Charles Nordhoff Biography and List of Works

American novelist and writer of adventure and travel books. Charles Nordhoff wrote with his friend James Norman Hall a three-volume novel about the famous eighteenth-century mutiny, in which the crew of the H.M.S. Bounty, a British war vessel, arose against their cruel commander, Captain William Bligh. The work gained a huge success and was adapted onto the screen in 1935, 1962, and 1984.

"I did ask him [Hall] how the partners had decided whose name should come first, and he gave an instructive answer: 'It's always effective to end a sentence or anything else with a short, crisp word. Hall and Nordhoff doesn't sound half as effective.'"
(James Michener in The World Is My Home, 1992)

Charles Nordhoff was born in London, England, of American parents. His mother, Sarah Cope (Whitall) Nordhoff, came from an old Philadelphia Quaker family, and his grandfather had been a journalist and an author during the Civil War. In his early childhood Nordhoff moved with his family to the United States and spent most of his youth on his father's ranch near Santa Barbara in Southern California. At the age of fifteen Nordhoff published his first article in an ornithological journal. He attended Stanford University for a year, but transferred to Harvard University, receiving his B.A. in 1909.

From 1909-11 Nordhoff worked on his father's sugar plantation in Mexico. From 1911 to 1916 he was a secretary and a treasurer at Tile and Fine Brick Company in California. In 1916 he served as an ambulance driver in France and later as a pilot. At the end of the war he was commissioned to First Lieutenant in the Unites States Air Service. For his military services Nordhoff was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Nordhoff met James Norman Hall in 1916. The friendship led them to write a book about their flying unit, the Lafayette Flying Corps. When they received an advance from Harper's to write travel articles, they moved to Tahiti, and in 1921 they published their travel book Faery Lands of the South Seas. In Tahiti Nordhoff married Pepe Teara , a Polynesian; they had four daughters and two son.

"I never met Nordhoff and am not sure he was living in Tahiti during my various trips, and, except for that terse comment about name order, I never heard Hall speak about him; I judged that he was fed up with visitors who wanted to discuss aspects of their collaboration, one of the most famous in history."
(James Michener in The World Is My Home)

In the 1920s Nordhoff wrote three novels of his own. Picarò (1924) was based on his flying experience and life in Paris. The Pearl Lagoon (1924) and The Derelict (1928) were semi-autobiographical. Will Cuppy considered the latter a "superior adventure." 1929saw the publication of Nordhoff's and Hall's jointly written book about flying, Falcons of France.

After Hall' suggestion the Nordhoff-Hall team started to write Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), the story about charismatic Fletcher Christian and Captain William Bligh. It was based upon factual events, which were almost forgotten, although John Barrows had published an account of the mutiny in 1831. The authors decided to use Captain Roger Byan as the narrator. Byan had been a midshipman on the Bounty when the ship set sail on its mission to collect a cargo of breadfruit trees from Tahiti for an experimental transplantation in the West Indies. During the voyage Bligh's inhumanity turned out to be more than the usual tyranny of a captain. The second part, Men against the Sea (1933), focused on Bligh, his loyal companions, and their 3500-mile safe return in an open longboat. Pitcairn's Island (1934) recounted Christian's journey to an uncharted Pacific island and the later history of the crewmembers. The last of them were finally discovered in 1808, living peacefully on the island inhabited by their descendants.

The authors' did not repeat the success of the Bounty trilogy. Nordhoff and Hall published six more co-authored novels, although Hall largely composed the last three. In 1941 Nordhoff divorced and moved to California. In the same year he married Laura Grainger Whiley. Following a severe depression and heavy drinking, Nordhoff committed suicide on April 10, 1947. He left behind an unfinished novel, written in collaboration with Tod Ford.

For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996, vol. 3); Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, ed. by Kay Mussell, Alison Light, Aruna Vasudevan (1994); In Search of Paradise: The Nordhoff-Hall Story by P.L. Briand (1966)

The Fledgling, (1919)
Men Against Sea, (1933)