What happened to the ship used in this version?

It was bought by Ted Turner himself in the 1970s or 1980s and he had it for awhile. It was a tourist attraction. Turner produced "Treasure Island" the 1990 TNT movie with Charton Heston and a young Christian Bale and used the Bounty for the ship.

It was given to the city of Fall River, Massachusetts as a gift in 1993 and originally continued to serve as a tourist attraction, hosted by an actor portraying William Bligh. In the late 90s, it was turned into a sailing school part time while remaining a tourist attraction the other part of the time. Unfortunately, it's financial backers stopped providing the funds necessary for upkeep on the ship and slowly fell into disrepair. What little help there was from the city of Fall River also came to an end. No support at all. The clincher was Captain Robin Walbright's idiotic decision to replace it's copper bottom (I forget the proper term) with wood instead of copper while in drydock. This only quickened it's rotting and the ship was almost lost. Well, in a way it did, as you'll read...

A multi millionaire in Maine bought the ship in 2001 where it remains to this day as a sailing school vessell. The ship was fixed up and used in the "Spongebob Squarepants Movie" and in "Pirates of the Carribean 2." It looked the same as in "Mutiny" at that point. Then good old Captain Walbright, amazingly STILL the captain of the ship, asked to have the ship completely "renovated." Everything was gutted and stripped, below deck, upper deck, hull, masts, everything. Painted it black instead of the original blue and yellow. It was completely converted into a MODERN sailing school. Apparently they've forgotten the ship is supposed to be a REPLICA of the original. It was back in Fall River for a couple days last May. I was crushed to see it looked completely different, nothing like it used to be. It's only the Bounty in name now. Sad.

Well, as you can tell, I was connected with the ship when it was in Fall River for 8 years. Me dad ran the Tall Ship Bounty Foundation and my brother and I helped sail it up from Florida to Fall River on its initial journey to the city in 1993. We did our Boy Scout eagle projects on the ship, replacing the rigging. Toward the last couple years we still had it, the ship was doing haunted tours, a ghost ship, during October and some friends and I participated in that.

You'll love this story. Around the late 90s, Marlon Brando himself called up my Dad at his office, from Tahiti I think, asking if he could buy the ship! They had a nice little chat.

The Foundation received several Hollywood film offers too, and a couple producers and scouts came out to look at the ship. One movie was going to be "Ann Bonnie: the Lady Pirate" or something like that. I think Geena Davis was up for the lead. Didn't work out for whatever reason and neither did the film. I still have that unproduced screenplay.

Another film was a remake of "Captain Blood." Guess who was set to star in that one. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Imagine him playing a Brit... Got to meet one of the producers who came on board, Chris Kenney, who co-produced "Batman" 1989 and "1492: Conquest of Paradise."

A third film offer was for "Amistad" directed by Steven Speilberg. It was set to shoot in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Foundation was paid for use of the ship and everything. Then, at the last minute, location shooting was switched to the West Coast. No way they could get the ship over there in time. So Speilberg used a different ship. To the best of my knowledge, the ship would've appeared in the opening scenes as the slave ship.

The ship did end up getting used in a couple of documentaries and a television episode or two. Saw it on TV once, and the Canadian Mounties were in it..

Another note (it's all coming back to me now), a year or two after the ship came to Fall River, the owner of the replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria asked my father if the Foundation would be interested in buying those three ships. He would have too but there wasn't enough money to do so.

Ah, I miss the ship. Huge part of my childhood.