I don't know much about ships, & prefer historical fiction, but this book is a record of actual historical events, well documented. It reads like a story. Anyone interested in the history of the Royal Navy should read it! ( )

Dudley Pope, author of the Ramage series, has written an absorbing history of the most bloody mutiny to occur in the English navy .
His Majesty's frigates during the late 18th century were crammed with men. It was an unusual captain who managed to keep the men reasonably content and safe under such circumstances. The Hermione, a very small ship, carried 170 at the time of her crew's mutiny against Captain Pigot. Even though the normal complement was 220 for such a small warship, that was a lot of men, and it meant many duties on the foretops had to be shared. Pigot was an extraordinarily cruel captain at a time when cruelty was commonplace.

Hugh Pigot had led a charmed life. His father was an Admiral of the Blue, and Hugh's first experience as a midshipman was on a ship used as flagship by his father. For obvious reasons at a time when connections meant everything, Hugh was not treated in the rough-and-tumble manner a normal midshipman would have been. He had the best of everything and no chance to learn "assurance and tolerance." His promotions were hurried along and when appointed post captain he had had only twelve
weeks of command experience.

Flogging with a cat-o'-nine tails (nine two-foot lengths of rope attached to a handle) was the most common form of punishment to maintain discipline. A few lashes could reduce a man's back to bloody ruins and until 1790 Admiralty rules forbade more than twelve, a regulation that was ignore d. Experiments done with replicas have shown that one or two strokes with the lash could easily break a 1 x2 board, and in 1781 three men died within twenty-four hours of being flogged. For mutinous behavior a man could be flogged around the fleet, i.e., taken to each ship to receive twelve lashes; the total might be 300, leading to almost certain death. Punishments on shore were equally harsh, hanging being th e retribution for over two hundred different offenses, but 0 n shore some oversight was available. At sea no one could take exception to the captain's orders. Pigot flogged everyone except his favorites over and over again.

The mutiny was successful, but only in the sense that the captain and most of the officers were killed or thrown overboard. The ship was sailed to a Spanish port where it remained for several years, moored in a sea of red tape, the Spanish being unable to decide what to do with the men and vessel. The ship was eventually recaptured during a daring raid into the Spanish harbor. About thirty of the mutineers were captured and hung. It is extraordinary how Pope has managed to reconstruct the events using contemporary documents to recreate a rather dismal period of British history.
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1227. The Black Ship, by Dudley Pope (30 June 1973) This is an account of the mutiny on H.M.S. Hermoine on Sept. 21, 1797, in the West Indies. Quite an interesting book, in fact more interesting than the Dudley Pope book I read on June 10 (The Great Gamble). ( )

Is a account of the most violent and bloodiest mutiny on a Royal Naval Frigate in 1797. It took place in the West Indies almost at the same time but independent of the great fleet mutinies at Nore England. Pope is a good writer and does a great job of setting the scene of Naval life and the mutiny in the 18 th century.
The reader is not overwhelmed with useless details that only a historian would need or want. The book almost reads like a novel in places.
Highly recommended for anyone interested naval life in this time period. ( )