William Bligh, Not Likely To Get Lost Winner 1789

As usual Hollywood has done a great disservice to an Historical figure in the person of William Bligh, RN, Commander of Her Majesty's Armed Vessel Bounty.

I've just read his memoirs, "A Voyage To The South Sea" in which he relates the story of how he manages to get 18 of his comrades across 3618 miles of the Pacific Ocean, with very little rations and no weapons in a boat about twenty five feet long, for 41 days, while the mutinous Fletcher Christian and his chums park their collective backsides on Pitcairn having decided a life of shagging natives and eating coconuts is preferable to getting home to good old Blighty.

Now I'm as lazy as the next man, but I hardly think this demonstation of the idleness of the average Englishman in the 18th century is justification for poor old Bligh, arguably one of the greatest navigators England has ever known based on his exploits, to become the villain in at least three Hollywood adaptations of the Bounty mutiny.

Though Mel Gibson is on one of them, so you were always on a safe bet that somewhere in the story an Englishman was being misrepresented I guess.