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This paper pays special attention to incidents fi rst reported in the revolutionary decade of the 1790s, contrasting the mutiny experienced by the merchant captain John Meares, on his trading venture to Nootka, with that suff ered by William Bligh of the Royal Navy on the Bounty. These voyages reveal complementary aspects of Britain's imperial ambitions in the Pacifi c. The reports of each mutiny, which reached London within months of each other, illustrate the diffi culty contemporaries experienced in openly writing about insurrection at sea, and also reveal how an exotic South Sea location could focus the public's attention on the issue of "liberty." Previous commentators have examined the Bounty mutiny chiefl y to discover its cause and, in the process, to analyze the complex personalities involved. 1 This article, however, considers the impact of the Bounty mutiny on civil society and the arts, draws on parallels in the Meares and Bligh accounts, and contextualizes the Bounty episode within the long recorded history of mutinous behavior during South Sea voyages.The frequency of mutiny on the South Seas was a source of anxiety to sponsors of exploratory voyages, and to fi nanciers intent on commercial exploitation. Commanders who avoided open mutiny in the 1760s were