#Mounty bounty ship free

Director' was the last ship to take down it's flag of mutiny) and the New South Wales mutiny of 1805, where he was the Governor of the colony and his measures led to a mutiny of the local New South Wales Corp. Unfortunately for his reputation he would be involved (in later years) in two other mutinies: that of the entire British fleet (the 'Great Mutiny of 1797), where his ship 'H.M.S. Historically most people feel that Bligh was more bark than bite. Peter Heyward, the real life version of Byams (Franchot Tone) had the family connections and money to publish his anti-Bligh account, but Bligh's book became a best seller. Christian never did get a chance to produce his side of it. BOUNTY, but keep in mind that it is his account of his side of the story. If one wants to see the story from Bligh's side, read his very readable account THE MUTINY ABOARD H.M.S. Somehow making a case for Bligh weakens the story of men rebelling when they can't stand anymore.

It is the most literary version (based on the novels of Nordhoff and Hall - there are actually three novels), and it did give Charles Laughton his most famous ogre (which he repeated later as Captain William Kidd twice), but somehow the story was properly told in this version. That's all.Īlthough the versions with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard, and with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, are fairer in presenting William Bligh than the 1935 version did, it is the 1935 version that remains the best American version of the story of Bligh, Christian, and the 'Bounty'. If he called his men to their duty not by flaying their backs, but by lifting their hearts. If one man among you believe that - *one man* - he could command the fleets of England, He could sweep the seas for England.

#Mounty bounty ship free

If they could speak to you they'd say, 'Let us choose to do our duty willingly, not the choice of a slave, but the choice of free Englishmen.' They ask only the freedom that England expects for every man. I speak in their names, in Fletcher Christian's name, for all men at sea. I don't speak here for myself alone or for these men you condemn.

No finer man ever lived.'īyam: I don't try to justify his crime, his mutiny, but I condemn the tyranny that drove 'im to it. God knows he's judged himself more harshly than you could judge him.īyam: I say to his father, 'He was my friend. Fletcher Christian's still free.īyam: Christian lost, too, milord. That's why you hate him, hate his friends. A story of greed and tyranny, and of anger against it, of what it cost.īyam: One man, milord, would not endure such tyranny.īyam: That's why you hounded him.

A story of a man who robbed his seamen, cursed them, flogged them, not to punish but to break their spirit. But there's another story, Captain Bligh, of ten cocoanuts and two cheeses. Since I first sailed on the Bounty over four years ago, I've know how men can be made to suffer worse things than death, cruelly, beyond duty, beyond necessity.īyam: Captain Bligh, you've told your story of mutiny on the Bounty, how men plotted against you, seized your ship, cast you adrift in an open boat, a great venture in science brought to nothing, two British ships lost.

Lord Hood: Have you anything to say before the sentence of this court is passed upon you?īyam: Milord, much as I desire to live, I'm not afraid to die.