Product Description

A revisionist history of the Mutiny on the Bounty with a different take, the author seeing it first and foremost as the breaking daily news of a trial that mesmerized a great seafaring nation. The narrative broadens to cover the events of the mutiny itself, Bligh's extraordinary 3000 mile voyage in a long-boat, Fletcher Christian's fate, the capture of the mutineers, their harsh voyage back to England and eventual fate. The book gives an immediate and vivid portrait of London and Plymouth during this period (1789-1793), when the popular press was in its infancy, revolution was in the air and poets gave words to national feeling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #512598 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Few episodes in the history of British sea-faring are as gripping and sensational as The Bounty--an account of a mutiny of 1789. While the French were having a revolution in Paris, in the South Pacific a very English coup took place when Master's mate Fletcher Christian deposed Captain Bligh, the ruler of his ship, and set off with his fellow mutineers for a new life in the paradise of Tahiti. The tale has all the ingredients of an adventure--Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord of the Flies all rolled into one. And, as Caroline Alexander points out, myth and legend have often got in the way of the real truth of why the mutiny took place. She sets out to find out what really happened, and does so by not only reconstructing the fateful voyage of the ship, but also by focusing in on all the principal and minor characters in the drama.

The trouble with this book is that there seems to be too many different tales to tell and the author struggles to keep up with her narrative. Like a lost ship we set sail in one direction only to back-track and recover the same course over again. The promised treasure--why Christian really did it--is never found. Readers wanting a clearer and simpler chart might be better advised to read Captain Bligh's own famous account, and Edward Christian's defence of his brother The Bounty Mutiny and then follow-up with Greg Dening's book, Mr Bligh's Bad Language. --Miles Taylor

Review
'Extraordinary... Caroline Alexander has produced a thrilling book of the most perilous journey of them all... Outstanding.' Daily Telegraph

The mutiny on board HMS Bounty has become one of the most abiding of all the great sagas of the sea. Over the years, myths and legends took their place alongside the facts, creating a distorted version of history. William Bligh was often portrayed as a harsh and ruthless captain while the mutineer Fletcher Christian was romanticised into an avenging hero. Caroline Alexander takes a fresh look at this famous historical event, employing extensive research to bring new information to light. Using contemporaneous accounts, she allows the mutineers to tell their story in their own words. This is an adventure story full of colour and excitement, complete with exotic locations, death and disease, dissent and rebellion and survival against all odds. On 28 April 1789, just before sunrise, master's mate Fletcher Christian and three other armed men entered the cabin of their captain, William Bligh, tied him up and took control of the ship. Under the disturbed command of Christian, they put Bligh and other dissenters into a 23-foot craft and sent them out to sea, certain that they would perish. Against all the odds, Bligh commandeered the little ship across 4,162 miles of frequently perilous oceans to safety in the Dutch East Indies. The drama of their 45 days adrift, surviving on meagre portions of food and water and catching sea birds to eat, is vividly conveyed. Throughout the ordeal, Bligh held on tenaciously to his sanity and his navigational expertise to ensure the survival of his desperate crew. When he finally returned to England in 1790, the Admiralty mobilised an expedition to hunt down the mutineers and the story tracks the details of the fate that awaited Christian and his followers. This account of the story begins before the Bounty sailed and ends with the death of the last participant, looking at the backgrounds and personalities of the men and how these might have influenced events. The personal letters and accounts give the narrative an immediacy that recreates the atmosphere of the time. This is history at its best. (Kirkus UK)

Blending a smooth interpretation of events with primary-source material, Alexander profiles history's most famous mutiny in the same stylish manner she brought to Shackleton's Antarctic expedition (The Endurance, 1998, etc.). There's no dearth of original material to work from when piecing together what happened aboard the Bounty in 1789, when Fletcher Christian and a small band of men staged a mutiny against Captain William Bligh, and Alexander has harvested all the best of it: admiralty papers, personal letters, Bligh's logs, wills, memoirs, diaries, and even "correspondence of figures not obviously connected to events, obscure news items, and the biographies and family pedigrees of seemingly minor players." The author re-creates the crew's capture on Tahiti and the courts-martial of Bligh and the others, with their contradictory evidence and clashes of will. Considering the surfeit of interpretations, it's not surprising when Alexander concedes that "exactly why, or precisely when Christian had begun to succumb to the pressure of serving under his irascible commander is impossible to ascertain." She offers fascinating and credible explanations for the rise of the Fletcher Christian myth, and the devolution of Bligh to join the ranks of Quisling and Legree; in one scenario, Bligh's breadfruit mission was intended to supply cheap food for slaves in the West Indies, and Abolitionists created in Christian "a young gentleman who, 'agonized by unprovoked and incessant abuse and disgrace,' stood up for his natural rights and overthrew the oppressive tyrant." The discovery, years later, of the families of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island added further grist to the Romantic mill. A great sea story ("surpassed, perhaps, only by the Odyssey," the author remarks), handled with dexterity to capture characters and circumstances with faithfulness to the record and a steady feeling of anticipation for history in the making. (32 pp. illustrations, not seen) (Kirkus Reviews)

Daily Mail
'painstaking and absorbing'

Customer Reviews

The Bounty
This is a tale of exploration, adventure and mutiny on board the navy cutter Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant Bligh (for he was only nominally a captain) and under orders to sail to Tahiti and thence to transport indigenous breadfruit plants from that south Pacific island 'paradise' to the plantations of the West Indies via the channel between New Holland (Australia) and New Guinea (Papua New Guinea) which they were to explore and chart for the Admiralty as the true objective.

But the captain is unceremoniously relieved of his command and cast adrift in the ship's launch with a handful of loyalists to a certain death on the high seas (or so the mutineers believed) when things turn nasty not far from Tahiti. But, the captain and his band of fellows makes his way to a Dutch trading post-cum-settlement in Timor where they are received honourably and given safe passage to Batavia, Java, the principal trading station in the Dutch East Indies. After the mutiny one faction on board the Bounty is returned to Tahiti where they settle. The remainder, including Fletcher Christian, eventually wash up in Pitcairn where the survivors were found decades later (a story in itself).

The first seeds of rebellion were sown nine months from port, and six months previously, in Adventure Bay, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) when Bligh ticked off his carpenter - not the first of his officers to be lashed by his tongue during the voyage - William Purcell during a "wooding" expedition on shore. Apparently his billets of timber were "too long" and he responded "insolently" to Bligh's criticisms (the captain should have left well alone if you ask me) ... But Bligh is generally bad tempered and the mutiny is eventually precipitated one night after Bligh harangues his officers about the theft of coconuts and calls them "dogs", "scoundrels" and "villains".

Alexander takes us effortlessly from the south seas, via provincial England and its intrigues and intricate web of family connections which binds many of the protagonists in this saga, to the court-martial aboard the HMS Duke in Portsmouth Harbour where the mutineers apprehended at Tahiti are tried for their lives. There follows probably one of the best and most lucid courtroom dramas that has appeared anywhere in print. Alexander writes beautifully and substantiates her claims and hypotheses quoting from primary sources such as the captain's log and various other contemporary memoirs and diaries written by the mutineers, their families and other contemporaries with a connection to the story.

This book is so much more than just the Bounty and the mutiny; it's an evocative look at the ordinary life of a seafarer of the day, and a history of that era of exploration and adventure when Britain's navy was emerging to rule the waves and establish the first outposts of what would become a great empire.

As good as a Frederick Forsythe thriller!
I ran out of books on holiday and this was the only one left.I had just read the hottest book of the summer 'The Da Vinci Code' and the latest Frederick Forsythe. I already knew the story of The Bounty and so I was prepared for a rather dry historical narrative. I was amazed.
This is simply one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. Superbly well crafted, it reads like a top quality novel. Caroline Alexander carefully unfolds the drama of the Bounty, the open-boat journey that turned Bligh into a national hero and the subsequent investigations, the recapture of the mutineers and the court martials. Her narrative is packed with well researched facts ,rich in detail,that bring the story to life. The personal story of each mutineer is revealed to explain some of the rather unexpected verdicts. This is a masterpiece of scholarly research.

The Best Bounty Book Available
For an event that has been so thoroughly treated in print and on film (even on stage and in verse!) it is hard to imagine that there is room for another book on the topic. But this is it. Though not as lavishly produced as her excellent "Endurance", Alexander's latest book brings a fresh new perspective to the Bounty story and is not only an essential addition to any Bounty library, but is perhaps also the best first book on the topic.
What distinguishes this book is its exploration of the social and cultural web relationships in England that were ultimately responsible for shaping how we see events that occurred far away in what was then literally the end of the world with only a few surviving witnesses -- all of whom had vital interests in how those events were interpreted. Alexander's extensive use of primary sources brings authenticity and immediacy to the story, and here careful avoidance of trying to play detective engages the reader: she lays out quite a bit of evidence and we are left to puzzle out what it means. This is refreshing, as is her through coverage of not only the events on the bounty, but the evolution of the mutineer's settlement on Pitcairn, the voyage of the Pandora, the court marshal proceedings, and the ultimate fates off the entire Bounty crew.

Only one minor complaint, which is really not unique to this book, but ultimately makes it much harder to read than it ought to be: because of the tremendous expanse of space and time covered by the events of the Bounty saga, and especially because of the extensive treatment of the web of players, relations, patrons, and other interested parties in the mutiny story, this book could have benefited greatly from more and better maps (there are only three and these are sparsely labeled and mostly decorative) and from some tables (the closest one comes is a simple crew manifest) and charts depicting the social networks.