NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Henry Halboth
Date: 2012 Nov 16, 23:28 -0500
GL: And the captain died so we don't know what was he thinking?
But the first mate did survive, and I expect that the investigators will learn from him the reasoning and intentions of Capt Walbridge.
Before sailing from New London, Walbridge indicated that he was going to head due east to avoid the storm. He obviously changed his mind, perhaps because of the head winds that he would face. Instead, he chose to take advantage of the CCW flow and steer a course that would give him following winds almost the entire way. From what we know, it seems that the Bounty experienced winds no greater than 40 knots, no worse than the ship had weathered many times before.
What may have defeated this strategy was the unusually punishing waves that the Bounty encountered. Professional sailors have commented on the difficulty of bucking the Gulf Stream with a gale force wind from astern. That kind of punishment would have severely worked the hull, requiring continual pumping. Once the crew talks to the investigators, we should know the sequence of failures. Perhaps the generators broke down first. Perhaps the pumps could not keep up and were flooded out. Perhaps there was a catastrophic breach of the hull. With so many survivors, we will likely know eventually.
Don Seltzer
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