Promotional Information

The names William Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and the Bounty have excited the popular imagination for more than two hundred years. The story of this famous mutiny has many beginnings and many endings but they all intersect on an April morning in 1789 near the island known today as Tonga.

Table of Contents

Introduction by R.D. Madison
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Texts
Maps

A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty, by William Bligh

Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court-Martial held at Portsmouth, August 12, 1792. On Ten Persons charged with Mutiny on Board His Majesty's Ship the Bounty, with an Appendix by Edward Christian

An Answer to Certain Assertions Contained in the Appendix to a Pamphlet, by William Bligh

A Short Reply to Capt. William Bligh's Answer, by Edward Christian

Appendixes:
Appendix A: Bligh's Orders and a Description of the Breadfruit
Appendix B: Lady Belcher's Account of the Pandora (1870)
Appendix C: The Quarterly Review on the Bounty (1810)
Appendix D: The Quarterly Review on the Bounty (1815)
Appendix E: Jenny's Story (1829)
Appendix F: John Adam's Story (1831)

About the Author

William Bligh was born near Plymouth, England, in 1754. His sailing career began in 1762, when, at the age of seven, he was entered on the books of the Monmouth as captain's servant. In 1787, he was given command of an expedition to transplant breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies aboard the Bounty. The mutiny that took place on the voyage has excited the popular imagination for more than 200 years, and his account of it, The Bounty Mutiny, is published by Penguin Classics.

Edward Christian, brother of mutineer Fletcher Christian, was born in 1758 near Cockermouth in the Lake District. The counsel for William and Dorothy Wordsworth in their famous suit against James Lowther, he became chief justice of the Isle of Ely and professor of law at Cambridge. He died in 1823.

R. D. Madison is an author, an editor, and a teacher. He served as a professor of English at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and has edited several volumes of military and naval history, including William Bligh and Edward Christian'sThe Bounty Mutiny.

Reviews

"Highly recommended . . . Anyone interested in the Bounty mutiny should own this book."