Pitcairn’s island
James Norman Hall & Charles Nordhoff
Boston, Little, Brown, 1934
Pitcairn’s Island is the most ambitious of the three books in the Bounty Trilogy. In fact, it is likely the most ambitious book Nordhoff and Hall ever undertook. In relating the story of the Bounty mutineers’ escape and exile, the authors dispense with earlier perspectives and their wide epic sweeps. Whereas Mutiny on the Bounty described the voyage from England to Tahiti and the sailors’ rebellion against Captain Bligh and did so from the point of view of Midshipman Roger Byam and Men Against the Sea told of Bligh and the rest of the loyal crew members’ 3600 nautical miles sail in an open launch to Timor and did so from the perspective of the ship’s doctor, Thomas Ledward, Pitcairn’s Island mostly tells things from the third person. The latter novel also has all its action take place on a small, almost forgotten island in the far regions of the South Seas.