Goofs

During the mutiny, the villainous clerk Maggs is impaled through his left hand with a bayonet. In subsequent scenes when he is set adrift with those loyal to Bligh, his hand appears uninjured.

As Byam is climbing aloft for the second time, he has a bottle of brandy in his hand-- carrying the bottle and attempting to climb almost makes him fall at one point. When he reaches the top of the mast, both hands are empty, and the bottle is nowhere in sight.

When Dr. Bacchus is telling to Christian how he lost his leg, the Bounty rolls, knocking him down, but the brandy bottle clearly remains on the table. Next shot the bottle has disappeared.

After he takes the pearls from Christian with his right hand and passes them to someone, Bligh appears in the following shot with a book in the same hand.

When Christian orders the return of the Bounty to Tahiti, he has nothing in his hands. Next shot he has a musket in his left hand.

The portrayal of the mutiny shows loyalists and mutineers battling and killing one another on deck. This is false. When Christian took the Bounty it occurred at night where most of the crew were captured in their hammocks. The only person who struggled was Bligh himself.

Bligh did not sail on the Pandora in the search for the mutineers. Captain Edward Edwards commanded that mission. The only Bounty crewman with Edwards was Thomas Hayward, who was one of the men cast adrift with Bligh.

Bligh is shown as flogging mercilessly, even to the point of flogging a dead man. Bligh actually never ordered a single flogging, and would scold where other captains would flog and hang.

When the Pandora runs aground, the prisoners are shown being unshackled below deck and safely released. In reality, four went down with the ship (two still manacled and two struck by a falling gangway.)

At some point, Bligh threatens Byam to have him flogged. By the Articles of War flogging an officer was impossible, as both Bligh and Byam knew perfectly well.

There would not have been two captains on board the Pandora. In this film Captain Edwards is only a lieutenant, and under Bligh's command.

The Tahitian girl whom Fletcher Christian romances is Maimiti. According to the book, the correct pronunciation of this name is my-mee-tee. But, Christian, Byam, and others mispronounce it as my-my-tee. In Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), her name is pronounced correctly.

However, movie adaptations are not required to, and most often do not, adhere to all aspects of the original source material.

When the Bounty is crashed against the rocks at Pitcairn Island, the film is reversed to stretch out the scene.

When Maimiti and Tehani invite Christian and Byam to swim with them, they are wearing only leis as tops. In one shot Tehani's lei exposes the side of her left breast, prompting actress Movita to narrowly avoid a nip slip by holding the garland against her chest. Despite Hollywood's strict new Production Code - which virtually banned female cleavage, for example - this shot made it past the censors.

When Bligh is set adrift a mutineer takes a shot at him with a musket. There's the sound of a discharge but no flash or smoke. The weapon being used is an American-made 1873 Trapdoor Springfield fitted with a false flintlock hammer and frizzen.

When Bligh questions one of the crewmen towards the beginning of the film, mention is made of Dartmoor Prison, which was built in 1809, twenty years after this time.

Captain Bligh is shown keel hauling a sailor for a minor offense. The British Navy discontinued the practice around 1720, decades before the Bounty sailed. The French and Dutch navies discontinued keel hauling in 1750, 37 years before the Bounty's voyage.

Fletcher Christian's father died years before the voyage, and as such was not present at Christian's trial.

The Christmas scene back in England shows a Christmas tree, but these weren't introduced to England until after Prince Albert brought the tradition over from Germany around 1840.

When the Bounty leave port, you see another sailing ship. This is a steel hull tall ship that came into fashion about 100 years after this film takes place.

Bligh was never aboard the HMS Pandora, and did not attend the mutineers' trial. He was half a world away at the time of the trial, being on a second breadfruit expedition.

In Bligh's log of the voyage to Timor after the mutiny, the longitudes are of points in the Atlantic.

When sailing from England to Cape Horn South America the direction is South West. The ships course was ordered South East by East.

The film's map graphic shows the Bounty stuck in the area known as The Doldrums while it is southeast of the Horn of Africa and south of the tropics. In reality, The Doldrums are an area within the tropics, stretching about five degrees north and south of the Equator. Meteorologists refer to it as the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.