Mutiny on HMS Bounty
Poet involved
What happened
Members of HMS Bounty's crew seized the ship from Lieutenant William Bligh near Tonga in April 1789. Bligh and eighteen loyalists survived an extraordinary open-boat voyage to Timor, while Fletcher Christian and other mutineers eventually settled on Pitcairn Island. The episode became a lasting controversy about authority, empire and rebellion.
Literary impact
Byron drew upon the mutineers' story in The Island, presenting rebellion and Pacific life through Romantic ideas of freedom and desire. The Bounty tradition subsequently generated poems and ballads that alternately idealised Christian, defended Bligh or examined the islanders displaced by European intrusion.
Source: Wikipedia