Product Description

More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend. Combining vivid characterization and deft storytelling, Caroline Alexander shatters the centuries-old myths surrounding this story. She brilliantly shows how, in a desperate attempt to save one man from the gallows and another from ignominy, two powerful families came together and began to create the version of history we know today. The true story of the mutiny on the Bounty is an epic of duty and heroism, pride and power, and the assassination of a brave man’s honor at the dawn of the Romantic age.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138126 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-25
• Released on: 2004-05-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780142004692
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Surely this exhaustingly-researched, enthralling and enthusiastically-written tome is the last word on the most famous of all seafaring mutinies, that of shipmate Fletcher Christian and against Lieutenant Bligh on the Bounty. More than 200 years have gone by since the ship left England after dreadful weather kept it harbored for months, on its mission to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies. The mutiny in Tahiti left the mutineers scattered about the paradisiacal islands and found Bligh and 18 of his loyal crew members set adrift in a 23-foot open boat. Bligh, who'd served as Capt. James Cook's sailing master, fantastically maneuvered the crew on a 48-day, 3,600-mile journey to safety. Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance, is never in over her head even when weaving together densely twisting narratives, or explaining the unwritten rules of the Royal Navy, of the complexities of class and hierarchy that impelled much of what happened aboard the Bounty. The book centers far more on the effort to round up the mutineers than the actual mutiny itself. The book is enlivened by the colorful commentary of the crew members themselves, gleaned from letters and court documents. Alexander does us all the favor of presenting Bligh the way he was understood and received in his day--as a brilliant navigator who, when placed in context, was not a brutal task-master at all. She roots the tyrannical figure we know so well from the movies on the last-ditch efforts of one well-connected crew member to save his own hide from hanging. --Mike McGonigal

From Publishers Weekly
A contributor to the New Yorker, Granta, Cond‚ Nast Traveler and National Geographic, Alexander brings the past to life with travel narratives spanning continents and centuries. Alexander (The Endurance) again recreates a high seas voyage, retelling a familiar story-of the South Pacific misadventures of the small British naval vessel the Bounty-yet taking a fresh look at the drama. Commanded by William Bligh, the Bounty left England in December 1787 to transport breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the West Indies. During the 1789 mutiny, Bligh and crew members were set adrift in an open boat and eventually returned to England. Bligh-who up until now has been viewed as a tyrant-was praised at the time, Alexander finds, since "no feat of seamanship was deemed to surpass Bligh's navigation and command of The Bounty's 23-foot-long launch, and few feats of survival compared with his men's forty-eight-day ordeal on starvation rations." Alexander's reconstruction of the mutiny and its aftermath (thanks to her exhaustive research through books, reports, newspapers, correspondence, historical societies and archives) is almost as remarkable as Bligh's feat. She details daily events during the captured mutineers' court-martial, expanding on court transcripts. Separating facts from falsehoods and myths in the closing chapters, she finally turns to the life of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island, noting "this fantastic tale of escape to paradise at the far end of the world had the allure of something epic." Alexander's work is destined to become the definitive, enthralling history of a great seafaring adventure. Maps and illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Countless rebellions have taken place since Fletcher Christian overtook Captain William Bligh in 1789, but it is the story of the mutiny on the Bounty that has taken permanent hold of the public's imagination, to be played and replayed on stage and screen. Why this is so is amply demonstrated by Alexander's (The Endurance, 1998) fast-reading and gripping narrative, which draws on a host of primary-source materials, including letters, diaries, logs, and court transcripts, to provide an in-depth, well-researched look at all the elements that went into the history-making event. From the overly cramped quarters of the ship to the enticing depiction of the generous and sensual Tahitians to Fletcher's elusive motivations, Alexander leaves no detail unexamined. She makes a convincing case that Bligh has been unjustly maligned, mainly due to the machinations of mutineer Peter Heywood, who escaped the hangman's noose at his court-martial but sought to deflect evidence of his central role by exaggerating accounts of Bligh's temper tantrums; furthermore, Alexander underlines Bligh's navigational skills with hair-raising descriptions of his 4,000-mile voyage in an overloaded open boat, which brought the loyalists to safety. Other narrative highlights include the discovery, after many years, of the mutineers' families on Pitcairn Island. A rollicking sea adventure told with enormous confidence and style. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The Bounty
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.

A superbly well written adventure
Caroline Alexander takes a story you perhaps thought you knew-the 1789 mutiny on board the HMS Bounty-and says something new about it, in a style that is both economical, elegant, and exciting. In a first chapter that is a masterpiece of simple story-telling, she structures the fantastic story: "Captain" William Bligh (in fact, he was only a lieutenant) commanded the HMS Bounty to Tahiti, suffered the mutiny of part of his crew, and navigated a simple row-boat across many thousands of miles of the Pacific to be rescued. A second voyage, undertaken by the HMS Pandora, discovered many mutineers on a distant island, taking them into custody, only to be broken up in a terrible storm, its survivors (crew and prisoners) enduring a second open-boat voyage to safety. On return to England a length court-martial condemned many of the mutineers to death, but left unscathed young Peter Heywood, convicted but later pardoned.

The traditional view of things (i.e. the one you `know' from the movie versions) has Bligh as a torturer, the famous Fletcher Christian as a defender of the ordinary sailor's rights, and Heywood as an innocent bystander. Through careful reading of seemingly every contemporary document-including every bit of the trial transcripts-Alexander subverts the story to one of privilege rebelling against authority: whereas Bligh came from a family of extremely modest means, Christian and Heywood both came from old and well-connected families who, after the courtmartial, ensured their own good names by besmirching Bligh's.

This is not sensational journalism but careful scholarship, and even if you don't agree with Alexander's `take' on the subject, you will enjoy hearing the sailor's own first-person narratives, as well as Alexander's careful reconstruction of what actually occurred.

This book was nominated for the National Book Critic's Circle award for non-fiction; it was richly deserved. "HMS Bounty" receives my highest endorsement as well!

The manufacturing of history
A book worthy of study by students of history. I say that as a history teacher because it combines metriculous research with a compelling narrative. In addition, it is contextualised within the French Revolution and slavery and Romanticism among other significant events. It reveals the importance of who you know to how YOUR history is going to be manufactured, eg Midshipman Peter Heywood of THE BOUNTY, convicted mutineer, but pardoned by the KIng as the consequence of family connections. Or the diligence of Edward Christian (d.1823) sometime professor of law at Cambridge, who helped to inflate the case for Fletcher Christian, indeed could be considered michievous in honouring him(p324) and diminish the character of Lieutenant Bligh. Fascinating examination of men in confined cirumstances overcoming astonishing difficulties and surviving. Lieutenant Bligh must be remembered as one of the greatest sailors in history having sailed the Bounty's 23 foot long two foot deep launch from Tofua in middle of the Pacific to Coupang in Timor over 3000 miles after having been set adrift by the mutineers and as one who suffered a "bad press". On the evidence, there was very little romantic about Fletcher Christian and his fateful decision may have been a matter of hurt pride and a hangover - far less noble impulses than the allure of a possibled heaven
on a tropical island freed from a tyrranical "captain".