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AUTHOR COMMENT: THE FACTS ABOUT CAPTAIN BLIGH
Captain (actually, Lieutenant) William Bligh of the Bounty is an oft-misunderstood individual. While it is true that he had a fierce temper and was notoriously foul-mouthed — so much so that it was noticed, in the Royal Navy of the eighteenth century — he was also much admired by his crew: Fletcher Christian and others of the mutineers had sailed with him before, and volunteered for the voyage that made them famous.
Bligh's problem was his undue leniency. For example, in the navy of the day, the crew were typically divided into two watches and hence were either working or sleeping. Bligh, the humanitarian, divided them into three watches ... without actually thinking through the consequences. The crew were working, or asleep, or ... getting bored, opportunities for entertainment on a 90-foot sailing ship being limited. Bounty was also badly overcrowded, many friends of Bligh having called in favours to get a relative or a friend onboard and Bligh having been too nice or too weak to say "no". Bounty's mission was to collect breadfruit from Tahiti and transplant it to the West Indies where it would be used as a food source for the slave plantations. The ship arrived at Tahiti too early for the breadfruit season, and rather than sail around the Pacific in circles, or map out the island, or do something, Bligh dropped anchor and gave the crew effectively six month's shore leave in a tropical paradise full of beautiful women. Strangely, they were reluctant to leave. Bligh returned to Britain a hero, and rightly so, having been cast adrift with his loyal crew in Bounty's longboat and having performed a magnificent feat of seamanship in getting them all back to civilisation. While he was off on a second mission, however, back in England Fletcher Christian's family began to spread the story that Bligh was a harsh tyrant, thus (partially) justifying the rebellion. Bligh returned home to find himself the ogre of popular imagination that he has been ever since. But don't just take my word for it ...
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