8. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Mutiny on the Bounty Movie Poster

I have to admit that I wasn't looking forward to watching Mutiny on the Bounty. I am not necessarily a huge fan of sea yarns. However, I soon realized my error as I was enthralled by not only the performances of the two main stars, Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, but I was also quite interested by the nefarious means by which Captain Bligh kept disciplining his sailors!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Mutiny of the Bounty starts with the impressing of soldiers. As seen by Fletcher Christian's willingness to drag men away from their lives for two years to go to sea, he was willing to follow the King's orders. He wasn't someone to just rebel because he felt bad for the others.

Before the voyage even starts, Captain Bligh shows how evil he really is when he has a man flogged before the ship's company even though he has already died due to his previous punishment. The man was guilty of striking an officer.

Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh - Mutiny on the Bounty

Over the course of the voyage to Tahiti, men were subjected to floggings and worse. The depths of Bligh's corruption and sadism were revealed as each punishment and death was worse than the last. He punished a man for taking cheese when he, himself, had ordered the same man to have it delivered for his own use. Then, a man was keelhauled as a punishment (dragged under the ship from bow to stern). After the ship landed in Tahiti, two men who had secretly went off the ship to see the island were brought back and thrown below in chains with little no water. However, the thing that really upset the men on board was when the well loved surgeon who was very sick was forced by Captain Bligh to go on deck to watch a flogging. He died before the men's eyes. Christian had had enough at this point and armed the men loyal to him to mutiny.

Fletcher Christian and Tehani
on Tahiti

The mutineers then returned to Tahiti. One of the officers who had been asleep at the time of mutiny, Roger Byam, disagreed with the mutiny even though he was good friends with Christian. He missed the boat to join Bligh and settled with the other men in Tahiti. Bligh and his followers were put in a boat at sea. Through Bligh's strong will, they were able to make it 3600 miles to safety with dwindling food supplies and by the end no water.

Captain Bligh and his followers
are on the small ship being
sent out to sea after the mutiny

Bligh returned to Tahiti to pick up the mutineers and take them back to English for punishment. Christian left with the mutineers but a few including Byam 'reported back for duty' to Bligh. He did not accept that they were loyal throughout and chained them in the hold. When they made it back to England after a treacherous journey, they had to stand trial. All the mutineers who had been captured were sentenced to death. However, Byam stood before the tribunal and explained how terrible conditions had been at sea. Byam ended up being saved in the end, and more importantly, the navy changed its rules about how superior officers were to interact with sailors on the high sea.

Mutiny on the Bounty was an interesting study in the way that a loyal man who has a grounding in good morals can go against the 'law' to do what is right. One thing that I found interesting was how many people actually went with or wanted to go with the Captain when he was put off the ship. Captain Bligh ranks up there for me as one of the worst 'bad guys' in movies. Sadly, as the movie portrayed, he was an amazing seaman. When it was required for him to step up to the plate and get the loyal men home to England, he found a way to make it happen. His hatred ran so strong that he did not accept failure at all. He needed to get home to punish Christian.

The real Captain Bligh

I read later that this was a fictionalized account of the real story. Even though the movie ends with Christian making it safely to another island with his wife and child, in real life things did not turn out so well. The men who fled Tahiti eventually settled on Pitcairn Island. Eventually, many of them were killed in an uprising between them and some of the Tahitian men who came with them. Interestingly, descendants of the mutineers still live on the island today.

Bligh went on to be promoted and made the governor of New South Wales, Australia. Here, too, he was faced with a mutiny which he survived. He ended up as seventh in command of the navy, Vice-Admiral of the Blue.

In terms of the actors, Charles Laughton was amazing as Bligh and Clark Gable's ability to deliver a line with a twinkle in his eye captured the spirit of Fletcher Christian. I have read that the antagonist in any movie needs to be so bad that it makes the audience move even further into the protagonist's corner. The way that the movie slowly built the case against Bligh was extremely well done, and by the end I was left wondering how any men could follow him. Overall, this was quite an enjoyable movie. In my next post, I'll got through it's beat sheet.