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Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian
Delve into the riveting saga of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian in "The Men and the Mutiny", a meticulously researched account of one of history's most infamous maritime events. Uncover the compelling story behind the Mutiny on the Bounty with Caroline Alexander's vivid narrative, exploring the complex dynamics between two men caught in the throes of rebellion. Experience the drama and intrigue of the Mutiny on the Bounty firsthand through Alexander's masterful storytelling, bringing to life the trials and triumphs of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian. Embark on a journey through the turbulent waters of the South Pacific as Alexander chronicles the events leading up to the mutiny, painting a vivid portrait of life aboard a ship in the late 18th century. From the lush landscapes of Tahiti to the unforgiving seas of the open ocean, follow the harrowing adventures of Bligh and Christian as they navigate love, loyalty, and betrayal. Caroline Alexander's "Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian" offers a captivating blend of history and drama, shedding new light on a story that has captured the imaginations of readers for centuries. With meticulous attention to detail, Alexander pieces together the puzzle of the Mutiny on the Bounty, revealing the human drama behind one of history's most enduring legends. Through meticulous research and vivid prose, Alexander transports readers back in time to witness the clash of wills between two remarkable men, each driven by his own sense of duty and honor.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Richard Hough
123 books25 followersRichard Alexander Hough was a British author and historian specializing in naval history. As a child, he was obsessed with making model warships and collecting information about navies around the world. In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force and trained at a flying school near Los Angeles. He flew Hurricanes and Typhoons and was wounded in action.
After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.
His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.
After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.
His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
February 13, 2021
Upon finishing Charles Nordhoff's Mutiny on the Bounty I had an uneasy feeling about the book. I had questions concerning the truth of the story and the defamation of Captain Bligh. There were subtle contradictions in the story that irked me to the point where I needed a factual interpretation of the historical record so that I could move on. Hence, chosen mostly by chance, I read Richard Hough's The Bounty.
Hough presented the record of available information regarding the voyage of the Bounty, Bligh, and the mutiny. I found it a relief to know that portions of Nordhoff's novel were manipulated for his purposes. It was also a relief to know that while Captain Bligh is mostly to blame for the mutiny, his faults do not rest with the long-term tyrannical unhinging of Bligh as depicted by Nordhoff.
There were a host of circumstances that contributed to the mutiny some of which can be attributed directly to the Royal Navy in their planning of the voyage. Other circumstances rest with the hypersensitive Fletcher Christian, who overreacted with the mutiny in response to the strictly verbal punishment imposed on him by Bligh. However, Bligh's shortcomings in knowing how to command sailors at sea are where most of the circumstances lie.
In US Navy terms, Bligh was a mustang. He was commissioned as an officer after working his way up from an ordinary seaman. I think that this limited Bligh’s exposure to more nuanced methods of command and the various processes needed to maintain unit cohesion. At that time, discipline during Bligh’s career was maintained by harsh punishment, which is what Bligh used on his men when required. Bligh was actually very brilliant in all that he did, but he was only brilliant to the limits of his abilities. As such, he probably never realized his shortcomings which contributed greatly to the mutiny.
I can see why Nordhoff would find a bunch of nuanced circumstances difficult to work into a swashbuckling novel. But therein rests my foremost issue with Mutiny on the Bounty. Nordhoff wrote a falsification that's more satisfying than real life, and in doing so, he's almost pushed the truth out of the way of actual realization.
Hough presented the record of available information regarding the voyage of the Bounty, Bligh, and the mutiny. I found it a relief to know that portions of Nordhoff's novel were manipulated for his purposes. It was also a relief to know that while Captain Bligh is mostly to blame for the mutiny, his faults do not rest with the long-term tyrannical unhinging of Bligh as depicted by Nordhoff.
There were a host of circumstances that contributed to the mutiny some of which can be attributed directly to the Royal Navy in their planning of the voyage. Other circumstances rest with the hypersensitive Fletcher Christian, who overreacted with the mutiny in response to the strictly verbal punishment imposed on him by Bligh. However, Bligh's shortcomings in knowing how to command sailors at sea are where most of the circumstances lie.
In US Navy terms, Bligh was a mustang. He was commissioned as an officer after working his way up from an ordinary seaman. I think that this limited Bligh’s exposure to more nuanced methods of command and the various processes needed to maintain unit cohesion. At that time, discipline during Bligh’s career was maintained by harsh punishment, which is what Bligh used on his men when required. Bligh was actually very brilliant in all that he did, but he was only brilliant to the limits of his abilities. As such, he probably never realized his shortcomings which contributed greatly to the mutiny.
I can see why Nordhoff would find a bunch of nuanced circumstances difficult to work into a swashbuckling novel. But therein rests my foremost issue with Mutiny on the Bounty. Nordhoff wrote a falsification that's more satisfying than real life, and in doing so, he's almost pushed the truth out of the way of actual realization.
June 17, 2017
Captain Bligh. Fletcher Christian. Their names are forever linked; and neither man would like that fact, albeit for different reasons. The two men, both late of His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty, are the two great antagonists in history’s most notorious mutiny – an event that, 228 years later, has lost none of its power to fascinate. Yet the popular historical novels and big-budget Hollywood movies that have purported to tell the “true” story of what happened aboard H.M.A.V. Bounty on 28 April 1789 may actually have gotten a great deal wrong, as Richard Hough makes clear in his book Captain Bligh and Mister Christian.
Hough, a veteran naval historian of the “salt water in the veins” school, is well-suited to the task of stripping away the encrusted layers of myth that have gathered, barnacle-like, about the Bounty saga. As a sailor himself, he “sailed the Cape Horn waters where the Bounty took such a beating, watched the skyline of Rarotonga loom out of the morning maze as Christian – now the lonely mutineer – had seen it, made my choppy way into Bounty Bay, Pitcairn Island…Matavai Bay, and visited in a launch little bigger than Bligh’s a number of the islands inside the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland” (p. 282). The fact that Hough has sailed the same waters that Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian and the rest of the Bounty officers and crew sailed gives Captain Bligh and Mister Christian an extra degree of authority.
Part of the problem that Hough faced in writing Captain Bligh and Mister Christian is that the story of the Bounty mutiny contains so many archetypal, even mythic, storytelling elements – a long sea voyage; a fabled and mysterious island that constitutes a veritable earthly paradise; a passionate love story; an epic conflict between two forceful personalities – that it all but invites embellishment.
And much embellishment has indeed occurred down the years. After all, the text that many readers would assume is the definitive recounting of the Bounty saga -- Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall – is not a history, but rather a historical novel, one that invents characters and telescopes events as the novelists’ needs dictate. It is a fine and exciting novel; but to assume that it provides an accurate documentary-style recounting of the Bounty mutiny seems to me rather like looking to Cervantes’ Don Quixote for the factual low-down on Spanish knighthood.
All the more fortunate, therefore, that Hough's Captain Bligh and Mister Christian, a non-fiction book written 40 years after the Nordhoff-Hall novel, eschews myth and adheres strictly to the known facts of the Bounty mutiny. Hough provides a sensible and logical setting-forth of how a series of decisions by many people -- including, but not restricted to, Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian -- led, almost inevitably, to the mutiny.
One of those key decisions related to the Bounty’s anomalous mission: to retrieve breadfruit plants from Tahiti and transport them to Jamaica, in order to see if breadfruit could be used as a staple food for enslaved people on Jamaican plantations. Because the Bounty was to be crowded with as much breadfruit as it could possibly fit, “There could certainly be no accommodation for any Royal Marines either for punitive measures ashore or to give edge to the captain’s authority on board” (p. 48). Consider the significance of that one decision: Royal Marines on board the Bounty would almost certainly have ensured that no mutiny could have occurred.
Movie fans who are used to Charles Laughton’s scenery-chewing villainy from the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty film may be surprised to find that the Captain Bligh they meet here is defined largely in terms of his skill and facility as a naval officer. Indeed, Bligh emerges in the pages of this book as a progressive-minded naval officer with a laudable concern for the welfare of his men. When, for example, the Bounty is navigating the cold waters around Tasmania, preparing for the journey north toward Tahiti, “Bligh concerns himself with his men’s health and diet, ensures that they are kept warm and dry…inspects them daily for cleanliness, keeps them fit with compulsory dancing…performs divine service on Sundays” (p. 78). Nothing could be further from the popular image of the sadistic Captain Bligh with the cat-of-nine-tails ever at the ready.
But the Bounty spent a lot of time in Tahiti, as the protracted and time-consuming task of collecting the breadfruit and preparing it for transport went forward. It was five long, languorous months in paradise, with many of the ship’s men forming passionate attachments with Tahitian women – and it seemed to affect everyone on board the Bounty. Once the Bounty had finally left Tahiti and was making its way westward toward the completion of its mission, Bligh, in Hough’s opinion, was “angry at the state of the ship and the slackness of the officers and men” (p. 273); and his expression of that anger toward his officers, and particularly toward Fletcher Christian, led Fletcher Christian – a “weak, moody, temperamental and sentimental young man” who had been “promoted above his ability” (p. 275) – first to consider leaving the Bounty in a raft, and then to lead the mutiny that gave both him and Captain Bligh their place in history.
Even Captain Bligh’s strongest detractors have always had to acknowledge the extraordinary nature of Bligh’s achievement in leading the successful open-boat voyage of the Bounty’s launch – some 3,500 nautical miles: from near Tofua, in modern-day Tonga, to Dutch-held Coupang, now part of Indonesia. Why, then, is Captain Bligh remembered in popular imagination as the sadistic ogre from the Nordhoff-Hall novel, or from the 1935 and 1962 film adaptations of Mutiny on the Bounty? The answer, in Hough’s estimation, has everything to do with the socioeconomic class system of late 18th-century England. Captain Bligh was from a respectable but middling background, while mutineers Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood were “gentlemen” of higher social station, from families that had the power and influence necessary to influence how the British public saw the Bounty mutiny:
“Public opinion in England in the late eighteenth century was a very small and very sensitive barometer, just as those who wielded power were few in number. A large and powerful family, with connections in the law, in civil service, in politics and the armed forces and the seats of learning, could speedily destroy the good name of a man who lacked these supports. Both the Heywood and Christian families were of this calibre, and Bligh showed a grave lack of wisdom in his failure to recognise the dangers lying ahead after enjoying his rapturous reception in London” (pp. 247-48).
The Heywood and Christian families did their work well, and Lieutenant William Bligh’s fall in public estimation was a direct result of their public-opinion campaign. Today, 228 years after the mutiny occurred, the Heywood-Christian families' interpretation of the mutiny on the Bounty still prevails, to the point that many a tough boss in many a modern-day office is still likely to be described as "a real Captain Bligh."
Ultimately, in Hough’s interpretation, the clashing personality traits of Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian made the mutiny on the Bounty all but inevitable. This scenario may seem familiar to movie viewers who have seen New Zealand director Roger Donaldson’s film The Bounty (1984), with Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. This film, based on Hough’s book, is regarded as the most accurate cinematic recounting of the Bounty mutiny; and it is a marker of Hough’s dedication to seeking out the truth of the Bounty saga that his Captain Bligh and Mister Christian is the book that was sought out for adaptation by a group of filmmakers who wanted, at long last, to get the Bounty story right.
Hough, a veteran naval historian of the “salt water in the veins” school, is well-suited to the task of stripping away the encrusted layers of myth that have gathered, barnacle-like, about the Bounty saga. As a sailor himself, he “sailed the Cape Horn waters where the Bounty took such a beating, watched the skyline of Rarotonga loom out of the morning maze as Christian – now the lonely mutineer – had seen it, made my choppy way into Bounty Bay, Pitcairn Island…Matavai Bay, and visited in a launch little bigger than Bligh’s a number of the islands inside the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland” (p. 282). The fact that Hough has sailed the same waters that Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian and the rest of the Bounty officers and crew sailed gives Captain Bligh and Mister Christian an extra degree of authority.
Part of the problem that Hough faced in writing Captain Bligh and Mister Christian is that the story of the Bounty mutiny contains so many archetypal, even mythic, storytelling elements – a long sea voyage; a fabled and mysterious island that constitutes a veritable earthly paradise; a passionate love story; an epic conflict between two forceful personalities – that it all but invites embellishment.
And much embellishment has indeed occurred down the years. After all, the text that many readers would assume is the definitive recounting of the Bounty saga -- Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall – is not a history, but rather a historical novel, one that invents characters and telescopes events as the novelists’ needs dictate. It is a fine and exciting novel; but to assume that it provides an accurate documentary-style recounting of the Bounty mutiny seems to me rather like looking to Cervantes’ Don Quixote for the factual low-down on Spanish knighthood.
All the more fortunate, therefore, that Hough's Captain Bligh and Mister Christian, a non-fiction book written 40 years after the Nordhoff-Hall novel, eschews myth and adheres strictly to the known facts of the Bounty mutiny. Hough provides a sensible and logical setting-forth of how a series of decisions by many people -- including, but not restricted to, Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian -- led, almost inevitably, to the mutiny.
One of those key decisions related to the Bounty’s anomalous mission: to retrieve breadfruit plants from Tahiti and transport them to Jamaica, in order to see if breadfruit could be used as a staple food for enslaved people on Jamaican plantations. Because the Bounty was to be crowded with as much breadfruit as it could possibly fit, “There could certainly be no accommodation for any Royal Marines either for punitive measures ashore or to give edge to the captain’s authority on board” (p. 48). Consider the significance of that one decision: Royal Marines on board the Bounty would almost certainly have ensured that no mutiny could have occurred.
Movie fans who are used to Charles Laughton’s scenery-chewing villainy from the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty film may be surprised to find that the Captain Bligh they meet here is defined largely in terms of his skill and facility as a naval officer. Indeed, Bligh emerges in the pages of this book as a progressive-minded naval officer with a laudable concern for the welfare of his men. When, for example, the Bounty is navigating the cold waters around Tasmania, preparing for the journey north toward Tahiti, “Bligh concerns himself with his men’s health and diet, ensures that they are kept warm and dry…inspects them daily for cleanliness, keeps them fit with compulsory dancing…performs divine service on Sundays” (p. 78). Nothing could be further from the popular image of the sadistic Captain Bligh with the cat-of-nine-tails ever at the ready.
But the Bounty spent a lot of time in Tahiti, as the protracted and time-consuming task of collecting the breadfruit and preparing it for transport went forward. It was five long, languorous months in paradise, with many of the ship’s men forming passionate attachments with Tahitian women – and it seemed to affect everyone on board the Bounty. Once the Bounty had finally left Tahiti and was making its way westward toward the completion of its mission, Bligh, in Hough’s opinion, was “angry at the state of the ship and the slackness of the officers and men” (p. 273); and his expression of that anger toward his officers, and particularly toward Fletcher Christian, led Fletcher Christian – a “weak, moody, temperamental and sentimental young man” who had been “promoted above his ability” (p. 275) – first to consider leaving the Bounty in a raft, and then to lead the mutiny that gave both him and Captain Bligh their place in history.
Even Captain Bligh’s strongest detractors have always had to acknowledge the extraordinary nature of Bligh’s achievement in leading the successful open-boat voyage of the Bounty’s launch – some 3,500 nautical miles: from near Tofua, in modern-day Tonga, to Dutch-held Coupang, now part of Indonesia. Why, then, is Captain Bligh remembered in popular imagination as the sadistic ogre from the Nordhoff-Hall novel, or from the 1935 and 1962 film adaptations of Mutiny on the Bounty? The answer, in Hough’s estimation, has everything to do with the socioeconomic class system of late 18th-century England. Captain Bligh was from a respectable but middling background, while mutineers Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood were “gentlemen” of higher social station, from families that had the power and influence necessary to influence how the British public saw the Bounty mutiny:
“Public opinion in England in the late eighteenth century was a very small and very sensitive barometer, just as those who wielded power were few in number. A large and powerful family, with connections in the law, in civil service, in politics and the armed forces and the seats of learning, could speedily destroy the good name of a man who lacked these supports. Both the Heywood and Christian families were of this calibre, and Bligh showed a grave lack of wisdom in his failure to recognise the dangers lying ahead after enjoying his rapturous reception in London” (pp. 247-48).
The Heywood and Christian families did their work well, and Lieutenant William Bligh’s fall in public estimation was a direct result of their public-opinion campaign. Today, 228 years after the mutiny occurred, the Heywood-Christian families' interpretation of the mutiny on the Bounty still prevails, to the point that many a tough boss in many a modern-day office is still likely to be described as "a real Captain Bligh."
Ultimately, in Hough’s interpretation, the clashing personality traits of Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian made the mutiny on the Bounty all but inevitable. This scenario may seem familiar to movie viewers who have seen New Zealand director Roger Donaldson’s film The Bounty (1984), with Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. This film, based on Hough’s book, is regarded as the most accurate cinematic recounting of the Bounty mutiny; and it is a marker of Hough’s dedication to seeking out the truth of the Bounty saga that his Captain Bligh and Mister Christian is the book that was sought out for adaptation by a group of filmmakers who wanted, at long last, to get the Bounty story right.
April 27, 2012
Beautifully written, the narrative keeps pace with the tumultuous events and the often mundane existence aboard an ocean going vessel. A lot of the apocrypha surrounding the Captain is thankfully dispersed and replaced by a much more humane and credible account.
September 2, 2025
Richard Hough's Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian is an influential revisionist take on the famous Mutiny on the Bounty story, trying to provide a more nuanced and true-to-life account than the Nordoff and Hall novel and its various film adaptations. Veteran naval historian Hough reconstructs the Bounty's fateful South Seas voyage in search of bread fruit, and probes the psychology of the drama's major players. Lieutenant William Bligh, generally the villain of the piece, receives welcome shading as a brilliant, conscientious sailor (later commended for bravery in the Napoleonic Wars) but an erratic leader of men, a man whose faults were a quick temper, an inability to forgive slights and an unwillingness to take responsibility for his failures. Fletcher Christian, the mutinous first mate, is a veteran sailor whom Hough convincingly depicts as hot-headed and indecisive; after falling into the tropical languor at Tahiti, he resented Bligh's belated attempts to restore discipline and increasingly petty treatment of the crew, but still had to be goaded by his shipmates into actually taking action (Hough shows Christian contemplating desertion, and even suicide before realizing that Bligh had isolated enough sailors to make a mutiny feasible). Hough is always a skilled writer and his portraits of the two men ring true; he gives ample space to Bligh's impressive feat sailing to Timor in a single, open-boat, the Bounty crew's squabbles before fleeing to Pitcairn Island and the brutal punitive expedition by Captain Edwards of the Pandora. Neither protagonist comes off well in Hough's telling; a red-blooded adventure tale becomes a full-blown tragedy. Hough's book inspired the excellent 1984 film The Bounty with Anthony Hopkins as Bligh and Mel Gibson as Christian.
August 16, 2025
Very good, Hough is incredibly detailed and thorough in the telling of the events before, during and after the mutiny.
It does take a while to get into the book, and the last chapter takes a real left turn - what should’ve been a neatly wrapped up conclusion, opinion or potentially a question to the reader regarding what could drive a man to mutiny, Hough discusses sexual issues onboard naval vessels and theorises that Bligh and Christian may have had a homosexual relationship - and then just presents it as fact, whilst acknowledging “we shall never know”. He also starts writing in the present tense sometimes, so as to put the reader in the scene - but he does this so well anyway that it’s just confusing rather than enrapturing. Finally, as with the nature of the events, the story jumps around a bit quickly post-mutiny - from Bligh’s post-Bounty life, Christian’s ordeal on Pitcairn Island and the arrest of the men on Tahiti.
But overall it is an enthralling account, with amazing first hand illustrations and documentation. The context of Bligh, Christian and especially the tale of Captain Cook was really well done. Good book, perfect if you enjoy naval/maritime disasters.
It does take a while to get into the book, and the last chapter takes a real left turn - what should’ve been a neatly wrapped up conclusion, opinion or potentially a question to the reader regarding what could drive a man to mutiny, Hough discusses sexual issues onboard naval vessels and theorises that Bligh and Christian may have had a homosexual relationship - and then just presents it as fact, whilst acknowledging “we shall never know”. He also starts writing in the present tense sometimes, so as to put the reader in the scene - but he does this so well anyway that it’s just confusing rather than enrapturing. Finally, as with the nature of the events, the story jumps around a bit quickly post-mutiny - from Bligh’s post-Bounty life, Christian’s ordeal on Pitcairn Island and the arrest of the men on Tahiti.
But overall it is an enthralling account, with amazing first hand illustrations and documentation. The context of Bligh, Christian and especially the tale of Captain Cook was really well done. Good book, perfect if you enjoy naval/maritime disasters.
February 9, 2023
William Bligh was the Rodney Dangerfield of the 18th century-he didn't get any respect. The British admiralty didn't promote him to Captain when he was given command of HMS Bounty. He remained a Lieutenant. His title 'Captain' was titular only, not his rank. Other British captains were harsher to their crews than Bligh, George Vancouver was cited as one example.Vancouver has two cities on the west coast of North America named after him and Bligh becomes the euphemism for a harsh taskmaster.
When set adrift in an open boat by Mr. Christian & the mutineers, Bligh deftly navigates the vessel across 3600 miles of Pacific Ocean without losing a single man. A record that still stands today.
As for Fletcher Christian -he was a rich prig- Clark Gable, Marlon Brando & Mel Gibson not withstanding.
When set adrift in an open boat by Mr. Christian & the mutineers, Bligh deftly navigates the vessel across 3600 miles of Pacific Ocean without losing a single man. A record that still stands today.
As for Fletcher Christian -he was a rich prig- Clark Gable, Marlon Brando & Mel Gibson not withstanding.
August 15, 2022
It doesn't say anywhere on Goodreads, but this was republished as The Bounty, perhaps to tie in with a film of that name.
Read this with a schoolfriend when we were walking through Portugal together in the 1980s. We were avid readers desperate for literature, and had picked this up from a stationery shop in Porto Covo. We both thoroughly enjoyed it.
Read this with a schoolfriend when we were walking through Portugal together in the 1980s. We were avid readers desperate for literature, and had picked this up from a stationery shop in Porto Covo. We both thoroughly enjoyed it.
April 13, 2025
Capturing the tangled significance of the Bounty's historical importance, its color cast of characters and its profound sense of predestination, Richard Hough brings the famous mutiny to life in a way that illuminates multiple aspects of society during these tumultuous times and expands the modern understanding of civilization.
April 1, 2026
A very good exploration of the captain and crew of the “Bounty” in the famous mutiny.Everything is explained and analysed in a lively and clear style.It comes to a final conclusion too which I found useful.
June 26, 2019
So interesting.
July 2, 2019
Having read a Val McDairmid book which had links to this story I picked out this book as further reading. A good pick as its an excellent read and really interesting. Recommended.
February 7, 2020
Very interesting read!
November 13, 2020
A page-turner - until the last chapter: poor, tortured Christian was homosexual?!?!?!?!?!?!?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2020
Excellent, a real page turner! So good I had to read a second time.
August 21, 2021
I read the Reader's Digest Edition of this story. I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it for your read. White mold: yuck!
October 13, 2016
I read everything Bounty, because I loved the story as a young kid. This was from a historically accurate point of view, the author's note after (read this particular one in Readers' Digest condensed) was very interesting. On the whole I'm not sure why I liked this as a child...it's a disturbing story, to be sure. And sad. :(
January 15, 2024
This is the text that the 1984 film starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson was based on. I read through the book in less than three days. It is fast paced and analysis the circumstances and motives that led to the mutiny as well as charting the aftermath, Fletcher Christian's flight to escape justice and eventual arrival on Pitcairn's Island and Bligh's extraordinary journey in the Launch boat his subsequent return to England and careers until his death. It also details the hunt by the Royal Navy to track down the muniteers and what happened to the ones they caught. The film, if you have seen it captures much of the actual events but skips out chunks due to the limitations of telling the story in a film format. It really needs a TV mini-series or two films to do the whole story justice(which is what the film makers had originally planned until costs for a two film project could not be met.
The book paints colourful portraits of many of the main protagonists and places you, the reader, in the heart of the action. Bligh's story is of course more detailed as of course he documented it himself and in the subsequent trials - both Bligh's and the captured muniteers as well as accounts of the other loyalists who survived the launchboat after it was set adrift my the mutineers, added their own detailed accounts. The details of what happened on Pitcairn are more hazy as only one muniteer was found still alive when the royal navy found the island 18 years after the mutiny and he had not documented events on the island, but the men - mutineers and Polynesians turned on each other and mostly murdered one another. If you like the film I highly recommend you read the book.
The book paints colourful portraits of many of the main protagonists and places you, the reader, in the heart of the action. Bligh's story is of course more detailed as of course he documented it himself and in the subsequent trials - both Bligh's and the captured muniteers as well as accounts of the other loyalists who survived the launchboat after it was set adrift my the mutineers, added their own detailed accounts. The details of what happened on Pitcairn are more hazy as only one muniteer was found still alive when the royal navy found the island 18 years after the mutiny and he had not documented events on the island, but the men - mutineers and Polynesians turned on each other and mostly murdered one another. If you like the film I highly recommend you read the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2024
This is the book on which the film by the same title was based upon, and thankfully so, for it tells a far more fascinating story by attempting, not so much as to fictionalize a la Nordoff and Hall, but to tell the real story taking dialogue almost verbatim from court publications, journals from the crew etc.., Of course, this book, originally titled Captain Bligh and Mister Christian, has since been superceded by Caroline Alexander's grippping account which is also titled the Bounty and Peter Fitzimmons "Mutiny on the Bounty" which gives the reader a sense of urgency in its present tense narration. All three volumes complement each other well, and are in a way trilogy that retreads the most famous and fascinating mutiny of all time.
Note: Readers ought to seek out the hardcover edition of Hough's book, which can be acquired second hand, which contains significant sections (almost the entire Pitcairn chapter for instance) that have since been excised (specially in the shortened kindle edition).
Note: Readers ought to seek out the hardcover edition of Hough's book, which can be acquired second hand, which contains significant sections (almost the entire Pitcairn chapter for instance) that have since been excised (specially in the shortened kindle edition).
August 30, 2020
Not authorative but worth a read.
The story itself is enthralling, no matter who tells it. This one maintained my interest until the end, but it is certainly not a definitive account. Although some sources are vaguely referenced there is very little factual verification. As an example, the opening direct dialogue reads as fiction but seems to be reported as fact and very early raises questions of credibility.
This said, the book does often convey the heroics of Bligh’s voyage to safety, the despair of those serving under him, the decadence of the long stay in the Tahitian paradise, and explains convincingly the effect this had on ship’s discipline and duty.
Overall, a sideways glimpse at a complex piece of history that might expose an occasional new insight.
The story itself is enthralling, no matter who tells it. This one maintained my interest until the end, but it is certainly not a definitive account. Although some sources are vaguely referenced there is very little factual verification. As an example, the opening direct dialogue reads as fiction but seems to be reported as fact and very early raises questions of credibility.
This said, the book does often convey the heroics of Bligh’s voyage to safety, the despair of those serving under him, the decadence of the long stay in the Tahitian paradise, and explains convincingly the effect this had on ship’s discipline and duty.
Overall, a sideways glimpse at a complex piece of history that might expose an occasional new insight.
November 27, 2018
This is an interesting book that kept my attention all the way through. The picture it paints of life at sea or in the South Pacific Islands in the 18th century is not a pretty one--it was a hard life led by adventurous and skilled but difficult men. It's worth a read if you are interested in adventure and history. From an anthropologist's perspective, there is very little insight into the culture and people of the South Pacific, despite prolonged interactions and much trading. Of course, the enslavement and treatment of the native peoples is abhorrent and this is not given quite the attention it deserves.
July 19, 2014
A wonderful in depth look at the main characters in the Bounty mutiny by Richard Hough. William Bligh was undoubtably a bully and at times a poor leader, however he was a great navigator and seaman, perhaps the greatest of his generation, Fletcher Christian one-time favourite of Bligh's was a weak character, who only led the mutiny because his plan to desert would have been even more of a disaster. A great read.
March 16, 2011
This was an excellent read. I think we are all aware of the basic story of the infamous mutiny but this book flushes out the details in an balanced unbiased reconstruction of this historic event. How people lived in those days (1780s)on those sailing vessels and how they were treated makes me very glad to live in an enlightened age.
February 26, 2016
Richard Hough, RDC-M, #3, 1973, @ 1973, 1/74. The story of Fletcher Christian and the rest of the Bounty's mutineers' discovery of an uninhabited island and their attempt to create a community away from the pursuing ships of the Royal Navy is part of this narrative. Captain Bligh's 3,600 mile voyage to Timor in an open launch is also described. Very good read.
June 20, 2007
I went thru a phase where I read everything I could about the mutiny on the Bounty. They tend to get jumbled in my brain. I recall that this was one of the better ones.
July 3, 2010
Basically, I can't remember. Read it after the mutany 3 series. Pretty much the same story, I think. From a different point of view.
August 11, 2012
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11328038
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11328038
November 20, 2012
Another good read from Richard Hough.
December 29, 2015
Historie vzpoury na Bounty je velice zajímavá a sám jsem rád, že jsem konečně pořádně zjistil jak tomu vlastně bylo, přesto kniha samotná měla některé pasáže poměrně zdlouhavé a nepříliš záživné.
January 22, 2016
Historical view of Bligh and Christian in mutiny on Bounty
April 4, 2016
Most Engrossing Sea Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty.
A "must read" for all Navy Officers and Sailors and all those interested in Military History.
A "must read" for all Navy Officers and Sailors and all those interested in Military History.
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