On deep-sea voyages, in which ships were remote from the common instruments of justice, mutiny was the most feared and extreme of offences. … In circumstances like these mutinous spirits soon infected others, and the history of the sea is full of the murders and strifes that ensued, and of the weak and irresolute captains like Dampier, Kidd and Bligh who succumbed to them.

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, loc. 482