On this link that Sal posted and that is a recent article there are some interesting new statements and information:
Quoted:
"The ship .. was "
built as a movie set, not an ocean-going ship," said longtime tall ship designer and naval architect Andrew Davis, president of Tri-Coastal Marine in California....The Bounty was nearly twice as long as the original vessel, lengthened to accommodate movie crews....
Barksdale's knowledge of engines, motors and things mechanical qualified him to be the Bounty's engineer. But he spent his first three weeks of his six-week experience on the Bounty while the ship was in dry dock in Maine getting its hull caulked with oakum. Sailing aboard a tall ship ..."It was a chance to do something in a way it was done 200 years ago, to go to sea and just step back in time," Barksdale said.
In Nelson, he operates a home-repair company called the Honey-Do Handyman, a name suggesting he's not unaccustomed to taking orders.
Barksdale, a novice at sea...was finding it increasingly difficult to do his job. Working in the engine room, Barksdale encountered high temperatures in cramped quarters, surrounded by two couch-size generators and twin 375 horsepower diesel main engines. He could barely afford to let go of something secure.
"All of our hands were numb from having to hold on to something," he said. "It took a death grip to hold on."...
Barksdale said the ship was being hit by 70 mph winds and 30-foot seas. Over the next several hours, the main engines failed, leaving the boat without propulsion and without the hydraulic pumps. It became impossible to fight the water level inside the boat's hull, which was rising about 2 feet each hour, Barksdale acknowledged.
"It was clear the boat was filling with water but I don't understand entirely why that happened and I'm not going to speculate. We were taking on more water than we were pumping out." The second generator was the last to fail...
Barksdale was being overwhelmed in the engine room and other crew members, including Walbridge and Svendsen, rushed to spell him, trying to keep the pumps free of clogging debris.
"I couldn't take more than an hour at a time in there," Barksdale said, describing how he was becoming increasingly seasick, drained by the 100-degree heat and battered as the ship twisted and turned in the waves and wind.
"Some of the real heroes of all this are the crew members who climbed the rat lines, got up in the rigging and were able to furl the sails," he said.
Barksdale said he and the rest of the crew had been able to get only a few hours sleep in the previous two days.
"You had to hold on to something solid with one hand and try to clear the pumps with the other, trying not to bang your head or crash against something the whole time. I was just exhausted and so was everyone else," Barksdale said.
Questions persist about the loss of a ship and two lives far at sea - Richmond Times-Dispatch: News:
The rest is already been told in other article even if this one is the best I have read.
Some new things. Barksdale confirmed my conviction that the boat was not being sailed but relied only on its engines and at the end only in one.
It seems also that Flatballer was right in what regards problems with debris clogging the pumps.
....