Court, wrote a book on the mutiny, and this work, for the reason that it was published in a remote part of the world, is little known; yet it is probably the best book on the subject.  The Judge marshals his facts with judicial ability, and he sums up in such a manner the causes leading to the mutiny, that if Bligh were on trial before him we are afraid the jury would convict that officer without leaving the box.

A critic whose opinion is entitled to the greatest weight, having read the manuscript of this and the next chapter before it went to press, considered that, although we had written of Bligh’s harshness to his men as proved, we had not specifically alluded to the proof.  For this reason, and because the story of the Bounty mutiny, like every event that happened in the South Seas a hundred years ago, is interwoven with the early history of Australia, we propose to retell the story shortly.  And since it seems that Bligh’s tyrannical character is still a fact not taken for granted by everyone, we will endeavour, not to justify the mutiny, but to show that, by all the rules of evidence, Bligh’s behaviour to his ship’s company is proved to have been of the aggravating character alleged by his shipmates, and that the Bounty was not, as Bligh represented her to be, what is called by sailors “a happy ship.”

Another reason for retelling the story is, that, notwithstanding that the name of the Bounty sounds most familiar in most people’s ears, yet we have some evidence that the present generation has [Sidenote:  1776] almost forgotten nearly everything relating to it.

A few years ago one of the authors went to Norfolk Island, so remote a spot that visits are counted not so many to the year, but so many years to a visitor.  It was thought that an account of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers would be of interest to English magazine-readers.  Everyone, it was supposed, knew all about the Bounty mutiny, so half a dozen lines were devoted to it, the rest of the space to the present state of the old Pitcairn families.  The article was hawked about to most of the London magazine offices, and was invariably rejected, on the ground that no one remembered the Bounty mutiny, and that an account of the event would be much more acceptable.  It appears from many recently printed allusions to the mutiny that the magazine editors rightly judged their public.

Bligh’s first visit to the South Seas was when, under Cook, he sailed as master of the Resolution in 1776-9.  A native of Plymouth, of obscure parentage, he was then about twenty-three years old, and had entered the service through the “hawse-pipe.”

By Cook’s influence, he was in 1781 promoted lieutenant, and later, through the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, was given the command of the Bounty, which sailed from Spithead on December 23rd, 1787, for Tahiti.