Mutiny on the Bounty

On the twenty-third of December, 1787, His Majesty's armed transport Bounty sailed from Portsmouth on as strange, eventful, and tragic a voyage as ever befell an English ship. Her errand was to proceed to the island of Tahiti (or Otaheite, as it was then called), in the Great South Sea, there to collect a cargo of young breadfruit trees for transportation to the West Indies, where, it was hoped, the trees would thrive and thus, eventually, provide an abundance of cheap food for the negro slaves of the English planters.The events of that voyage it is the purpose of this tale to unfold. Mutiny on the Bounty, which opens the story, is concerned with the voyage from England, the long Tahiti sojourn while the cargo of young breadfruit trees was being assembled, the departure of the homeward-bound ship, the mutiny, and the fate of those of her company who later returned to Tahiti, where the greater part of them were eventually seized by H. M. S. Pandora and taken back to England, in irons, for trial.