitcairn, followed by more families in 1864. Today, just a few dozen live on Pitcairn Island, and all but a handful are descendants of the Bounty mutineers. Meanwhile, 4,000 miles to the West, about a thousand residents of Norfolk Island - half its population - trace their lineage from Fletcher Christian and the eight other original mutineers of The Bounty.

While we don’t generally recommend mutiny, we do recommend rebelling against fascistic monsters. So with that in mind, we give you today’s Drink Of The Day, Mutineers’ Grog.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: