Editing William Bligh (section)

===First breadfruit voyage===
In 1787, Lieutenant Bligh, as he then was, took command of [[His Majesty's Armed Vessel|HMAV]] ''Bounty.'' In order to win a premium offered by the [[Royal Society]], he first sailed to [[Tahiti]] to obtain [[breadfruit]] trees, then set course east across the South Pacific for South America and the [[Cape Horn]] and eventually to the [[Caribbean Sea]], where breadfruit was wanted for experiments to see whether it would be a successful food crop for enslaved Africans on British colonial plantations in the [[West Indies]] islands.<ref name="Britannica">{{cite web |title=William Bligh |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Bligh |website=Britannica |access-date=17 April 2023}}</ref> According to one modern researcher, the notion that breadfruit had to be collected from Tahiti was intentionally misleading. Tahiti was merely one of many places where the esteemed seedless breadfruit could be found. The real reason for choosing Tahiti has its roots in the territorial contention that existed then between [[Kingdom of France|France]] and [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]] at the time.<ref>Lorbach, Karl Ernst Alwyn. 'Conspiracy on the Bounty: Bligh's Convenient Mutiny'. 2012, printed University of Queensland, hardcover/Kindle, 366 pages, {{ISBN|978-0-9806914-1-2}}.  [see Appendix Four – An Afterword on Banks and his Breadfruit, pp. 309–314].</ref> ''Bounty'' never reached the Caribbean, as [[mutiny]] broke out on board shortly after the ship left Tahiti.

The voyage to Tahiti was difficult. After trying unsuccessfully for a month to go west by rounding South America and [[Cape Horn]], ''Bounty'' was finally defeated by the notoriously stormy weather and opposite winds and forced to take the longer way to the east around the southern tip of Africa ([[Cape of Good Hope]] and [[Cape Agulhas]]). That delay caused a further delay in Tahiti, as Bligh had to wait five months for the breadfruit plants to mature sufficiently to be potted in soil and transported. ''Bounty'' departed Tahiti heading west in April 1789.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Voyage of HMAV Bounty |url=https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/bounty/voyage.shtml |website=Pacific Union College |access-date=17 April 2023}}</ref>