Collectible maritime shipwreck artifact 1700-1799 HMS Bounty iron hull nail for Sale

Collectible maritime shipwreck artifact 1700-1799 HMS Bounty iron hull nail For Sale

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Collectible maritime shipwreck artifact 1700-1799 HMS Bounty iron hull nail :
$150.00

Nail is 2-3/4” long hand-wrought iron, reputed to be from HMS Bounty. The item was purchased as Lot 3017 at the 10 May 2024 Morphy sale, among a number of documents from the private collection of the late Columbia University professor and urologist Dr. John K. Lattimer. No letter of authenticity was included in that sale and no provenance for the item has been since established. No warranty of authenticity is offered to buyer. Nail wrapped in 8-3/8” x 10-3/4” thin waxed paper with handwritten “NAIL From HMS Bounty” note in black pen. Came inside torn 4” x 7-1/2” embossed and printed business envelope from Carl Byoir &Associates, Inc., 800 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 on verso flap. Envelope addressed to: John K. Latimer, M.D., Director Urological Services, The Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, 622 West 168 Street, New York, New York 10032 and postmarked from New York on 18 April 1977. Hand written on verso in blue ink is “NAIL From Bounty (Capt Bligh)\" and “Robert Lewis, Heavy man who did PH Survey”.

Nail purportedly recovered from the remains of the HMS Bounty, the famous Royal Navy vessel under the command of William Bligh sent to Tahiti in 1787 to acquire breadfruit plants. The ship’s sailing master, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny and seized command on 28 April 1789. Afterwards the mutineers attempted to build a colony on the island of Tubuai. Subsequently, the mutineers arrived at Pitcairn Island and stripped the Bounty of useful materials. To avoid detection from a Royal Navy expedition, the mutineers burned the hulk to the waterline on 23 January 1790. The remains of the ship were first located in 1933 by mutineer descendant Parkin Christian and lay undisturbed on the bottom until January 1957 when a National Geographical Society diving expedition led by Luis Marden located them at the bottom of Bounty Bay at Pitcairn Island (I Found the Bones of the Bounty, National Geographic Magazine, December 1957).

The only potential connection that has been established between Carl Byoir & Associates and the HMS Bounty is George Hammond. A Columbia University graduate who studied on a Pulitzer Scholarship, Hammond was hired by public relations pioneer Carl Byoir in the 1930’s to photograph expeditions for public consumption by hungry American newspapers. One of Byoir’s early clients was RCA and its broadcast wing NBC. In February 1938, RCA sent an expedition to Pitcairn Island to set up a shortwave radio station in order to broadcast the Bounty’s story, including interviews with a descendant of the mutineers and RCA’s L.S. Bellham and Granville P. Lindley. Their efforts demonstrated the engineering capability of broadcasting from a remote Pacific Island which would prove instrumental just a few years later at the onset of WWII. If genuine, it is possible that this nail came back to Carl Byoir & Associates from that expedition with George Hammond, Robert Lewis or another unidentified participant.A number of bronze or copper nails between 1\" and 1-1/4\" long and other relics from the HMS Bounty have appeared on the market over the years. All these others appear to have associations with expedition leader Luis Marden, a young Pitcairn local named Norris (Foggy) Young or HMS Bounty collector Tony Probst.