Tom Halsted
Joined: 01 Dec 2009 Posts: 5 Location: Gloucester, MA, USA
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:08 pm Post subject: Pitcairn Island |
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Readers can find a detailed description of the self-destructive mutineers' experiment on Pitcairn in Richard Hough's Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian, a book which was supposedly the source for the Anthony Hopkins/Mel Gibson movie "The Bounty." The book ends with a jarring note: Hough's really far-fetched speculation that Bligh and Christian had had a homosexual relationship. He offers no evidence, other than a mysterious message Christian supposedly passed to Peter Heywood, a young midshipman who was later convicted in the mutineers' court martial. You don't have to read Patrick O'Brian's description of Jack Aubrey's difficulty in keeping anything secret aboard HMS "Surprise" to conclude it would have been almost impossible for Bligh to have carried on an affair with Christian without it becoming known--particularly since Bligh had turned the Bounty's more isolated Captain's quarters into a floating nursery for the breadfruit plants he was trying to take to the West Indies, and moved forward to smaller quarters with even less privacy. |
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