Bligh
Subtitle: William Bligh in the South Seas
By: Anne Salmond
Edition: 1st University of California Press ed.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Berkeley [Calif.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 528
ISBN-13: 9780520270565
Subjects: Travel; Officers; Great Britain. Royal Navy; Great Britain; Admirals; Biography; Bounty Mutiny, 1789
Other titles: William Bligh in the South Seas
Description: "In Bligh, the story of the most notorious of all Pacific explorers is told through a new lens as a key episode in the history of the world, rather than simply of the West. Award-winning anthropologist Anne Salmond recounts with a fresh perspective the triumphs and disasters of William Bligh's life in a riveting narrative that for the first time portrays the Pacific islanders as players. Beginning in 1777, when Bligh, at twenty-two, first arrived in Tahiti with Captain Cook, Salmond charts Bligh's three Pacific voyages--and tells how they transformed lives on the islands as well as on board the ships and back in Europe. She sheds new insight into the mutiny aboard the Bounty--and on Bligh's remarkable 3,000-mile journey across the Pacific in a small boat--through revelations from the raw, unguarded letters between him and his wife Betsy. This beautifully told story reveals Bligh for the first time, as an important ethnographer adding to the paradoxical legacy of this famed seaman, and it captures more definitively than ever the excitement, drama, and terror of these events" --Publisher's website.
Notes: "First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 2011"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [474]-478) and index.
Table of contents: title: The paradise of the world; title: The death of Captain Cook; title: The 'Resolution's' master; title: Island of the blest; title: The old boy tips a 'Heiva'; title: 'Bounty'; title: The finest sea boat; title: Captain Cook's 'son'; title: Bligh/Parai; title: Mr Bligh's bad luck; title: These happy islanders; title: Huzza for Otaheiti; title: I have been run down by my own dogs; title: An island fort; title: Murder and mayhem; title: Pandora's box; title: Wreck of 'Pandora'; title: The mutineers' babies; title: 'Providence'; title: The modern Cyprus; title: Belle of the isle; title: Paradise lost; title: The awful day of trial; title: A floating forest; title: Death of 'the Don'.