[ADMIRAL WILLIAM BLIGH, F.R.S.]
ADMIRAL WILLIAM BLIGH, F.R.S.
'His name is added to the glorious roll
Of those who search the storm-surrounded Pole.'
Byron.
The name of Admiral Bligh will always be associated with that painful episode in the history of the British Navy—the Mutiny of the Bounty—and the settlement of the mutineers on Pitcairn and other of the South Sea Islands; whence we still occasionally obtain news of their happy and flourishing descendants—happier far than their progenitors.[62] He is another example of a Cornish circumnavigator of the globe; the first being a Michell of Truro, who went round the world with Sir Francis Drake. Captain Samuel Wallis, R.N., of Lanteglos juxta Camelford, also sailed round the world in the Dolphin in 1766-68.
The Admiral was born, in all probability (though there has been some uncertainty on the subject) on the Duchy Manor of Tinten,[63] in the parish of St. Tudy, about half a mile south of the 'Church Town,' about the year 1753,—the son of Charles and Margaret Bligh; although I am aware that, according to another account, he is said to have been the son of John Bligh, of Tretawne, in the adjoining parish of St. Kew. The earliest connexion which I have been able to trace between this family and the parish of St. Tudy is, that they acquired some property here of the Westlakes, in 1680-81; but there was a John Bligh, or Blygh, at Bodmin, who acted as an assistant to the Commissioners for the Suppression of Monasteries, temp. Henry VIII. To this ancient town a branch of the Bligh family contributed four mayors between the years 1505 and 1588—indeed, the Cornish Blighs may be traced back as early as the reign of Henry IV. I am not sure whether or not Admiral Sir Richard Rodney Bligh, G.C.B, (who died in 1821), was a member of this family; but he was a Cornishman, as were some other naval officers of the same name.