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,
Peter Heywood with a bayonet at his breast and his hands tied, had addressed a remark to Heywood who had "laughed, turned round and walked away". Another midshipman, Thomas Hayward, claimed he had asked Heywood his intentions and been told by the latter that he would remain with the ship, from which Hayward assumed that his messmate had sided with the mutineers. After the departure of Bligh's launch, Christian turned "Bounty" eastward in search of a remote haven on which he and the mutineers could settle. He had in mind the island of Tubuai, 300 miles south of Tahiti, partly mapped by