Historic ship launched after extensive repairs

BOOTHBAY HARBOR – After undergoing repairs for more than a year, the tall ship featured in the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” was launched Saturday night at the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard in preparation for an around-the-world voyage.

The 412-ton HMS Bounty is poised to take to the high seas after a $2 million overhaul in which only its three 115-foot masts were left untouched. The work included replacing stern and bow sections, installing a new top deck, recasting the ship’s ballast, building a new skylight and galley windows and installing new deck hatches.

“When the owner first approached us to have the ship’s bottom redone, it was like Swiss cheese,” said Robert C. Foster III, a spokesman for the shipyard. “It came up here with a big rubber diaper on her to keep her afloat.”

More than 40 shipyard workers working 10-hour days put in an estimated 35,000 hours to make sure the Bounty is prepared to return to sea.

“We pretty much replaced everything but the keel and hull,” said Skip Collins, a heavy-equipment operator.

The overhaul was the replica’s third since owner Robert Hanson acquired it from the Fall River (Mass.) Chamber of Commerce.

The Bounty is scheduled to leave July 2 for Nova Scotia and Portsmouth, England, as part of a 6,000-mile trip that tentatively includes a stop in Brazil before the ship moves on to South Africa and the South Pacific. The 18-member crew plans to arrive in Tahiti in October 2008 to take part in the island’s celebration of Capt. William Bligh’s arrival 220 years ago.

The ship will attempt to follow the course Bligh took in 1788 when the original Bounty was commissioned to sail to Tahiti to collect sapling breadfruit trees.

“The ship is beautiful. It truly tugs at your heart,” said Margaret Ramsey, spokeswoman for Hanson’s HMS Bounty Organization LLC in Smithtown, N.Y., who noted that most people don’t realize what it costs to keep the Bounty shipshape.

“It easily costs us between $750,000 and $1 million a year just to maintain the ship,” she said. “It is not an easy feat.”

The replica ship has appeared in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” and appears briefly in the recently released “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

Information from Portland Press Herald, www.press

herald.com.