The Bounty: The True Story Of The Mutiny On The Bounty

Caroline Alexander

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Review

The story of the mutiny itself, Bligh's epic voyage in the open boat, and the Pandora's voyage to capture the mutineers (which involved a repeat of Bligh's journey after the ship was wrecked on the Barrier Reef)  - all this makes gripping reading of course.  But what makes this by far the best account of the  mutiny and the circumstances surrounding it is that the author has made a tremendous effort to piece together the crew's family connections.  In an age when influence and "interest" counted for so much, this is crucial to understanding what occurred, both before and later as folk memory.  Thus, of the mutineers who were picked up by the Pandora, only two were hanged and one, Peter Heywood, later became a Rear Admiral.  Bligh himself was a first-rate officer, and yet he was vilified by subsequent generations because the Romantics glorified Fletcher Christian and the mutineers - and this too was not accident: like Heywood's family (but unlike Bligh's), Christian's family had some influence.  This is a fascinating book for the light it casts on the shift in attitudes between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and also for the extraordinary story at its centre. - review by Johnny de Falbe