Read The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Online
Authors: Caroline Alexander
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (23 page)
BOOK: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
2.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“[N]ot very great Sir,” Bligh replied furiously. “[B]y God Sir if it is not great to you it is great to me.”
“I told him,” said Fryer, flailing in the hole he had dug, “that I was very sorry that we had lost the Grapnail—but being sorry I thought was of no use.”
Bligh’s own account is brief. Noting that he had sent Fryer with the watering party, along with Nelson who wanted plants, his log reports that “[o]ne lost the Grapnel and the other a Spade and met with some insults.” Bligh thought highly of Nelson, and this fact may have mitigated his anger, for he appears to have been focused only on regaining the grapnel; no report is given of his anger toward the men involved.
In the midst of this confusion, two hours’ leave was granted to the men still on the ship for trade, since, as Morrison noted, “this was likely to be the last Island where Iron currency was the most valuable.” Curiosities such as spears, clubs and mats, as well as large quantities of yams and coconuts, were purchased by all hands in exchange for their all-valuable nails. When everything was stowed on board—piled even into the cutter and jolly boat for lack of deck space—Bligh, in his own words, “gave directions to unmoor” and “secretly determined to confine” the chiefs; this, after all, was what Cook had done.
“[W]e had hoistd the fore topmast Staysail and the Ship was easting, two hands up loosing the Foretopsail,” Fryer wrote, “when I heard Mr. Bligh call out, hand the arms up.”
“Why dont you come to assist me Sir,” Bligh greeted Fryer. The master now discovered that the call for arms was in order to guard the detained chiefs. Local rumor, however, already reported the grapnel had been carried away to another island.
“[M]ean while we were under arms some of the People was rather awkward, when Mr. Bligh made a speech to them told them that they were all a parcel of good for nothing Rascals.” This was the first time, on record at least, that Bligh had complained about his “People,” as opposed to his officers. Morrison recalled the incident somewhat differently. After taking the detained chiefs below, Bligh returned on deck.
“He then came up and dismissd all the Men but two, that were under arms, but not till he had passd the Compliment on officers & Men to tell them that they were a parcel of lubberly rascals and that he would be one of five who would with good sticks would disarm the whole of them.” The day had clearly seen an unpleasant dressing-down of the entire company, either rightly, or quite possibly wrongly. The detained and frightened chiefs—“those poor miserable fellows,” as Fryer described them—were, according to Bligh, “Vastly Surprized” at their predicament and assured Bligh that a canoe would be sent after the thieves and the grapnel.
As the hours passed, great long canoes followed the ship, “full of People making sad lamentations for their chiefs,” as Fryer wrote. By late afternoon, all but one impressive double canoe had left them, full of weeping women and the oldest chief, all lamenting and inflicting on themselves the wounds of ritual mourning.
Still, no grapnel had appeared.
“I however detained them untill Sun Down,” wrote Bligh of the chiefs, “when they began to be very uneasy, beat themselves about their Eyes with their fists and at last cried bitterly.” As before, when he had tried to stay aloof from Tynah, Bligh appears not to have had the stomach to carry out his charade.
“I now told them I should not detain them any longer and called their Cannoes alongside to take them in, at which they were exceedingly rejoiced,” was Bligh’s account of the abrupt termination to the standoff. Each of the captives was given a hatchet, saw, nails and other desirable ironware, at which they “showed such gratitude and thanks for my goodness that it affected all of us,” is how Bligh concludes this bewildering chapter. Two of the chiefs, according to Morrison, “[s]eemd as if they only smotherd their resentment, seeing that they could not revenge the insult.”
At the end of this fraught day, Bligh had gained absolutely nothing by his heavy-handed mismanagement of almost everything recorded of this harried and unsettling visit to Anamooka. His losses, on the other hand, were disastrous. To his men, only three weeks out of Tahiti, with the memories of
taios
and lovers and many kindnesses received still vivid, the treatment of the chiefs was probably genuinely shocking. Nothing like it had been enacted onshore, and Bligh must have lost much moral stature in their eyes. He had also, as it were, lost the game. When the chiefs and
Bounty
parted company, the chiefs left with their many presents, the
Bounty
without her grapnel.
taios
and lovers and many kindnesses received still vivid, the treatment of the chiefs was probably genuinely shocking. Nothing like it had been enacted onshore, and Bligh must have lost much moral stature in their eyes. He had also, as it were, lost the game. When the chiefs and
Bounty
parted company, the chiefs left with their many presents, the
Bounty
without her grapnel.
But it is the milling confusion at the watering place that stands at the tantalizing center of the Anamooka sojourn, for it is here that Fletcher Christian was most specifically and directly embroiled. No report makes clear what Christian had in fact done to warrant Bligh’s damning him for a “cowardly rascal.”
Bligh’s very specific instructions regarding the use of arms, which surely struck his men as being almost incomprehensibly unreasonable, were firmly based, once again, upon experience with Cook. Bligh had seen how useful arms had been in February 1779, at Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay. Here, the
Resolution
and the
Discovery
had come for repairs, and here Cook and his men suffered the usual petty thieving. But when the ship’s cutter was stolen, Cook had loaded his double-barreled musket, one barrel with shot and one with ball, and accompanied by Lieutenant Molesworth Phillips at the head of nine armed marines, had strode ashore. The crowd he met with on arrival was suspicious and hostile; it was also armed with spears and stones, and the people gathered protectively around their chief, whom, indeed, Cook had intended to take hostage. A man made a menacing movement at Cook, something was thrown and Cook fired his shot—to no effect, for his assailant was protected by stout matting. The crowd grew more threatening, throwing stones, and Cook fired ball. This time he killed a man; his lieutenant of marines fired, the marines fired and the crowd overwhelmed them all. Minutes later, the men in the waiting boats watched with stunned horror as Cook was clubbed from behind and fell facedown into the water as he attempted to reach one of the boats. He was then clubbed to death in the shallows.
Resolution
and the
Discovery
had come for repairs, and here Cook and his men suffered the usual petty thieving. But when the ship’s cutter was stolen, Cook had loaded his double-barreled musket, one barrel with shot and one with ball, and accompanied by Lieutenant Molesworth Phillips at the head of nine armed marines, had strode ashore. The crowd he met with on arrival was suspicious and hostile; it was also armed with spears and stones, and the people gathered protectively around their chief, whom, indeed, Cook had intended to take hostage. A man made a menacing movement at Cook, something was thrown and Cook fired his shot—to no effect, for his assailant was protected by stout matting. The crowd grew more threatening, throwing stones, and Cook fired ball. This time he killed a man; his lieutenant of marines fired, the marines fired and the crowd overwhelmed them all. Minutes later, the men in the waiting boats watched with stunned horror as Cook was clubbed from behind and fell facedown into the water as he attempted to reach one of the boats. He was then clubbed to death in the shallows.
“I not only gave my Orders but my advice,” Bligh had told Christian and his men, as they set out on the wood and watering parties; his advice was a personal admonition, concerned, perhaps even friendly. It was based upon what he, Bligh, knew: that no word or gesture should be made to engage a suspect crowd, that loaded arms endowed their bearers with fatal confidence, that the wrong shot fired at the wrong time could precipitate trouble, not quell it. Morrison’s account vindicates Bligh’s concerns.
The crowd, Morrison wrote, was “very rude & attempted to take the Casks from the Waterers and the axes from the Wooding party; and if a Musquet was pointed at any of them produced no other effect than a return of the Compliment, by poising their Club or Spear with a menacing look.” Morrison’s account also confirms that Bligh’s orders had been ignored: Bligh had stipulated that the arms be kept in the boats, knowing that if events took an ugly turn, the boats providing the getaway were the objects that must at all cost be safeguarded.
Like most of the crew, Christian had not sailed with Cook. He did not perhaps know that the taking of hostages had, as it were, naval precedent and was not merely some underhanded act of tyranny devised by Bligh; nor was the ship’s company likely to have appreciated Bligh’s insights into the finer points of crowd management.
It was now April 27, 1789. For the past several days the weather had been unremarkable, with light easterly winds, and cloudy. On leaving Anamooka, the
Bounty
headed north toward Tofua, the northwesternmost of the Friendly Islands. By night, the air had become so light and still that the ship made little progress. Away to the west, a volcano on Tofua erupted, shooting flame and columns of smoke into the night sky, a spectacle enjoyed by the men on ship. The same still, calm weather held into the morning when Bligh came up for a turn about the quarterdeck and, taking a hard look at the coconuts piled between the guns, sent for Fryer.
Bounty
headed north toward Tofua, the northwesternmost of the Friendly Islands. By night, the air had become so light and still that the ship made little progress. Away to the west, a volcano on Tofua erupted, shooting flame and columns of smoke into the night sky, a spectacle enjoyed by the men on ship. The same still, calm weather held into the morning when Bligh came up for a turn about the quarterdeck and, taking a hard look at the coconuts piled between the guns, sent for Fryer.
“Mr. Fryer,” said Bligh, according to Fryer, “don’t you think that those Cocoanuts are shrunk since last Night?”
“I told him,” said Fryer, “that they were not so high as they were last night, as I had them stowd up to the Rail but,” as he added diplomatically, “that the people might have pull them Down—in walking over them in the Night.”
Bligh thought not. “[H]e said No that they had been taken away and that he would find out who had taken them.” Churchill, the master-at-arms (Morrison says it was Elphinstone, the master’s mate), was then ordered to bring up all the nuts from belowdecks, along with their owners.
“ ‘Every Body,’ he repeated several times.”
One by one, Bligh addressed his officers. “‘Mr. Young—how many Nuts did you bye?’ ‘So many Sir.’ ‘& How many did you eat?’ ” Young did not know, but there was the remainder to be counted. Morrison implied that the interrogation was only of the officers, while Fryer specifically noted “then all the other Gentlemen was calld and likewise the People.” Fryer made no mention at all of Fletcher Christian; indeed, Edward Young is the only person singled out in his version. But in Morrison’s narration, Christian is placed front and center.
Bligh, according to Morrison, “questioned every Officer in turn concerning the Number they had bought, & coming to Mr. Christian askd Him, Mr. Christian answerd ‘I do not know Sir, but I hope you dont think me so mean as to be Guilty of Stealing Yours.’ Mr. Bligh replied ‘Yes you dam’d Hound I do—You must have stolen them from me or you could give a better account of them—God dam you you Scoundrels you are all thieves alike, and combine with the men to rob me—I suppose you’ll Steal my Yams next, but I’ll sweat you for it you rascals I’ll make half of you jump overboard before you get through Endeavour Streights.’ ”
“‘I take care of you now for my own good—but when I get you thro the Straits you may all go to hell,’ and if they did not look out sharp that he would do for one half of them” was how Fryer condensed this same speech.
In Fryer’s account, Bligh concluded this showdown by telling “Every Body that he allowd them a pound and a half of yams, which was more than there Allowance—but if he did not find out who took the Nuts that he would put them on ¾ of a pound of Yams.” Fryer’s almost parenthetical aside—“which was more than there Allowance”—is such an oddly reasonable qualification of Bligh’s threat that it must, one senses, be true; Fryer’s narrative was not intended to be complimentary to Bligh, and this detail was unlikely to have been invented. This same concluding threat, however, Morrison reported somewhat differently.
“Stop these Villains Grog, and Give them but half a Pound of Yams tomorrow,” Bligh is said to have commanded his clerk, Mr. Samuel. “[A]nd if they steal then, I’ll reduce them to a quarter.” Bligh went below, according to Morrison, at which “the officers then got together and were heard to murmur much at such treatment, and it was talkd among the Men that the Yams would be next seized.”
Later reports would depict Christian as having been not only wounded but shattered by this confrontation. William Purcell would state that Christian came from Bligh with tears “running fast from his eyes in big drops.”
“What is the matter Mr. Christian?” Purcell had asked—which is itself intriguing; if all had happened as reported, surely he knew?
“Can you ask me, and hear the treatment I receive?” Christian had asked; to which Purcell had replied, “Do I not receive as bad as you do?”
“[Y]ou have something to protect you,” Christian said to Purcell. He was referring to the carpenter’s warrant, which forbade that he be flogged; although designated “acting lieutenant” of the voyage by Bligh, Christian was still officially a master’s mate, which amounted more or less to a senior midshipman.
“[Y]ou have something to protect you, and can speak again; but if I should speak to him as you do”—apparently the carpenter’s verbal defiance was well recognized—“he would probably break me, turn me before the mast, and perhaps flog me; and if he did, it would be the death of us both, for I am sure I should take him in my arms, and jump overboard with him.”
“Never mind it, it is but for a short time longer,” was Purcell’s parting, buck-up-it’s-not-as-bad-as-you-think advice. To this Christian is said to have replied, “In going through Endeavour Straits, I am sure the ship will be a hell.” Hell was to come up a good deal in Christian’s later speeches.
All reports agree that after this blowup, Bligh went contentedly about his business; the coconut incident receives no mention whatsoever in either his private or official log. Afterward, he resumed his custom of inviting Christian to dine with him, as Christian had done every third evening of the voyage. Christian declined, sending word he was indisposed, upon which Thomas Hayward accepted Bligh’s offer, and, according to Fryer, was hissed by the other young gentlemen when he left.
BOOK: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
2.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Other books
Really Something by Shirley Jump
Home Is Wherever You Are by Rose von Barnsley
Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen
Remembrance by Alistair MacLeod
Kingdom's Reign by Chuck Black
Come to Me by Lisa Cach
Transcendence by Christopher McKitterick
Year of No Sugar by Eve O. Schaub
The Queen's Exiles by Barbara Kyle
French Roast by Ava Miles