Bounty's complement is forty-six men, comprising forty-four…

September 1787 CE

Bounty's complement is forty-six men, comprising forty-four Royal Navy seamen (including Bligh), and two civilian botanists.

Directly beneath Bligh are his warrant officers, appointed by the Navy Board and headed by the sailing master John Fryer.

The other warrant officers are the boatswain, the surgeon, the carpenter, and the gunner.

To the two master's mates and two midshipmen are added several honorary midshipmen—so-called "young gentlemen" who are aspirant naval officers.

These sign the ship's roster as able seamen, but are quartered with the midshipmen and treated on equal terms with them.

Most of Bounty's crew are chosen by Bligh or are recommended to him by influential patrons.

William Peckover the gunner and Joseph Coleman the armorer had been with Cook and Bligh on HMS Resolution; several others had sailed under Bligh more recently on the Britannia.

Among these is the twenty-three-year-old Fletcher Christian, who comes from a wealthy Cumberland family descended from Manx gentry.

Christian had chosen a life at sea rather than the legal career envisaged by his family.

He had twice voyaged with Bligh to the West Indies, and the two had formed a master-pupil relationship through which Christian has become a skilled navigator.

Christian is willing to serve on Bounty without pay as one of the "young gentlemen"; Bligh gives him one of the salaried master's mate's berths.

Another of the young gentlemen recommended to Bligh is fifteen-year-old Peter Heywood, also from a Manx family and a distant relation of Christian's.

Heywood had left school at fourteen to spend a year on HMS Powerful, a harbor-bound training vessel at Plymouth.

His recommendation to Bligh comes from Richard Betham, a Heywood family friend who is Bligh's father-in-law.

The two botanists, or "gardeners", are chosen by Banks.

The chief botanist, David Nelson, is a veteran of Cook's third expedition who had been to Tahiti and had learned some of the natives' language.

Nelson's assistant William Brown is a former midshipman who had seen naval action against the French.

Banks also helps to secure the official midshipmen's berths for two of his protégés, Thomas Hayward and John Hallett.

Overall, Bounty's crew is relatively youthful, the majority being under thirty; at the time of departure, Bligh is thirty-three years old.

Among the older crew members are the thirty-nine-year-old Peckover, who had sailed on all three of Cook's voyages, and Lawrence Lebogue, a year older and formerly sailmaker on the Britannia.

The youngest aboard are Hallett and Heywood, both fifteen when they leave England.

Living space on the ship is allocated on the basis of rank.

Bligh, having yielded the great cabin, occupies private sleeping quarters with an adjacent dining area or pantry on the starboard side of the ship, and Fryer a small cabin on the opposite side.

The surgeon Thomas Huggan, the other warrant officers, and Nelson the botanist have tiny cabins on the lower deck, while the master's mates and the midshipmen, together with the young gentlemen, berth together in an area behind the captain's dining room known as the cockpit; as junior or prospective officers, they are allowed use of the quarterdeck.

The other ranks have their quarters in the forecastle, a windowless unventilated area measuring thirty-six by twenty-two feet (eleven by six point seven meters) with headroom of five feet seven inches (one point seven meters).