Mutiny: The History and Legacy of the Mutinies aboard the HMS Wager, the HMS Bounty, the Amistad, and the Battleship Potemkin

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the mutinies *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Mention the 18th century Royal Navy and visions come to mind of swashbuckling sailors swinging from rope to rope while a red-faced captain in an even redder coat and a powdered wig shouts order and pitches fits. Such visions, largely shaped by Hollywood pictures such as the popular Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, naturally fail to do full justice to a group of men who functioned, with little direction and even less support, on the seas for years at a time. Disney may enjoy portraying them sitting down to sumptuous feasts or cavorting with scantily clad native girls, but the opposite was true; the men were almost always hungry, with even the best meals consisting of little more than bread, beans, and a bit of meat on the side if the voyage was still in its early days. Likewise, those stranded on islands were not met by pretty native girls bearing coc