Unsurpassed as a gripping tale of historical adventure, Men Against the Sea is the epic account of the eighteen loyal men who, in the aftermath of the mutiny on the Bounty, are set adrift on the high seas in a 23-foot open launch, with Captain William Bligh at the helm. Alone on uncharted waters, the men struggle to survive on scant rations, taking pains to avoid war canoes and inhabited islands under cover of night. Their 3,600-mile voyage from the island of Tofoa in the Friendly Archipelago to the Dutch East Indies remains to this day one of the greatest feats of courage and endurance in maritime history.
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In Mutiny on the Bounty, Nordhoff and Hall wrote a novel which will stand the test of time. Now, with the same amazing skill, they tell the unparalleled story of Captain Bligh of the Bounty and the eighteen loyal men who were driven by the mutineers into the ship's launch and cast away.
Without firearms, with only a pittance of food and drink, they were alone on an unknown sea. At the first island on which they landed to replenish their stories they were surrounded by savages, and a massacre of the entire company was barely averted. During the days which followed Bligh, whatever his failings as a man, proved himself a great leader. Steering by dead reckoning, cheering on his weak and storm-soaked men, keeping the strongest everlastingly bailing out the overladen boat, avoiding under cover of night the inhabited islands and the war canoes, doling out the pitiful food with patient fortitude, Captain Bligh never for a moment relaxed his iron determination to reach the East Indies
Forty-seven days after the mutiny he brought his half-dead crew of seventeen men to anchor before the Dutch colony of Timor. Thirty-six hundred miles in an open boat!—it still stands as one of the great exploits in naval history.
Wrapper drawing by C. Alister Macdonald
—from the dust jacket
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