God’s Portolan

Summary

 

Among the most famous nautical yarns is the mutiny on the Bounty, a Royal Navy ship sailing the South Pacific. In 1789, a group of mutineers led by his master’s mate, Fletcher Christian, overthrew the captain of that ship, William Bligh, a notoriously harsh taskmaster. Rather than murdering their captain, the mutineers put Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen into the ship’s 23-foot launch. It seemed like a death sentence as they had only a week’s provisions and the overloaded launch rode just a few inches above the waterline. But Bligh and all but one of his men survived. Over the course of 47 days, they sailed that little boat on an island-hopping voyage of more than 3,600 miles to the Dutch colony of Timor, at the eastern edge of present-day Indonesia. It was one of history’s most remarkable feats of navigation.