BOOTHBAY HARBOR – Capt. Robin Walbridge stands at the teak helm on the main deck of the Bounty, as the sounds of power saws and hammers drift from below through a summer morning’s steamy air.

The slickly varnished wheel is said to have shown up in more movies than any other movable prop, starting with the 1935 film “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.

“Everybody who was ever famous has stood at this helm at one time or another,” Walbridge says with a tad of exaggeration and slight smile.

Now it’s Walbridge’s turn at the famous wheel of the sailing vessel, which has just been refitted with a new hull, engine and other critical parts so it can resume its latest role.

Walbridge’s job is to pass along the 18th century skills of sailing one of the world’s few remaining square-riggers to mariners born into a push-button age. It’s a challenge the former freighter captain plunges into with delight.

“Quite frankly, I think I’ve got the best job in the world,” Walbridge said as young crew members prepared the 412-ton, three-masted replica of the original Bounty to set sail July 15 for Portsmouth, N.H.

At 180 feet from bowsprit to stern, and its tallest mast at 115 feet, the replica is longer than the original HMS Bounty, whose 1789 mutiny inspired hundreds of articles and books and five major movies.

But the newer ship’s classic lines still closely follow those of the original vessel. It was built in 1960 as a floating prop for MGM’s film version of the mutiny, in which Marlon Brando had a lead role.

After the movie, the Bounty was berthed in St. Petersburg, Fla., where it remained for two decades as a tourist attraction. The ship reappeared in “Treasure Island,” “Yellowbeard” and other swashbuckling films before it was donated in 1993 to a group in Fall River, Mass., where it was displayed.

Cable TV titan Ted Turner gained possession of the Bounty when he bought the MGM film library in 1986.

Walbridge joined the ship in 1995 and began leading training missions from the Canadian Maritimes to the Caribbean.

Since February 2001, the Bounty has been owned by Long Island businessman Robert Hansen, who formed the HMS Bounty Organization LLC, under which training and appearances at coastal festivals have continued.

Students over the years have ranged from an 11-year-old boy from Jacksonville, Fla., to U.S. Navy officers trained to sail the USS Constitution. In July 1997, the Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, sailed under its own power for the first time in 116 years.

The years took a toll on the Bounty. Its hull slowly rotted and fell victim to worms that tunneled into the wood.

Restoration in Maine began in June 2001.

Sample’s Shipyard in Boothbay Harbor was chosen for the $1 million overhaul because it is one of the last with specialty skills needed to replace the wooden hull. Sample’s also has an inclined, harbor-side railway big enough to haul the Bounty out of the water.

Besides getting a new hull, the Bounty was equipped with a new diesel-electric engine to supplement sails so the ship can meet its schedules when the wind doesn’t cooperate. The ship also got new wiring and plumbing, with virtually everything from the waterline down being replaced.

The next round of repairs will be from the waterline up, Walbridge said as crew members worked overhead in the crow’s nest, above roughly 7 miles of rigging. The deck was cluttered with equipment such as newly inspected wooden spars ready to be hoisted aloft, coiled lines and lead ballast.

The original HMS Bounty itself underwent a major refit more than two centuries ago. Originally a coal-carrying ship called the Bethia that sailed along the English coast, it was decommissioned, purchased by the Admiralty and recommissioned in 1787 as the HMS Bounty.

The ship was sent to Tahiti to bring breadfruit plantings to the Caribbean. On the return voyage, a dozen crew members staged a mutiny against Capt. William Bligh, setting him and his supporters adrift in a small boat.

Bligh managed to navigate the 23-foot boat 3,600 miles to safety in present-day Indonesia, while the mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island.

Each year, Pitcairn islanders build a replica of the Bounty using scrap wood masts and cardboard sails, set it adrift and burn it to commemorate its destruction by the mutineers in 1790.