Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining history
Review: A man commits a crime. When the community finds out, he is condemned. Then, the man and his family do a little spin control, and suddenly, he turns out to be a hero (or at least a victim) to a large segment of the population and the victim becomes the villain. We see it in the news all the time today, but it is hardly a new phenomenon; as shown in The Bounty, the criminal-as-wronged-individual is a centuries-old idea.
The Bounty is part history, part true crime story. Set in the late 18th century world of maritime trade and warfare, The Bounty tells the story of the most famous mutiny in history. As in a true crime story, the actual act takes a mere few pages, but it is the central act in the tale. The events leading up to the mutiny and the actions taken afterward by both sides fill up the rest of the book.
The myth of the Mutiny of the Bounty has Captain William Bligh as the villain and the mutinous Fletcher Christian as the hero (how could a man named Christian be anything less than heroic?). Bligh's name has become synonymous with tyrannical behavior, yet The Bounty shows that there was nothing exceptional about his behavior: in an era when ships' captains were tyrants, Bligh was no saint, but he may have actually been a little better than average. In this book, the sympathies are definitely with Bligh, especially after he and his loyalists are abandoned on a small craft and must undergo a harrowing trip over 3000 miles of mostly open water. That Bligh was pivotal in almost everyone surviving this trip makes Bligh the true hero in this book. Fletcher Christian, on the other hand, often comes off as an irrational or just an ingrate.
Well-documented, The Bounty is both entertaining and educational. The only thing I would have liked to have seen was an epilogue dealing with the various movies and books that have been about this event. Nonetheless, this is a very good book and a worthwhile read for those interested in this subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but occasionally bogged down
Review: Caroline Alexander has written a very compelling and readable account of the Bounty mutiny, complete with an account of the heroic open water navigation feat of Capt. Bligh, and a detailed account of the court-martial trials of the surviving mutineers who were captured and tried in England. Of course little can be written about the aftermath of the mutiny among the Pitcairn survivors, since sources of information do not really exist, and likewise any author would have a hard time getting into the heads of Fletcher Christian and his shipmates to study exactly what caused the mutiny. I believe the author did as well, on those subjects, as anyone could ever hope even though the reader ultimately wants a little more information.
What I found curious in this book was the excessive number of pages devoted to Peter Heywood, his trial, and in particular the endless stream of letters between Heywood and his somewhat wacky sister leading up to his trial. I think the author found Heywood particularly fascinating since he was a gentleman and an officer, unlike many who were brought back to Europe. So much attention had been devoted to Heywood, and so little attention had been given to some of the other mutineers, that when the trial commenced I lost track of the other defendants and start confusing them.
Captain Bligh is a complex character, and I thought Alexander did a good job portraying Bligh's inherent courage, his skills as a captain, his sense of duty, his attention to detail and yet his stubborn inflexibility. It was this last characteristic which may have pushed Christian and some of the others over the top after a lazy sojourn in Tahiti. The author also points out that due to the size of the Bounty, and the space needed for transporting the precious breadfruit plants (which were to be used for feeding slaves in the colonies by the way), Bligh did not have marines on board who would assist him in promoting discipline and keeping order.
All in all this was a very good book, and required reading for anyone wanting to know more about the Bounty mutiny. Had the author presented a little more information about the other mutineers, and devoted a little less space to Peter Heywood and his family, I would give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Unputdownable.
Review: Caroline Alexander's history of the Bounty is a magnificent synthesis of deft narrative and thorough, patient scholarship.
The chapters describing the court-martial kept me up until the wee hours. Alexander's description of the captured mutineers' ordeal, sourced from, and coloured by, a mind-bogglingly vast pile of primary sources, is a gripping account of what it would be like to have your life depend on the opinions of 12 British naval officers at the end of the 18th century. That the mutineers' hopes and fears, as they passed daily beneath the yardarms from which three of them would eventually be hanged, mattered so much to me that I lost sleep over them is a testament to the author's art.
Anyone offering a postmodernist rant against this type of history should be smacked on the side of the head with Alexander's 450+ page book.
Alexander uncovers the elaborate webs of allegiance and interest that underscored the Bounty's mission, her crew, their mutiny, the court-martial, and the various smear campaigns that followed. This last in particular amazed me, I had no idea that so many of the Bounty's crew had published their own accounts of the mutiny.
The author also reveals the important roles various women played in events. Apart from the "seductions of Tahiti," as Alexander puts it, I had never known that women were such an integral part of the Bounty story. In her final chapter, Alexander mentions that there were frequently women aboard British men-of-war, though they weren't usually listed in the ships' books. O'Brian knew this and wrote women onto ships in various tomes of his Aubrey-Maturin series, though the film "Master and Commander" leaves them out of the picture.
Alexander gives particular attention to Peter Heywood, a midshipman in his teens when the mutiny happened, and who stayed with Christian aboard the ship. He was captured, tried, found guilty, sentenced to hang, pardoned by the king, and went on to live a life of penitence. His story made me ponder how quickly people had to grow up back then - the consequence of Heywood's teenaged passivity was a death sentence from 12 battle-scarred British Naval officers.
Although the book is sympathetic to Bligh, it is not at Christian's expense nor uncritical of the captain abandoned in his launch. My allegiance shifted back and forth as Alexander presented new information about each man, as well as introducing their families, friends, and foes.
History, character study, sea yarn, this is an unputdownable book.
Rating:
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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