Rainy Sunday

I have just finished listening to the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty written by Caroline Alexander. It is a book worth reading or listening to on tape as I did. The film starring Marlon Brando was the first movie I ever saw, my dad took me to see it in the sixties at the theater on the Cambridge-Watertown line. I still remember the scenes of keel-hauling, whippings, and the tyrannically cruel Captain Bligh. In this book Bligh, while not a hero, is not altogether bad, not nearly as old as in the movie, he just seeme to be a little poor at interpersonal relations and had not been given sufficient support to his authority. In the end, they burn the ship as they did in the movie. The book tells a fascinating story, revealing the complexities of the case and its mysteries. It follows in particular the story of Peter Hayward, who was sixteen at the time of the mutiny, who did not go to Pitcairn but lived on Tahiti with a tahitian wife until discovered and arrested by the royal navy. He was returned to England in chains, tried and convicted to death, but then pardoned by the King and went on to a long career in the navy, as did Bligh. Several others tried with him were hanged. The mutineers who went to Pitcairn left many descendants but all but one disappeared, or were killed by the tahitians that they took with them.