The Bounty Audiobook By Caroline Alexander cover art

The Bounty

The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

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The Bounty

By: Caroline Alexander
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
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Has history been wrong for 200 years? Read the startling truth about the mutiny on the Bounty, its characters, causes, and aftermath. Television rights are now in development with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions.

More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend. Combining vivid characterization and deft storytelling, Caroline Alexander shatters the centuries-old myths surrounding this story. She brilliantly shows how, in a desperate attempt to save one man from the gallows and another from ignominy, two powerful families came together and began to create the version of history we know today. The true story of the mutiny on the Bounty is an epic of duty and heroism, pride and power, and the assassination of a brave man’s honor at the dawn of the Romantic age. Maritime History & Piracy Armed Forces Naval Forces Military Great Britain Europe World England

Critic reviews

“With this and her previous book, The Endurance, [Alexander] has made the wondrous genre of open-boat-voyage narratives still more wondrous.” —The New York Times

“Meticulously researched and smoothly readable.” —The Washington Post

“A rollicking sea adventure told with enormous confidence and style.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Alexander profiles history’s most famous mutiny in the same stylish manner she brought to Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition (The Endurance).” —Kirkus Reviews

“Alexander’s work is destined to become the definitive, enthralling history of a great seafaring adventure.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
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Reader was very good. Story was well written but occasionally, probably unavoidably, dry.

My overall takeaway from this is that the entire reasoning behind the mutiny are, from a modern perspective, not fully understandable. The extreme class system and almost self indulgent sense of moral purity of the upper class is well exposed in this book. Honestly, can one blame a common seaman wanting to stay in Tahiti, considering their quality of life and prospects in Britain?

Good Story

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I was actually surprised and delighted to hear this rendition of The Bounty. It is a good example of how a story can be so twisted as to have so few facts to the original. Wonderful story and well presented.

The real story

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This is an excellent history. I did not want to read it because I loved Peter Fitzsimmons’s Mutiny on the Bounty and I sympathized with Fletcher Christian and Peter Haywood. But Alexander is a true historian writing history based on primary sources and where she is not sure she says so. Peter tends to the historic novelist. Anyway I recommend reading both. Why not? I think it is the greatest true story in the English language. You have English sailors meeting wonderful Tahitian women and men who have not yet been spoiled by meeting westerners. You have the mutiny. You have Bligh’s incredible voyage to Batavia. You have the court martial trial. And you have the remarkable Pitcairn Island story. On the latter both authors had a lot to offer. The narrator here was excellent too.

Better than fitzsimmons

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This goes beyond a simple telling of the story of the mutiny or the ship The Bounty. There is a lot of background to how the sailing was commissioned and the background for the sailors that up the crew. There is some back and forth time jumps in the story but they are necessary to isolate the individual storylines and isolate potential motivations.

There is a good analysis of different source material (logs, written testimony, personal letters, etc) attempting to triangulate what actually happened. Who started, who followed, individual motivations, etc. I think there is a fairly clear chain of events with multiple perspectives considered.

Then there is also the effects of this famous event - following the main characters after. Investigating how it influenced different lives and best practices along with some investigations of the people that simply "disappeared".

Overall, this is a much deeper dive into the mutiny and how it fit into the world at the time.

The story of the mutiny and beyond

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A very balanced and detailed narrative of the voyage, the mutiny, and its aftermath. Bligh bore some fault, but he was made into a caricature by some very effective propaganda coming from two well connected families.

Outstanding from start to finish

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