It’s the birthday of Captain James Norman Hall (1887-1951), who along with Charles Nordoff wrote The Bounty Trilogy, which includes Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), based on the actual mutiny that occurred on His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty in 1789.

Three fun facts that are so interesting I’m just going to blurt them out rather than trying to weave them artlessly into the narrative: 1) Hall was born in Iowa but later lived and died in Tahiti. 2) One of Hall’s two children is Academy Award winner Conrad Hall, considered one of the greatest cinematographers ever. 3) Nine of the actual mutineers on the Bounty escaped with a handful of Tahitians with whom they populated Pitcairn Island, which today at a population of about 50 is the smallest democracy in the world. (It’s actually a British territory. The sun never sets, and all that.)

Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, graduated from Grinnell College in 1910, and worked as a social worker in Boston while studying for his master’s at Harvard. Hall was vacationing in the UK when WWI broke out, so he faked being Canadian and enlisted in the British Army, like you do whenever you’re vacationing somewhere and war breaks out. He served as a machine gunner until he was discovered to be an American, at which point he was discharged and returned to the U.S. In 1916 he went to France and served in a U.S. volunteer unit in the French Air Force, which gave him awards for bravery and heroism and like that. Once the U.S. joined the war, he became a Captain in the Army Air Service. Hall was shot down over enemy lines, spent the end of the war as a German prisoner, and was given more awards, though not by the Germans.

During the war, Hall had met pilot Charlie Nordhoff, and post-war they both moved to Tahiti and wrote a pant load of books together: adventure stories, war stories, and of course The Bounty Trilogy. Hall also wrote books on his own, including a collection of poems called Oh Millersville! (1940) which he pretended was written by a ten-year-old girl named Fern Gravel. He confessed the truth in 1946 in an article in The Atlantic.

Hall married Sarah Winchester, who was part Polynesian, and they had two children. Hall died and was buried in Tahiti, in that order, and his house there is now an historic house museum. (Field trip idea: let’s all go there!)

NB: Of the Bounty mutineers, many were captured in Tahiti and hauled off to England, and several were subsequently hanged. The nine who escaped and populated Pitcairn mostly came to unsavory ends due to their unfortunate tendency to murder each other. Sad. If you can’t trust the people you committed mutiny with, who can you gosh darn trust?

Have a fabulous Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.