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

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Summary: The Bounty
Review: I read the "Bounty Trilogy" over 40 years ago, and I never forgot the fascinating story of the Bounty. As the years passed,I read other books on the subject, including Bligh's account of the voyage and mutiny. All were interesting.

Finally, we have a wonderful new book on the subject. "The Bounty" could not have been a more enjoyable, and fascinating reading experience. I am still depressed the book is finished.

The book tells as true a story of the muntiny as one could expect. It was not,of course, like the old "Bounty Trilogy," but it was written as well, and told a wonderful non-fictionl account of the events. I learned more background, and the fate of the crew and others involved in the mutiny. The section on the court martial was extremely interesting.

I think this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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Summary: Good to see a serious history book doing well
Review: In a time when so much rubbish is churning out, it is a relief to see a serious history book doing well! This, and Simon Winchester's book on Krakatoa show that you can write serious history without having to dumb down. Christopher Catherwood, historian, teacher and author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)

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Summary: THE non-fiction book to read this year.
Review: It is an essential read as everyone will soon be discussing it from the water cooler, to npr, to television, from Paris to Kansas City. The added benefit being that this is an exhilarating read in addition to being an important one. It is time we start getting our history from the accurate sources like Alexander and not from Hollywood.

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Summary: Setting the Record Straight
Review: Caroline Alexander's entertaining, impeccably researched book may finally lay to rest the popular notion-fostered primarily through fiction and film-that Captain William Bligh was a sadistic, seafaring monster. "The Bounty" does justice to a man who certainly had his faults as a leader, but who happened to be a brilliant navigator who genuinely cared for the health and welfare of his crew.

"The Bounty" is a judicious, well-balanced account of the mutiny that occurred on that ship in April 1789. For more than 200 years, people have discussed the events surrounding the mutiny, including the question of who was to blame for the insurrection-a bloodless event, yet one that ultimately resulted in the loss of many lives.

The mutiny generated an astonishing chain of events, including William Bligh's heroic, perilous open boat voyage; the mutineers' attempts to settle in the South Pacific; the Pandora's pursuit and capture of the mutineers, followed by shipwreck and a second open boat voyage; a suspense-filled court-martial; and a tale of murder and redemption on Pitcairn Island, where descendants of the mutineers still live today.

Ms. Alexander handles all of these elements with great skill, and her interpretations are solidly based on primary materials, notably contemporary accounts of the people and events. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Enthralling, Exciting (4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5)
Review: "The Bounty" is a well-researched piece of history that translates into an exciting and enthralling story. Alexander delves into the facts and the myths of the famous "mutiny on the bounty."
For those not familiar with the story: in the 1790's a british ship, captained by a William Bligh, was seized by its crew led by a Fletcher Christian. Bligh and some crew numbers were cast overboard in a small craft in the middle of the South Seas, basically left to die. Amazingly, they survived and made it to mainland. Christian and company returned to the paradise of Tahiti. Some crew members stayed there (and were eventually captured and brought back to England for court martial) while Christian and company (with the addition of some beautiful Tahitian women)sailed on to Pitcairn Island.
History and Hollywood have embellished the story: Bligh was pure evil, Christian pure nobility. The crew wanted to return to Tahiti where they had found true love.
Alexander debunks most myths. Bligh certainly was tough; however, no more so than most captains of his era. Christian was impetuous, likely borderline mad, and had been drinking heavily the night before the mutiny. Most interesting, Christian's family--and that of a fellow mutineer and Christian relative Peter Heywood-spent a tremendous amount of time and resources in the future decades defending their relatives' reputations and reshaping the story into the present day myth. (They were then helped by Hollywood.)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Alexander captured the tension of the mutiny and subsequent court martials brilliantly. I feel (like other reviewers) that she had a bit of bias towards Bligh (thus the four stars) and I almost wish she had just written it from his perspective.
Still I would recommend this book to those who love historical stories, seafaring books (e.g., "Master and Commander") and just plain old good yarns.

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Summary: Tale of the Bounty, and of how the legend came to be
Review: Caroline Alexander has written an interesting exploration of the mutiny aboard the Bounty, and then, how the legend of the Bounty which has Bligh as a villain and Fletcher Christian as a hero came to be.

Alexander is at her strongest when discussing Bligh. She gives us a coherent tale of the man, prior to the Bounty, during the voyage, and afterwards. It is interesting to note the legend of the Bounty becoming established during Bligh's own lifetime, and Bligh's dismissive reaction to that. Perhaps more could have been written concerning the second mutiny against Bligh, twenty years after the first, in Australia. Alexander contents herself with a short defense of Bligh (whom she clearly admires, and in the text devotes herself to his defense)

The lengthy description of the court martial of the captured Bounty crew members is another highlight of the book, which is worth reading just for that.

Also interesting is the attention devoted to Peter Heyward, a poor relation of several naval families who is convicted in the court martial but is later pardoned and goes on to a successful naval career. Alexander tries very hard to make a connection between Hayward's family connections and the pardon, but the sources are just not there for her. Heyward, interestingly, was also seen as a key character by Nordhoff and Hall, writers of the book "Mutiny on the Bounty", who made the character based on Hayward (Roger Byam) the central character of that book.

While the book tells how the Bounty legend began, a chapter continuing past the deaths of the last of the Bounty crew (which ends the book) and showing how the legend reached its present state, with the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy and the several movies, would have been helpful. Greater discussion of the voyage of the mutineers on the Bounty and their lives on Pitcairn Island would also have been good--it receives scanty coverage as is (though Alexander paints a fascinating picture of the efforts to obtain information from Alexander Smith, last of the mutineers on Pitcairn).

Good reading. Recommended.

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Summary: The Definitive Account of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Review: Caroline Alexander's "The Bounty", is a riveting, probing account into one of the most notorious episodes in the history of British Royal Navy, and one which has been seen erroneously as an epic struggle between the charismatic Fletcher Christian and the tyrannical Captain William Bligh. While some may complain that Alexander does not delve more deeply into the mutiny, providing us with a minute by minute account, or into the fate of the mutineers once they reached Pitcairn's Island, most will be as compelled as I was in reading her engrossing account of Captain Bligh and his successful 48 day navigation of the westernmost South Pacific in the Bounty's launch from Tonga to the Dutch East Indies; one of the great tales of survival in a small craft in the deep sea in which Bligh did not lose a single crewman to starvation or disease. And her portrayal of the court martial of the surviving mutineers seized by HMS Pandora is just as riveting. Alexander makes a very persuasive case for the mutiny's origin owing more to Fletcher Christian's peculiar personal psychology than to slanderous allegations of Bligh's cruelty to his crew. Indeed, Bligh, a celebrated navigator who was Captain Cook's sailing master on Cook's final expedition around the globe, was an enlighted, indeed, progressive ship commander; he was concerned first and foremost with the welfare of his crew. Alexander shows how splendid a captain Bligh would be in his subsequent successful expedition to Tahiti aboard the frigate HMS Providence and during several several French Revolutionary sea battles, serving under the likes of Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson. Her portrayal of Midshipman Peter Heywood, his family connections to senior Royal Navy admirals, and the suprising aftermath to his conviction at the Bounty court martial offers a fascinating look at social class and its bearing to British naval traditions. Without question, Caroline Alexander's splendid account of the HMS Bounty mutiny and its aftermath may be the definitive tome on this subject. Those wishing to know what did happen to HMS Bounty may find that this book could be the very last word on this saga.

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Summary: A reassessment of Captain Bligh
Review: Caroline Alexander attempts to correct popular history and resurrect the reputation of the commander of HMS Bounty, the infamous Captain Bligh, the "celebrated navigator who first transplanted the Bread Fruit Tree from Otaheite to the West Indies." The mutiny on the Bounty in the year 1789 is one of the most famous of stories and Bligh the most infamous of villains. Was he really a villain?

The author says no - although she does not paint him in the most attractive of colors. He demonstrated a "relentless perfectionism, an unwavering and exacting adherence to the strictest letter of the laws of his duty." But he was also a navigator of enormous skill, took great pains to ensure the health and welfare of his men, and was very sparing of the lash - by comparison with many of his contemporaries. The motivations of the mutineers are unclear, although they certainly had to do with the seductions (female) of Tahiti and the hardships of life aboard a small ship on a big ocean.

Although there is much confusion in a plethora of similar names (Huggan, Hayward, Heywood, etc.) this is a thorough history of all the events of the Bounty story: the voyage to Tahiti, the idyllic five months on the island, the mutiny, the amazing sea voyage of Bligh and his loyalists in a small launch, the hunt for the mutineers, the trial of those captured, the later life of crewmembers of the Bounty, and the discovery many years later of one surviving mutineer on tiny Pitcairn Island. "The Bounty" is a well-written, fascinating, and authoritative account of a trivial but enormously interesting event. The author persuades me that Bligh has been unfairly maligned by history - although he will likely remain secure in his position as one of Hollywood's favorite villains.

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Summary: Peter Heywood not so bad as Alexander says
Review: My family is related to Peter Heywood's and I don't think, after reading over the evidence pro and con, that Heywood was the spoiled, rich man's son that Caroline Alexander makes him out to be. It has long been a "fact" in our family that Peter H. was sort of a Regency St. Francis, famous for giving away everything that he owned, even to the very shirt on his back and the money out of his pockets. That said, Ms. Alexander is a skilled writer, marvelous at painting atmospheres, and both the frigid English manners and the warm, riotous Tahitian "adagios of islands" are luminously evoked. She knows how to lay out a complicated story on several levels at one time, satisfying both the historian in all of us and also the child who likes to hear a romantic tale. The book is beautifully done and I'm not surprised it has been an international bestseller. Has it altered our appreciation of the famous movie with Gable and Laughton? I think not. All of the versions I've seen (including the one with Mel Gibson and the notorious Brando one) have some merit, and the story of conflict is one that keeps repeating itself over and over like a nightmare of civilization. Caroline Alexander sees it as a class fable, in which poor old William Bligh may have whipped a few men here and there, but no worse than the way he was treated as a boy and young man.

So continues the cycle of abuse, lo, even unto the next generation. All in all, a tiptop read.


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Summary: It really is the true story
Review: I (like many others I am sure) believed "Captain" Bligh to have been a cruel, unjust man and therefore thought that the loss of the ship Bounty was essentially his own fault. In short, I watched too many movies. This book gave me an unexpected and a realistic take on what really happened on board his majesty's ship Bounty from the time it left England until years after the last of the mutineers had died. I found it most interesting that even though we have court martial documents and letters of correspondence to prove other wise, Captain Bligh is still remembered as "the villian". Anyone who has even a little bit of interest on this subject should read this book. I am now reading it for the third time and still can't put it down.