The sea monster that never was

It is never easy to tell a story that everyone knows and still harder to tell one that everybody thinks he knows. For more than 200 years the mutiny on the Bounty has been part of British folklore, and its main protagonists — William Bligh and Fletcher Christian — enshrined in myth as types of brutal oppression and romantic defiance.

The interesting thing about the Bounty story, too, is just how early this popular caricature of events succeeded in passing itself off as history. For a brief period on his return to England Bligh found himself widely feted, but even before he had completed his second journey in search of the West Indian planters’ breadfruit the innuendos, lies, slanders and misrepresentations that would transform him from naval hero into national villain had already done their work.