Publisher's Synopsis
The Mutineer: A Romance of Pitcairn Island by Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery: The tale of the mutiny of His Majesty's armed ship Bounty, which led to the founding of the Pitcairn community, is well known. All that needs to be told here is from Tahiti with a cargo of breadfruit trees for planting in the West Indies, the master's mate, Fletcher Christian, and others of the crew mutinied. Casting adrift the Commander, Lieutenant William Bligh, and eighteen loyal officers in the ship's boat, the mutineers sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti, then to Tubuai in the Austral Group. There, relations with the inhabitants soon deteriorated and, spurred by the fear of discovery and arrest, eight of the mutineers set sail with Christian in search of an uninhabited island, secure from the outside world. To help them the men took with them six Tahitian men and, to look after them and be their consorts, twelve Tahitian women. George Lewis Becke (or Louis Becke; 18 June 1855 - 18 February 1913). An Australian novelist. He was born at Port Macquarie, New South Wales. He was a trader in the South Sea Islands from 1870 to 1893, but afterwards moved to England. Becke, who belongs to the school of Stevenson and Conrad, has written, single-handed and in collaboration with Walter Jeffery, many stirring tales of adventure in the Pacific islands. Among them are: By Reef and Palm (1894); The Ebbing of the Tide (1896); Pacific Tales (1897); Wild Life in Southern Seas (1897); The Mutineer (1898); Ridan the Devil (1899); The South Sea Pearler (1900); Tom Wallis (1900); The Tapir and Other Stories (1901); By Rock and Pool (1901); and Breachley: Black Sheep (1902).
