Named for His Majesty’s Ship Bounty. In 1787 the Admiralty dispatched the ship, under the command of Lt. Bligh {see planet  (3263)}, to Tahiti, to collect breadfruit plants for the slave plantations in the West Indies. The Bounty was taken by mutineers to Pitcairn Island, where the ship was destroyed, in a bay now known as Bounty Bay. The mutineers’ refuge was accidentally discovered in 1808 by an American whaling vessel, which found only one survivor from the mutineers who went to Pitcairn. (M 19692) _ _.