Bligh was typical British naval officer. I first saw this film as a boy in 1935. Loved it at the time and still do but not as much now. The problem is what has always plagued Hollywood when it attempts to deal with history and alters it to suit its own purposes. After reading an article by James Mitchener I became convinced Bligh was a product of his era when common seamen ranked at the bottom of the totem pole economically and socially. It was a miserable life which often required the ship owners to kidnap men for the long voyages which often lasted for years. We should not be surprised that the crew of the Bounty mutinied after visiting what must have seemed the equivalent of heaven-Tahiti. Beautiful women on an island which did not know poverty as the crew experienced in England. The wonder of this is why it really happened to this ship and to this captain? Why not others who suffered similar deprivations? The original story by Nordoff-Hall was really a trilogy. The films made of this incident attempt to combine the three books into one story and that is unfortunate. I liked the original book which dealt with the mutiny, was fascinated with the later books dealing with Bligh's superb seamanship in getting the long boat to safety in the Dutch West Indies with the loss of only one man. The mutineers later establishing a colony on Pitcairn Island shows that the racism of the crew dealing with those natives kidnapped after leaving Tahiti, the effects of alcohol in the murder of all the mutineers except one and the shortage of women makes this part of the story even more interesting than the mutiny. Seamen around the world had one thing in common and that was living a miserable life while at sea with very little respect from anyone at any station of life. For example, seamen who defeated the Spanish Armada were actually allowed to starve to death because Parliament refused the necessary appropriations to feed them. The First Lord of the Admiralty actually advocated this as the fewer that survived were fewer to be paid. A later First Lord, Winston Churchill, did not think too highly of the men he commanded when he commented that the fleet's lifestyle was "rum, the lash and sodomy." Samuel Johnson was amazed when his servent ran away to sea by noting, "He would be better off in jail as that cannot sink."