The ship was sent to the South Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to the British West Indies.

The Royal Navy had purchased Bethia for the sole purpose of carrying out the mission of acquiring breadfruit plants from Tahiti, which would then be transported to the British West Indies as a cheap source of food for the region's slaves.

English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks originated the idea and promoted it in Britain, recommending Lieutenant William Bligh to the Admiralty as the mission's commander.

William Bligh was appointed commanding lieutenant of Bounty on 16 August 1787 at the age of 33, after a career that included a tour as sailing master of the sloop Resolution during the third voyage of James Cook, which lasted from 1776 to 1780.

For a full month, the crew attempted to take the ship west, around South America's Cape Horn, but adverse weather prevented this.

Bligh then proceeded east, rounding the southern tip of Africa (Cape Agulhas) and crossing the width of the Indian Ocean, a route 7,000 miles longer.

During the outward voyage, Bligh demoted Sailing Master John Fryer, replacing him with Fletcher Christian [citation needed].

Bligh allowed the crew to live ashore and care for the potted breadfruit plants, and they became socialised to the customs and culture of the Tahitians.

Sixteen of the mutineers – including the four loyalists who had been unable to accompany Bligh – remained there, taking their chances that the Royal Navy would not find them and bring them to justice.

HMS Pandora was sent out by the Admiralty in November 1790 in pursuit of Bounty, to capture the mutineers and bring them back to Britain to face a court martial.

They remained in their prison until 29 August 1791 when Pandora was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef with the loss of 35 lives, including one loyalist and three mutineers (Stewart, Sumner, Skinner, and Hildebrand).

Beechey later recorded this in his 1831 published account of the voyage, as did one of his crew, John Bechervaise, in his 1839 Thirty-Six Years of a Seafaring Life by an Old Quarter Master.

The details of the voyage of Bounty are very well documented, largely due to the effort of Bligh to maintain an accurate log before, during, and after the actual mutiny.

In the immediate wake of the mutiny, all but four of the loyal crew joined Bligh in the long boat for the voyage to Timor, and eventually made it safely back to England, unless otherwise noted in the table below.

The last of Bounty's four 4-pounder cannon was recovered in 1998 by an archaeological team from James Cook University and was sent to the Queensland Museum in Townsville to be stabilised through lengthy conservation treatment via electrolysis over a period of nearly 40 months.

On 29 October 2012, sixteen Bounty crew members abandoned ship off the coast of North Carolina after getting caught in the high seas brought on by Hurricane Sandy.

[29] The ship sank, according to Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, at 12:45 UTC Monday 29 October 2012 and two crew members, including Captain Robin Walbridge, were reported as missing.

For many years she served the tourist excursion market from Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia and appeared in a Tamil language Indian (1996 film), before being sold to HKR International Limited in October 2007.

She was then a tourist attraction (also used for charter, excursions and sail training) based in Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, and was given an additional Chinese name 濟民號.