Book of the Week #7: Mutiny on the Bounty

The book I read this week is the classic novel Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Hall. This book documents the fictionalized tale of the true story of several crew members who led a mutiny against the Captain of the Bounty.

The book is narrated by Roger Byam, whose main job on the ship is to make a dictionary of the Tahitian language while they are on their trip to the West Indies aboard the ship Bounty. The boat sets sail in 1787, and you get to meet the crew. It becomes immediately obvious that Captain Bligh is not a particularly kind-hearted man, and the crew begin to suffer. Living conditions rapidly deteriorate. They have little food, and Captain Bligh continues to mistreat them. When the boat lands in Tahiti, the men love it there and don’t want to leave, so some of them desert. Back on the ship, the men get together and talk about the poor treatment they have received at the hands of Bligh, so they rise up against him and his loyal men.

I really liked this book. It has been made into plays, musicals, and a couple of movies, so I’m sure that I’ll be watching at least one of the films soon. Overall it was a pretty slow read. It takes a bit of time to plod through, but it’s completely worth it. It gives you a really good idea of the kind of squalor and mistreatment that these men were subjected to at the hands of the British Navy on some of the stricter ships. As I said before, this was based on a true story, and there really was a mutiny led by crewman Fletcher Christian against Captain Bligh. I like reading this kind of story, because I can always enjoy the little bit of research I can do after. It makes the characters real. They aren’t just in my imagination, but they were living, breathing people with whole life stories. Fascinating.

Overall, I’d say that this book is a 7/10. I enjoyed it, and it really is a classic for a reason.