William Bligh was anything but a brutal captain. He was a brilliant navigator — learned his trade under Captain Cook himself.
When you look at the historical record objectively, Bligh was no villain, indeed, quite the contrary. Compared with other captains of his era, he didn’t often resort to harsh punishment. He generally looked after the welfare of his crews.
He managed to sail hundreds of miles in an open boat to reach safety in the Dutch East Indies and lost only one of his loyal crew members. This would be an amazing feat of seamanship in any era.
The worst that can be said about Bligh is that he had, at times, a short fuse and a sharp tongue. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, and that got him into trouble on occasion.
Bligh was a hero, in the real Bounty drama. Fletcher Christian was a misguided fool who went soft over the prospect of an easy life in Polynesia. It didn’t turn out well for him or most of the other mutineers.
‘The worst that can be said about Bligh is that he had, at times, a short fuse and a sharp tongue.’
he developed a paranoid streak upon departing from Tahiti, and started flogging over minor offenses, whereas he’d administered only one such punishment on the first trip; in later life he was appointed governor of New South Wales, where he became embroiled in another mutinous action the Rum Rebellion, where he was arrested and later deposed as governor...we could just leave it at he was rather anti-social, making him just like many others...
Yes that’s true. The movie ‘Bounty’ with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins does a much better job of depicting the truth of what happened on the Bounty than earlier movies, which portrayed Bligh as an almost cartoonishly evil villain.
Bligh was enlightened for his day and frowned upon corporal punishment. He prided himself in keeping crew deaths to a minimum and was ahead of his time in instituting innovations to improve the health of the crew. Towards that end he focused on diet and providing fruits and vegetables to his crew - this at a time when good nutrition was not very well understood. He also believed physical activity was necessary for good mental and physical health which is why he had the men dance on a regular basis - aerobics would be a more accurate term but the term wasn’t around then, even making sure to have a musician for this purpose on his voyages.
As you mentioned his navigation in the open boat was an amazing feat. And it’s true, one could fault him for having a a short fuse and a sharp tongue, but compared to your typical British Captain of the day, he was probably no worse in that regard than most of his peers.
All in all he appears to have handled himself on that infamous journey, honorably and showed great leadership and courage in returning those crew members who remained loyal to him, to safety. But he lost the PR war.