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

Rating:
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.

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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling read....
Review: I found Alexander's The Bounty to be generally well researched and fairly presented. As one other reviewer correctly points out, she is uneven in places. However, given the nature of the subject and the fact that she is dealing with 200 year old documents, themselves probably uneven, The Bounty is certainly worth the time it will take to read it.

The story is familiar. The Bounty, commanded by Bligh, is sent to Tahiti to collect breadfruit specimens for the West Indies. Christian, Bligh's friend and former shipmate is invited to sail by Bligh. The crew, seemingly more educated than the average British naval crew, is somehow changed by their visit to the island paradise. And why not. Bligh is an easy commander given the norms of the day. Alexander points this out by comparing the number of lashes handed out by Bligh over the entire length of the voyage of the Bounty to the number of lashes given out by the commander of the HMS Hector during the time of the trial of the mutineers. Bligh loses. In fact she points out that Bligh, while having a sharp tongue was a kind and caring leader. It is, perhaps, this kindness that is perceived as weakness by the crew.
Read the book and make up your own mind.

Caroline Alexander proved her metal when she undertook to write the definitive book on the Endurance. She is a first class researcher and a wonderful writer. She again proves herself with The Bounty.

Read the book and then watch the movie, the one with Mel Gibson.
The other two movies dealing with this topic are a waste.

Rating:
Summary: A Deeply Rewarding Meditation
Review: of the infamous Bounty Mutiny that eschews the ususal Hollywoodization of the drama (Fletcher Christian, handsome, romantic, agonized/Capt.(actually Lieut.)Bligh, cruel, dictatorial, insensitive. This book offers a reconsideration of the character of Bligh, especially placing it in the contemporary setting of 18th century naval life. It finds that the answer to why this mutiny happened must be assumed to lie within the psychology of Fletcher Christian, rather than any supposed shipboard tyranny of Bligh. The latter was, she points out, a student of Cook, and thus sparing of the lash as well as takiing pains to see that his crew was nourished, clean and well-exercised so that fatalities on the long voyage were minimized. Those who take their image of Bligh from Charles Laughton or Anthony Hopkins, might be amazed to learn that Bligh was all of 35 years old at the time of the voyage.
Along with her delineation of Bligh, the book offers a fascinating and probing portrait of Peter Heyward, a Bounty midshipman who somehow did not enter Bligh's launch and yet, through family connections, managed to get a King's pardon from his mutiny conviction.
Overall, this book offers a sober, grown-up examination of one of the most dramatic, romantic and still enigmatic episodes in British naval history. It would seem to be impossible to write a dull book about the Mutiny, and Caroline Alexander has written one of the best considerations of this endlessly fascinating event.

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling and interesting
Review: This is an informative and interesting presentation of Bligh's mission on the Bounty and the events which followed. The book lends particular focus on how the Haywood and Christian families "spun" the tale after the fact to make the mutineers seem more "noble" and Bligh more "evil". As far as I can tell, it's a straight-up, honest and well-researched account of what really happened.

However, it does seem to me that the book spends proportionally too much time on the court martial and Peter Haywood's family and life, and not enough on the events onboard ship or on Pitcairn Island; I suppose this reflects the amount of material available on each. Further, the author assumes an understanding of geography and nautical terms that could be explicated by a glossary and more (and better placed) maps. And the narrative is quite jumpy, at least at first, going back and forth in time, when a straightforward approach would probably serve the reader better.