Books like Mutiny on the Bounty

The British (and to a lesser degree the American) Navy in the age of sail has become a staple setting of modern English-language historical fiction, exemplified by the works of Patrick O'Brian and others. While Melville's Billy Budd and White Jacket are certainly forerunners of the trend, the main impetus to the subgenre was probably C. S. Forrester's Hornblower series; but this novel by Nordhoff and Hall was roughly contemporary with Forrester's work, and also well deserves a reading by fans of the above writers. (It's actually the opening book of a Bounty trilogy, though it's the only volume that I've read.) While it's a work of fiction, it closely follows the historical events of the H.M.S. Bounty mutiny, through the eyes of Midshipman Roger Byam, portrayed as one of the loyal crew members who were forced to remain with the mutineers because of insufficient room in the longboats used to set Bligh and his other loyalists adrift at sea (and later unjustly charged as accomplices in the mutiny).I recall the book as having a straightforward, well-written style and an eventful plot that easily held my interest (among other things, the narrator ultimately endures an open-boat sea voyage that parallels that of Bligh and his crew earlier). The fact that it has been adapted as a movie at least twice testifies to the popular interest it has evoked; and Bligh probably "enjoys" (if that's the word!) his status as an icon for bullying tyranny to the power of this literary portrayal, and the cinematic ones based on it, to brand itself in people's minds. The authors do use a significant amount of sail-age nautical jargon and naval terminology that won't be intelligible to all readers (as a teen, for instance, I had no clue what the role of a "master-at-arms" is. or was, and the names of various parts of the ship and its rigging were Greek to me), but the novel fascinated me nonetheless!