In 1610 Hudson led his ship Discovery to the frozen waters of modern-day Canada in an attempt to find a new western route to Asia. The British explorer Henry Hudson made four famous voyages to the United States and Canada, but his tireless efforts to locate the Northwest Passage ultimately provoked his crew to rebel against him. Hermione would go on to sail under the Spanish flag until 1799 when the British HMS Surprise recaptured it in a daring night raid. British authorities later apprehended a few dozen of the mutineers based on tips from informants, but over 120 evaded capture. Claiming they had merely marooned their officers in a dinghy, they agreed to turn Hermione over to the Spanish in exchange for asylum. Knowing they could never return to England, the mutineers sailed for La Guaira in modern-day Venezuela. In total, 10 officers were murdered during the uprising. Those whom the crew approved of were spared, but the rest were simply tossed overboard. Once in control of the ship, they dragged the rest of the officers to the main deck. The rebels-many drunk on rum-stabbed Pigot to death in his cabin and then proceeded to brutally slaughter several officers with cutlasses and tomahawks. Furious at the draconian punishments meted out by their captain, Hugh Pigot, roughly 30 men split into groups and launched a coordinated attack on their superiors. On the night of September 21, 1797, the Royal Navy vessel Hermione was trawling the Caribbean when the crew initiated the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history. The Potemkin mutiny was later immortalized in the 1925 silent film “Battleship Potemkin,” and was a significant influence on the 1917 revolution that led to the Soviet Union’s creation. Most of the crewmen remained in exile there, but some-including Matyushenko-later returned to Russia only to be arrested and executed. ![]() Matyushenko and his triumphant rebels would go on to sail for a total of 11 days before finally surrendering the battleship in Romania. Russia’s Black Sea fleet was soon mobilized to crush the mutineers, but their crews were sympathetic to the plight of the Potemkin sailors and refused to fire on them. Under the leadership of a revolutionary mariner named Afanasy Matyushenko, the crew killed nearly half the ship’s officers in a bloody shootout before commandeering Potemkin and the torpedo boat Ismail. Told to eat the tainted broth or face extreme punishment, the sailors rebelled. ![]() The revolt occurred during the Russo-Japanese War when the 700 crewmen of the battleship Potemkin were given rations of borscht made from maggot-ridden meat. ![]() The Potemkin MutinyĪlthough it was initially sparked by a mundane argument over food, the Potemkin mutiny became one of the pivotal events in the 1905 Russian Revolution. The last of the rebels died on Pitcairn in 1829, but descendants of Bounty mutineers still live on the island to this day. Along with a group of Tahitians, in January 1790 the men settled on Pitcairn, an isolated island in the South Pacific. Some of the men remained on the island and were later captured by the Royal Navy, but Christian and a small band of followers continued sailing in search of a safe place to hide. Now in command of the Bounty, the mutineers sailed for the island of Tubuai before returning to Tahiti. He would go on to weather two more mutinies during his long naval career. Amazingly, Bligh eventually led this dinghy on a 3,600-mile voyage to a safe port in Timor. Led by master’s mate Fletcher Christian, the mutineers forced Bligh and 18 loyalists into a small launch and abandoned them at sea. Shortly after the Bounty left Tahiti in April 1789, a group of disgruntled crewmembers revolted and took their commander prisoner. ![]() They also became increasingly dissatisfied with Bligh, who often flogged his men for dereliction of duty. During a five-month layover in Tahiti, many of the ship’s crew became enamored with island life and even married the local women. Commanded by William Bligh, HMS Bounty left England in December 1787 on a mission to collect breadfruit saplings in the South Pacific. The 1789 mutiny on the Bounty saw a rebellious crew hijack their ship and build their own island community.
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