The Last Mutiny

British admiral William Bligh, best remembered for the mutiny on his HMS Bounty, springs to blustering, vivid life in Australian writer Collett's cleverly constructed novel. Set in 1817, the last year of Bligh's life, and narrated by the old salt himself, it presents a more sympathetic portrait of the crusty, cursing sea dog than can be found in Nordhoff's classic trilogy. Though he was charged with tyranny by the men who mutinied in 1789 while the Bounty sailed from Tahiti to the West Indies, Bligh paints himself as a caring, paternalistic, misunderstood commander. He tenderly frets over his epileptic daughter, Anne (but he is a tyrant to her siblings). He has recurrent nightmares featuring his loyal quartermaster Jonathon Norton, who died while saving the crew from murderous natives. He receives with grim satisfaction news of the murder of chief mutineer Fletcher Christian on Pitcairn Island. Ruing his sexually stultifying marriage, Bligh recalls erotic dances in Timor, which he reached in 1789 after a remarkable 3600-mile voyage in an open longboat. He reminisces over the Battle of Copenhagen (1801), in which he and Nelson crushed Napoleon's allies, and relives his ill-fated governorship of New South Wales, which also ended in mutiny in 1808. These kaleidoscopic memories alternate with scenes in which a bitter, disputatious Bligh copes with his domestic life, and together they present a highly colored picture of early 19th-century British society. The denouement includes another mutiny, an irony that readers will appreciate. (Oct.)