Ask any layman and he or she will tell you that the mutiny in the ship Bounty was caused by Captain Bligh himself. The mutineers were innocent and mutinied to save themselves from a tyrant.
This biography of Bligh by an expert on the South Seas history is to my knowledge the most recent substantial biography on him.
Like her other books, Salmond has done thorough research. She quotes from many sources to support her narrative. But I find something lacking in her methodology. Her voice and opinion are missing. She does not say clearly whether this source or that source is more believable. Readers would have benefited from such an approach in particular from a writer that had studied the sources.
At the end of reading this book I still am not sure if she disagrees with Caroline Alexander who in her 2003 book The Bounty The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty contended that Blight was wrongly defamed as the tyrant captain in movies and books.
The end notes are of a very small font. It’s a pity.