COOK'S first and second expeditions had drawn special attention to the bread-fruit as an article of food. The English planters in the West Indies thought that the bread-fruit tree would be a valuable addition to their food supply; for, owing to the foolish economics of slave labour, periodical famines occurred in Jamaica and other West India islands from one cause and another. Accordingly, in 1787 the British Admiralty dispatched WILLIAM BLIGH, in command of a king's ship named the _Bounty_, to the Pacific Ocean to obtain young bread-fruit trees, and then convey them to the West Indies. Bligh had commenced his experiences in Australia by accompanying Captain Cook on his second expedition in 1772 as sailing-master or navigating officer of the _Resolution_. In 1772, and after Cook had started on his third expedition, Bligh was promoted to be a commander and sent out in H.M.S. _Providence_ to Tahiti in connection with Cook's last voyage. On 23 December, 1787, he left England in the _Bounty_, but owing to the frightful storms off the extremity of South America his ship was unable to proceed direct to the Pacific and obliged to cross the Southern Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope and remain there thirty-eight days to refit, to replenish the provisions and refresh the crew. Starting again from the Cape on 1 July, 1788, they reached Adventure Bay in Tasmania on 20 August, after a remarkably swift passage across the southern Indian Ocean. Another uneventful voyage of short duration took them to Tahiti. With him there sailed a Mr. Nelson, a horticulturist, who had been with Cook in his third expedition and had planted shaddock trees in Tahiti (now found to be, eleven years afterwards, well grown and full of fruit). Nelson at once set to work with the assistance of the natives to dig up quantities of young bread-fruit plants. He obtained 1015, besides many specimens of other Tahitian plants. The _Bounty_, on 4 April, 1789, sailed away from Tahiti, "where for twenty-three weeks we had been treated with the utmost affection and regard, which seemed to increase in proportion to our stay". After calling at Anamuka in the Tonga archipelago the celebrated mutiny occurred. In the early morning of 28 April, when Bligh had just turned in for a sleep, he was suddenly awakened by Fletcher Christian, the master's mate (one of the officers on board, and probably a Manxman), who, accompanied by several gunners and seamen, tied his hands behind his back and threatened him with instant death if he spoke a word. In spite of his shoutings, however, he was not hurt, but dragged up on deck, where he found that twenty-five officers and men had mutinied against his command and had resolved to put him and seventeen others into an open boat and cast them adrift.