Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff

First published: 1932

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: Late eighteenth century

Locale: England, the South Pacific, Tahiti, and the Dutch East Indies

Principal characters

• William Bligh, captain of the HMS Bounty
• Roger Byam, a midshipman
• Fletcher Christian, master’s mate and leader of the mutiny
• George Stewart, a midshipman and a friend of Byam
• Tehani, a Tahitian woman

The Story:

In late 1787, young Roger Byam accepts Lieutenant William Bligh’s offer of a berth as midshipman on the HMS Bounty, an armed British transport commissioned to ship breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the West Indies to provide a cheap source of food for the black slaves of English planters. Byam’s special duty, under the aegis of Sir Joseph Banks, a family friend and president of the Royal Society, will be to complete a Tahitian dictionary and grammar for the benefit of English seamen.

While still in port, Byam witnesses a brutal example of British naval law: A sailor is subjected to dozens of lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails for striking an officer, and the punishment is carried out to its conclusion, even though the man dies midway through the flogging. Once the full complement of officers and crew—a total of forty-five men—is aboard and favorable winds prevail, the Bounty sets sail.

Byam, a novice sailor from a sheltered, well-to-do background, begins to learn the ways of a ship at sea and comes to realize that Captain Bligh, though a competent navigator, represents the worst traits of British naval commanders. Bligh’s unbending adherence to discipline, demonstrated through excessive floggings for minor infractions and his insensitivity toward the crew as human beings, is exacerbated by his exploitation of the men: Their food rations, barely edible, are reduced so the captain can profit.

After sailing ten months and 27,000 miles, the Bounty arrives in Tahiti. In contrast to the tyrannical atmosphere aboard ship, the islands offer almost unbounded freedom. Crewmembers submit to tattooing, exchange their clothing for local garb, and acquire deep suntans. Eagerly adopting a traditional Tahitian custom, the men each choose a taio, or special friend, from among the indigenous people of the islands. During a sailor’s stay in Tahiti, the taio will supply him with all the delicacies the islands have to offer. Byam’s taio is Hitihiti, a respected chieftain who knows Captain Bligh from his previous visit to Tahiti accompanying the famous explorer Captain Cook.

During the stay at Tahiti, Byam, living ashore, collects information for his language study. Most of the sailors find women with whom they live on the island and to whom some of them marry. Fletcher Christian chooses as his female companion a woman named Maimiti, the niece of Byam’s taio. George Stewart chooses a Tahitian he calls Peggy. Byam is too devoted at the time to absorbing the culture, learning the language, and preparing his lexicon to become involved with a woman.

Unlike the rest of the crew, Captain Bligh seldom ventures from the Bounty and maintains the strictest decorum. He continues to exercise the cruelties that most of his underlings consider excessive, unfair, and illegal. One practice in particular that galls the crew is the captain’s insistence upon confiscating the sailors’ property, gifts from the island, when the Bounty sails again. These gifts include tapa cloth garments, fresh fruits, wildlife, handmade crafts, and pearls, which the friendly islanders regularly bestow upon the Englishmen and which the sailors feel rightfully belongs to them. Bligh orders such gifts to be put into the ship’s stores. He further places the men on unpalatable salt pork rations, in the middle of the abundance of the islands. Just before leaving Tahiti, Bligh alienates Christian by doing the unthinkable: He publicly and falsely accuses the proud master’s mate of stealing coconuts.

After nearly six months, the collection of the breadfruit trees is finally completed, and the Bounty sets sail for the West Indies, but not before four crewmen attempt desertion. Caught and returned, they are flogged before the crew. This adds to the already sullen attitude of the sailors. Feelings continue to run high against Bligh during the early part of the voyage, until one fateful morning when impulse leads Christian to mutiny. With like-minded companions, he gains control of the ship and subsequently sets Bligh adrift in the Bounty’s launch, with eighteen loyal crewmen, as many as the launch will safely contain; seven loyal hands, among them Byam and Stewart, his close friend, must stay behind on the ship because there is no room in the small boat.

With Christian in command, the Bounty, now with a crew of twenty-three, jettisons the breadfruit trees and sails the South Seas in search of a suitable, uncharted island on which to establish a permanent settlement. After several attempts to land are thwarted by islanders, the Bounty returns to Tahiti. Here, the crew again splits: Most of the mutineers continue to sail with Christian in their search for refuge, while others, including Byam and Stewart, remain in Tahiti. They expect eventually to be found and returned home to resume their naval careers.

Christian and the mutineers sail off in the Bounty to an unknown destination. Byam, Stewart, and the other crewmen left behind renew their idyllic existence in Tahiti. Byam falls in love with a noble local woman, Tehani, and they marry. He continues to work on his language manuscripts. They have a child, and they name her Helen. For eighteen months, time passes pleasantly. Then the HMS Pandora arrives at the islands. Unbeknownst to Byam and the other sailors happily marooned on Tahiti, Bligh has survived his long voyage in the overloaded launch to reach England. In making his report to the British Admiralty, the former captain of the Bounty has not distinguished between mutineer and loyal sailor among the men who remained behind. When Byam, Stewart, and their companions from the Bounty, eager for word of home, greet the newly arrived ship, they are promptly clapped in irons and imprisoned. They are placed on the ship for return to England and for trial for mutiny, a hanging offense. The prisoners suffer great privation during their voyage until the Pandora founders on a reef and sinks; Stewart drowns during the wreck. The survivors, duplicating Bligh’s feat, sail in open boats and endure incredible hardships until arriving safely at Timor in the Dutch East Indies, from which they are shipped to England.

Back home, the prisoners await months to be court-martialed for mutiny. Byam, supported by the sympathetic Sir Joseph Banks, learns his beloved mother has died, perhaps hastened to her grave by a cruel letter from Captain Bligh. Two loyal men falsely accused of the crime, Morrison and Muspratt, are pardoned. The innocent Byam and three mutineers who stayed in Tahiti—Ellison, Burkitt, and Millward—are convicted and condemned to be hanged. Several Bounty crewmen (Nelson, Norton, and Tinkler), who could have given evidence clearing Byam, have apparently perished. At the last moment, Tinkler, presumed lost at sea, is found alive, and he gives testimony that produces an acquittal for Byam. Nothing, however, can save Ellison, Burkitt, and Millward, who must swing from the yardarms for their part in the mutiny.

Following the trial, Byam continues his naval career and eventually becomes captain of his own ship. He participates in a series of wars—against the Dutch, the Danes, the Spanish, and the French—and though he thinks often of the family he left in Tahiti, he is unable to return to the islands until 1810. When he arrives there, eighteen years after leaving, he discovers that the friendly, happy place he once knew had been ravaged by war and disease, mercilessly exploited for its natural resources. He learns that Tehani, his wife, has long been dead. He finds his daughter, Helen, who closely resembles her mother, alive and now a mother herself. An older, wiser Byam sees no purpose in identifying himself to his daughter, and he sadly leaves Tahiti for the final time, realizing that the formerly beautiful green islands are now filled with ghosts, the young midshipman he once was among them.

Bibliography

Alexander, Caroline. The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. New York: Viking, 2003. Recounts the actual events aboard the ship and subsequent efforts to round up and court-martial the mutineers. Enlivened by excerpts from crewmembers’ letters and court documents. Portrays Bligh as a brilliant navigator and not as the brutal taskmaster depicted in fictional accounts.

Bligh, William. The Bounty Mutiny: Captain William Bligh’s Firsthand Account of the Last Voyage of the HMS Bounty. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Red and Black, 2008. An authoritative account from the oft-vilified subject of the mutiny, detailing the original purpose of the Bounty’s voyage, a detailed account of the ship’s takeover, and the captain’s forty-one-day journey in the ship launch to Indonesia.

Hall, James Norman. My Island Home: An Autobiography. 1970. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970. Includes Hall’s recollections of how he and Charles Nordhoff came to write Mutiny on the Bounty. Discusses their research and their fictionalizing of the historical material. Also examines how they envisioned the material as leading to a trilogy of novels.

Hough, Richard Alexander, and Richard Hough. Captain Bligh and Mister Christian: The Men and the Mutiny. Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2000. This overview covers three major aspects of the Bounty incident: the mutiny, Bligh’s voyage, and the mutineer’s settlement on Pitcairn Island. Emphasizes the roles and the characters of the main participants.

Kirk, Robert W. Pitcairn Island, the Bounty Mutineers and Their Descendants: A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008. This detailed study, complete with maps and photographs, traces the history of the island from its settlement by the Bounty mutineers in the late eighteenth century through the current status of its inhabitants.

Roulston, Robert. James Norman Hall. Boston: Twayne, 1978. In the first book-length critical study of Hall’s work, Roulston examines in some detail the Bounty trilogy. He declares the novel a melodrama, perhaps something short of true literature, but finds it to be among the best of the genre.