Antique botany print titled 'Tak van den Broodboom met de Vrugt'
Old botany print depicting the Breadfruit Tree. Originates from 'Reizen Rondom de Waereld door James Cook’. Thought to be from Captain Cook's first voyage to Polynesia.
In 1768, when Captain James Cook set out aboard the British Royal Navy vessel HMS Endeavour, English botanist Sir Joseph Banks in tow, their three-year exploratory voyage included a three-month stop in Tahiti. Here, both men were quickly taken by breadfruit's potential for feeding slaves in the British West Indies, seeing that the trees were fast-growing, required little care and produced ample amounts of carb-heavy fruits. On returning to England, Banks (who later became president of the Royal Society, the world's oldest national scientific institution) alerted King George III of their finds; the botanist even offered a reward to anyone successful in transporting 1,000 breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies.
Nearly two decades after Cook's original expedition, King George III appointed Lieutenant William Bligh to lead the breadfruit expedition to Tahiti. On 28 November 1787, Bligh set sail with his crew aboard the HMS Bounty. Their journey was rough from the start. High winds and stormy weather significantly slowed their voyage, and once they reached Tahiti, Bligh and his crew had to wait another five months for the plants to be ready to transport.
By the time they set sail for Caribbean waters, Bligh's men had grown used to island living – and to the Tahitian women. Many of them didn't want to leave. So, on 29 April 1789, just a month into their voyage across the South Pacific towards the West Indies, Master's mate Fletcher Christian and 18 other disaffected crew members forced Bligh, with 18 of his supporters, into a 7m longboat and dispatched them into the open waters, tossing all the breadfruit plants overboard and sailing off on their own.
On the more than 100 islands that make up French Polynesia, breadfruit is a staple food. The name derives from the fact that when it’s just ripe enough to eat, the cooked, starch-heavy fruit resembles freshly baked bread. It gets sweeter as it ripens, and can be prepared in a multitude of ways, including mashed, boiled, roasted and fried, or even devoured raw. Some locals call breadfruit the ‘Tree of Life’, because it can provide so much for so many: both the fruit and the tree's young leaves are edible; the trunk's lightweight timber can be used to build homes and traditional outrigger canoes; and the bark is even used to make clothes.
