The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Contemporary Review, May, 2004

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Caroline Alexander. HarperCollins. [pounds sterling]20.00. xviii 491 pages. ISBN 0-00-257221-4. The story of the mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789 has reached millions through the medium of the Hollywood film world. In this detailed, balanced and fascinating study of the mutiny, its origins, history and consequences, the author shows that, like so much Hollywood history, the story people know is a travesty of the truth.

Miss Alexander, whose book was first published in the U.S., has gone back to the original records to reconstruct the voyage of the Bounty, the mutiny and the fate both of Captain Bligh and his crew. She tells her story with considerable panache and sets out to be fair to all concerned. By so doing she demolishes the myth upon which Hollywood based its films. In her final chapter she traces the story of the myth's creation and how it became the accepted version of events, of how Bligh became demonised and how the mutineers were made into oppressed sailors standing up for an Englishman's liberty. The causes of the mutiny were more prosaic: 'The seductions of Tahiti, Bligh's harsh tongue--perhaps ... a night of drinking and a proud man's pride, a low moment on one grey dawn, a momentary and fatal slip in a gentleman's code of discipline ...'.