What happened when SAS man relived Bligh’s epic voyage
OF ALL the places to be trapped with a bunch of strangers, a tiny boat in the Pacific must be the worst. But that is where nine men have spent several weeks in an attempt to recreate the extraordinary journey of Captain Bligh after he was cast adrift with his loyal crew.
For the reality TV show Mutiny, Channel 4 commissioned a faithful replica of the 23ft dinghy and found volunteers to follow Bligh’s 3,600-mile route from the waters off Tonga in the South Pacific to Timor.
Leading the expedition was Ant Middleton, a tattooed former Marine, who stars as the chief instructor on another C4 show, SAS: Who Dares Wins. But while his training set him in good stead for the ordeal, some of the others had never even sailed before.
‘I thought we’d be on a much bigger ship, like in Pirates Of The Caribbean,’ says Freddy Benjafield, who at 23 was the youngest to take part. ‘They didn’t tell us at first what they were trying to recreate. As soon as someone mentioned Captain Bligh I thought, “Uh oh . . .” ’
Each crew member was chosen for a different skill: there’s a cook, a carpenter and a doctor. Four are professional sailors, and two are cameramen.
They shunned modern navigation aids for a sextant and map charts, and lived off a ration of dry sea biscuits and cured meat, totalling just 400 calories per day. There was no toilet nor washing facilities, and nowhere but the hard wooden benches to sleep.
‘I lost about 19kg,’ says Freddy. ‘People began to really suffer. Luke, the doctor, couldn’t sleep, and his bones started sticking out of his body.’
At one point it rained for three days, causing the men’s skin to start rotting. One of the cameramen had such bad ‘trench hand’ that he was unable to pull ropes or handle equipment for fear clumps of skin would come off.
Then there were the storms, which threatened to capsize the boat, and dangerous reefs, one of which they encountered at night.
And when there was no wind, the boat would sit almost stationary, in what is known as ‘the doldrums’, a dangerous state of listlessness that can send sailors mad. But perhaps hardest of all was the psychological challenge of getting on with eight strangers (the crew was made up of nine men rather than the original 19 to allow room for the camera equipment).
‘I absolutely knew there was going to be disagreement. It was just a case of waiting for it to happen,’ says Dan Etheridge, 38, one of the cameramen.
Sure enough, within 48 hours, a row erupted when one of the crew — Liverpudlian ex-convict Chris — ignored orders to forage for firewood on a desert island. All of which makes for gripping television.
The boat was followed by a support vessel, and if anyone decided they couldn’t carry on, they had the option of quitting. However, as a test of mental endurance, it was very real.
The only times the dinghy had contact with the support vessel was to change batteries or memory cards for the four cameras rigged up on the boat.
‘When the cameras stopped rolling, and you realised you were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the rescue boat is so many miles away, it hits you,’ says Ben Gotsell, 27, the ship’s carpenter. ‘That’s when I discovered fear for the first time.
‘Even when we got to some of the islands, I thought it would be like a Bounty advert. But actually you’ve got to try to land without breaking the boat, then make a fire and find food. All when you’re hungry and tired and wet.’
LIkE Captain Bligh, Ant Middleton experienced a few mutinies of his own. In the first episode, we see one crew member refusing to row when the boat gets dangerously close to rocks.
And Middleton was worried about commanding non-military trained men. ‘The challenge is going to be greater for me than for Bligh,’ he says. ‘He had 18 trained sailors; I don’t.’
Amazingly, Bligh’s journal of the voyage survives, and the modern-day adventurers took a copy which they would read as they went along.
‘It was creepy how often our experiences would mirror his, almost word for word,’ says Freddy.
In the original journey, one of Bligh’s men was stoned to death by aggressive islanders. Although we will have to wait to see if all nine stick it to the end, we do know they all survived. Even for C4, that would have been a reality too far. Mutiny is on Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm