In this second part of this book review of the Bounty Trilogy I\u2019ll include both of the remaining stories.\u00a0 I think this is reasonable because neither of these later \u201cbooks\u201d has the same narrative clout as \u201cMutiny on the Bounty.\u201d\u00a0 Although each story has remarkable human interest and involves harrowing danger and human suffering neither is as dynamic as the tale in Mutiny.\u00a0 And for this reason, I think I can do justice to both in this single review.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Men Against the Sea<\/strong><\/p>\n (Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Men Against the Sea is the narrative of Captain Bligh\u2019s Sea voyage.\u00a0 I\u2019ll let the narrator Thomas Ledward, the Bounty\u2019s Acting Surgeon summarize the voyage, \u201cNever, perhaps, in the history of the sea has a captain performed a feat more remarkable than Mr. Bligh’s, in navigating a small, open, and unarmed boat–but twenty-three feet long, and so heavily laden that she was in constant danger of foundering–from the Friendly Islands to Timor, a distance of three thousand, six hundred miles, through groups of islands inhabited by ferocious savages, and across a vast uncharted ocean. Eighteen of us were huddled on the thwarts as we ran for forty-one days before strong easterly gales, bailing almost continually to keep afloat, and exposed to torrential rains by day and by night.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n And that description gives us the gist of the book.\u00a0 But as remarkable as that voyage was what\u2019s it like as a story?\u00a0 I would say that the story is passably interesting and we do get a flavor of each of the passengers and especially Bligh but the circumstances of the story are on the whole too static to make the adventure come fully to life.\u00a0 For this I don\u2019t fully fault the authors.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure anyone could figure out a way to fully document the voyage and still give the story a dynamic feel.\u00a0 Instead, the book faithfully portrays the oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere that eighteen men trapped on a twenty-three-foot boat for forty-one days must have been like.<\/p>\n Pitcairn\u2019s Island<\/strong><\/p>\n (Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Pitcairn\u2019s Island is the story of the Bounty mutineers along with some women and men from Tahiti establishing a colony on a small, secluded and almost unknown island in the South Pacific in order to escape from the British Navy that would be searching for them over the mutiny.\u00a0 This is a very strange story of how these Englishmen took what was potentially a tropical paradise and turned it into a private hell.\u00a0 All of the human foibles are on display.\u00a0 Greed, sloth, lust, intolerance, drunkenness and wrath play a role in destroying the colony.\u00a0 By the end of the story only the women and children remain except for one mutineer who assumed the role of father figure for the children.<\/p>\n The story is an exciting one full of conflict and human tragedy.\u00a0 And the pace of the story is much more engaging than Men Against the Sea.\u00a0 But at points the dialog does seem to be a little stilted.\u00a0 But this book is much more readable than the previous story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Final Comments<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMen Against the Sea\u201d and \u201cPitcairn\u2019s Island\u201d aren\u2019t as engaging or have plots that are as well rounded as \u201cMutiny on the Bounty.\u201d\u00a0 But I would guess that nine out of ten readers of Mutiny will at least try to read these later stories.\u00a0 Personally, neither of these later stories was as satisfying as Mutiny but I recommend that anyone who read Mutiny on the Bounty should at least give them a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this second part of this book review of the Bounty Trilogy I\u2019ll include both of the remaining stories.\u00a0 I think this is reasonable because<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237],"tags":[68,747,3644,757,3645,38,1355],"class_list":["post-18955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-england","tag-men-against-the-sea","tag-mutiny-on-the-bounty","tag-pitcairns-island","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n