[1] All but two of those aboard were Royal Navy personnel; the exceptions were two civilian botanists engaged to supervise the breadfruit plants Bounty was tasked to take from Tahiti to the West Indies.

[2] Of the 44 aboard at the time of the mutiny, 19 (including Bligh) were set adrift in the ship's launch, while 25, a mixture of mutineers and detainees, remained on board under Fletcher Christian.

[1] Bligh led his loyalists 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) to safety in the open boat, and ultimately back to England.

[3] The mutineers divided—most settled on Tahiti, where they were captured by HMS Pandora in 1791 and returned to England for trial, while Christian and eight others evaded discovery on Pitcairn Island.

[5] Directly beneath Bligh in the chain of command were his warrant officers, appointed by the Navy Board and headed by the sailing master John Fryer.

[6] Two master's mates and two midshipmen were rated as petty officers; to these were added several honorary midshipmen—so-called "young gentlemen" who aspired to naval careers.

[8] Of the eventual crew, William Peckover, the gunner, and Joseph Coleman, the armourer, had been with Bligh when he was Captain James Cook's sailing master on HMS Resolution during the explorer's third voyage (1776–80).

[7] The two botanists, or "gardeners", were chosen by Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society and the expedition's chief promoter.

Among the older crew members were the gunner, William Peckover, who had sailed on all three of Cook's voyages, and Lawrence Lebogue, formerly sailmaker on the Britannia.

[19] He had served on five naval ships by 1787, when he was signed as an able seaman by Captain Bligh on the Bounty, primarily to play the fiddle.

Bligh wrote, "I had great difficulty before I left England to get a man to play the violin and I preferred at last to take one two-thirds blind than come without one," and described him as being "5 feet 6 inches high.

"[20] During the mutiny on 28 April 1789, Byrne was notably the sole able seaman who was a loyalist, but he remained on the ship with the mutineers, apparently because his near-blindness added to his confusion.

After participating in the mutiny, he remained in Tahiti rather than continuing on to the Pitcairn Islands, and in 1791 voluntarily turned himself in to the seamen of HMS Pandora to face justice in England.

However, the young seaman then handed control of the helm to a mutineer, John Mills, and left the scene to ask for advice from a loyal crewman, Lawrence LeBogue.

When the time came for Ellison to tell his story at his court-martial, he tried to portray this incident as an attempt to establish his loyalty; but LeBogue – who would within minutes be set adrift with Bligh in the ship's boat – was less than helpful or sympathetic to the confused youth:[24] He being wex'd, I believe, answerd me in a Sharp surly manner, told me to go to hell and not bother him; this Reception from my old ship mate quite Disheartened me from making an application to any One else.

[25] In his court-martial testimony, the loyal midshipman Thomas Hayward, who had also witnessed the mutiny, claimed to see young Ellison holding a bayonet and saying of Bligh, "Damn him, I will be sentry over him."

[30][31][32] Able seaman Ellison was seriously outranked by Hayward, who had been promoted to lieutenant, and had no means to hire counsel for his defence or to impeach this damning testimony.

As a forlorn hope, the doomed man wrote out a paper for the Judge Advocate, pleading his case and describing the mutiny from his point of view.

In this paper he concluded: I hope, honorable Gentlemen, yo'll be so Kind as to take my Case into Consideration as I was No more than between Sixteen and Seventeen Years of age when this of [sic] done.

His youthful optimism is depicted as raising the spirits of his fellow mutineer-prisoners, and his conviction and execution are characterised as a miscarriage of justice.

He was only 15 when he signed on, and 17 at the time of the mutiny; he accompanied Captain William Bligh on his open boat voyage to the Dutch East Indies.

His service on the Bounty seems to have been lacklustre, but he remained loyal to Bligh and a staunch opponent of Fletcher Christian, who disliked him immensely.

Heywood also disliked Hayward, calling him a 'worldling', raised a little in society, as a result of which he typically affected airs and graces beyond his station.

William McCoy (c.1763 – 20 April 1798) was a Scottish sailor who was with Fletcher Christian on the voyage from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island, settling there in January 1790.

Upon the Bounty's landfall in Tahiti in late 1788, Muspratt soon fell foul of his commanding officers and was sentenced in December to a dozen lashes with the cat o' nine tails for "neglect of duty."

[39] Bligh had meanwhile returned to England and written out descriptions of the mutineers; from this record we learn that Muspratt was "5 feet 6 inches high.

[39] Matthew Quintal (baptised 3 March 1766 as Mathew Quintril, Padstow, Cornwall – 1799, Pitcairn Island) was a Cornish able seaman.

On 20 September 1793, the four remaining Polynesian men stole muskets and killed Christian, Mills, Brown, Martin, and Williams.

He and Quintal quickly descended into alcoholism, often abusing and bullying both the Polynesian men and women, including his consort Tevarua.

Young was accepted as the leader of the island, and Adams became his friend and deputy, though some sources seem to indicate that the two men had an equal amount of power.