WILLIAM BLIGH WAS A NICE BLOKE!!!! Not only was he a superb sailor, he was, by the standards of his day, an unusually gentle and reasonable captain. Saying this generally causes incredulous laughter, because everyone has seen the Hollywood version where Bligh's brutality brings about the Mutiny on the Bounty.
          In fact the mutiny happened because Bligh was arguably way too soft. Royal Navy captains of his day were allowed to do some fairly vicious things to their crew, and what they weren't allowed to do, and did anyway, was worse. But Bligh stuck to the rules. It is on record that the harshest thing he did during the Bounty's voyage was have two sailors flogged. 25 lashes each may sound horrendous to us, but since they were deserters who could legally have been hanged, it's pretty mild.
          What caused the mutiny was simple. After a long, arduous voyage, the Bounty had to spend some unscheduled months in Tahiti, waiting for the breadfruit season. Tahiti, or Otaheite as it was known, was every Western sailor's idea of paradise: people lying about picking fruit, no work and no sexual taboos. So when Bligh mentioned that actually it was now time to leave and go back to work, nobody wanted to. They might have, if his officers had backed him, but he'd been far too soft on them and Fletcher Christian, who was deeply in love with his Tahitian girlfriend, just wasn't playing. So Christian took over the ship.
          Christian allowed Bligh and those who stayed with him a boat and minimal supplies. This should have been, and was meant to be, a death sentence. Christian did not mean for Bligh to get back anywhere he might have laid charges of mutiny. The supplies were meant to get them no further than the near islands, where they would either have been stranded for life or more likely killed by the inhabitants.
          The only thing that spoiled the plan was that Bligh was both a brilliant navigator and a charismatic leader when he had to be, and he got his boatload safe to Australia. From there he returned to England to explain how he'd committed the greatest naval crime, losing his ship. He was not at all certain to keep his rank; he had always been an outsider because he'd made his way up the ranks; he didn't come from the officer class (as Christian did, and was always reminding him). None the less, he convinced a hostile Admiralty board that he was not to blame for the mutiny and that the allegations that brutality was at the bottom of it were total fabrication. And for once, the official verdict was dead right.