Coconut chaos / Diana Souhami.

"At dawn on 27 April 1789 Fletcher Christian, master's mate on HMS Bounty, took a coconut to quench his thirst from the supply on the quarterdeck ... He thought this an 'act of no consequence', as insignificant as the flutter of a butterfly's wings.

But consequences followed: mutiny; Captain Bligh's navigation 3000 miles across the Pacific in an open boat in violent weather, without maps or supplies and with starving men; the colonising of Pitcairn Island; the shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef of HMS Pandora sent to capture the mutineers; the seduction of the narrator in a storm at sea in a rudderless yacht.".

"Hazardous and extraordinary sea voyages drive this story of quest and adventure, courage and villainy. The cast includes the Bounty mutineers, the all-Indian crew of the Tundra Princess - a 17,000-tonne container ship - Lady Myre, an eccentric lesbian aristocrat, Pitcairn Island sex offenders and the narrator's ancient mother. The action moves through time and place from eighteenth-century Tahiti to modern-day Pitcairn, from Knightsbridge to Tauranga, from Mangareva to Tubuai.".

"Inspired by chaos theory, Whitbread Prizewinner Diana Souhami brings wit and originality to a story that weaves together fact and fiction, history and autobiography, humour and danger. She shows how one chance act, one simple random event, had dramatic ramifications that ripple through time."--BOOK JACKET.