AllMovie

Released in the same year as the Bounty starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, this documentary continues to clear the name of the much-maligned Captain Bligh, overthrown by a mutiny in 1789. Captain R. W. Bligh-Ware, several generations removed from his famous ancestor, put together a crew of eight and sailed from Tonga to Fiji, to Vanuatu, to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia's east coast, and finally, to the island of Timor, in eastern Indonesia -- a trip of 4,000 miles across the middle of the South Pacific. After he was thrown off the Bounty, this was the route followed by Captain Bligh in an open boat -- and he survived somehow. The difficulties of this journey across dangerous seas, and through one severe storm, were captured on film by director Michael Edols. The narration is particularly lively, apparently based on many of the original Bligh's own thoughts and feelings, though the documentary needs to be edited to less than 94 minutes to eliminate over-extended passages.