Book excerpt: After the mutiny on the Bounty on 28 April 1789, led by Fletcher Christian, Captain William Bligh and 18 others were forced onto a 7-metre-long open boat and cast adrift. It was the beginning of a 47-day, 6700-kilometre journey from Tofua (a volcanic island in the Tonga group) to Timor. On this amazing voyage of survival, Bligh wrote daily entries in a small water-stained notebook and a selection of facsimile pages from this notebook is the foundation of In Bligh's Hand: Surviving the Mutiny on the Bounty. All but one of the men survived to reach Timor. In Bligh's Hand gives readers an insight into the character of William Bligh, the man who saved his men's lives through his iron will and stubborn adherence to a relentless regime of rationing and navigational calculations that kept the launch on course.