Mutiny on the Bounty (novel) Mutiny on the Bounty (novel) Mutiny on the Bounty is the title of the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, commanding officer of the "Bounty" in 1789. It has been made into several films and a musical. It was the first of what became "The Bounty Trilogy", which continues with "Men Against the Sea", and concludes with "Pitcairn's Island". The novel tells the story through a fictional first-person narrator by the name of Roger Byam, based on a crew member Peter Heywood. Byam, although not one of the mutineers,
HMS Bounty Tahitian woman. Others of the "Bounty"s warrant officers and seamen were also said to have formed "connections" with native women. After five months in Tahiti, the "Bounty" set sail with her breadfruit cargo on 4 April 1789. Some west of Tahiti, near Tonga, mutiny broke out on 28 April 1789. Despite strong words and threats heard on both sides, the ship was taken bloodlessly and apparently without struggle by any of the loyalists except Bligh himself. Of the 42 men on board aside from Bligh and Christian, 22 joined Christian in mutiny, two were passive, and 18 remained loyal to