The Bounty

Caroline Alexander reconstructs the voyage of HMS Bounty, sent from Britain in 1787 under Lieutenant William Bligh to collect breadfruit plants in Tahiti. After the ship finally left Tahiti, Fletcher Christian and a group of crewmen seized the vessel on 28 April 1789 and forced Bligh and eighteen loyalists into an open launch. Bligh’s subsequent navigation to Timor became one of the most celebrated open-boat voyages of the age, while the mutineers dispersed between Tahiti and the remote settlement eventually established on Pitcairn Island.

The book follows the consequences as closely as the mutiny itself. Alexander examines the recovery of suspected mutineers in Tahiti, the loss of HMS Pandora, the return of prisoners to Britain and the court-martial at Portsmouth. Using naval records, testimony and family papers, she also traces how Bligh and Christian acquired sharply opposed reputations and how relatives and supporters helped turn a complex naval crime into one of the enduring legends of eighteenth-century maritime history.