When Lieutenant William Bligh set sail for the East Indian island of Timor on 28th April 1789, he commanded an 18-man crew in a perilously overloaded 23-foot launch. The extremely hazardous 3,600-mile voyage he was facing had been forced upon him by his second-in-command, Fletcher Christian of His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty, who set him adrift following the famous mutiny. Remarkably, on 12th June, after fending off starvation and murderous Polynesian natives, Bligh arrived safely at his destination. Whatever flaws there may have been in his character, he was an exceptional navigator.

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Questions about Bligh’s supposedly despotic conduct during his command of the Bounty have been inconclusively debated ever since the mutiny. Whether or not he truly was a tyrant, he seemed to be cursed with a knack for inspiring insurrection. The Bounty rebellion was only the first of three mutinies against Bligh during the officer’s remarkable naval career.

On 14th March 1790, Bligh set foot on English soil for the first time since the Bounty had left Spithead on 23rd December 1787. On that day, Bligh had been bound for the romantic isle of Tahiti, where his less-than-glamorous mission was to embark a cargo of breadfruit saplings and carry them to the West Indies where they were to be transplanted. He had been allowed to recommend his own crew and had suggested that his friend, Fletcher Christian, serve as mate to the ship’s master.

Upon his return from the ordeal in the South Pacific, Bligh was regarded as a heroic victim. A court martial cleared him of all responsibility for the loss of the Bounty; he was promoted to commander and then to post-captain. He became the subject of romanticized accounts of the mutiny, and was given the chance to return to Tahiti, this time with two ships under his command, in order to complete his original mission.

After succeeding in this second attempt to introduce breadfruit to the West Indies, Bligh again returned to England on 9th September 1793, expecting that his accomplishment would have earned him even greater acclaim. He found, however, that while he was away 14 of the mutineers had been captured and put on trial. The emotional testimony of some of the defendants, along with the efforts of some influential families, including the Christians, had swayed popular opinion against the Bounty’s commander.

Unhappily for Bligh, the captain of the expedition that had brought the mutineers to justice had, in fact, treated his captives so brutally that the public began to sympathize with them. Peter Heywood, who had sided with the mutineers but did not play a major part in the crime, presented a lengthy defense of his actions that cast Bligh in a less favourable light than had previous accounts. Though the debate raged inconclusively, Bligh’s reputation had been irreparably damaged. Speculation about what could have driven so many respectable men to commit so disgraceful a crime became widespread.

In the 200 years since, no one has provided a definitive answer to the questions of whether Bligh was villain or victim and why the mutiny occurred. Bligh’s own assumption was that the mutineers had plotted to overthrow him so that they could return to Tahiti and avoid a comparatively mundane existence in England or the hardships of navy life. If this was so, Christian and his followers realized too late the obvious fact that they could never make Tahiti a permanent home after the mutiny because the British authorities would look for them there. Some of the less prominent mutineers actually did stay on Tahiti, knowing they would be found and taken home to England, where they assumed they would be excused for their minor role in the affair. Christian and eight other ringleaders, however, left Tahiti forever shortly after taking control of the Bounty.

On the other hand, Bligh’s conduct doesn’t seem an adequate cause of the mutiny either. Christian had sailed with him before without incident or complaint. Far from there being any friction on previous voyages, the two had become friends. Christian seems actually to have been treated with more favour and given more responsibility than his limited experience merited. Bligh was known to have had a foul mouth, but so did most sailors of his day, and mutiny seems too exaggerated a response to attribute to crude language.

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