CAPTAIN BLIGH'S PORTABLE NIGHTMARE

Eric Graham's relaxed familiarity with the story adds authenticity to a yarn about one of Britain's greatest seamen, William Bligh. The captain received notoriety for his four-thousand-mile ocean journey in a small boat following the mutiny aboard his ship, the HMS BOUNTY. The narrator's British accent deftly sets the rebellious scene. This is nonfiction, but remember that sea stories rarely fare badly in the retelling. The overall effect is to afflict the listener's imagination with hunger, illness, thirst, and fatigue in the midst of "vomitus swells." Survival is ironically made possible by a system in which class hatred was the accepted form of social control. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/MAR 01]