The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (29 page)

Read The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Online

Authors: Caroline Alexander

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval

BOOK: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
12.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
At their meeting, Bligh “expressed his Astonishment” at Peter’s involvement, Mr. Heywood told Nessy, adding, along with expressions of sympathy, his hope that Peter’s mother would remain “ignorant of the true cause of your Brother’s not returning.” The true cause had to be conveyed with some delicacy to a young maiden of only twenty-two, such as was Nessy, for it seemed that “Mr. Bligh, & the whole of the Ship’s Crew who came away with him are unanimous in ascribing the cause of this horrid Transaction to the Attachments unfortunately formed to the Women of Otaheite.” Bligh would almost certainly have informed Heywood that young Peter, like Christian, had been treated for “venereals” in Tahiti. At any rate, Mr. Heywood continued, as tactfully as he could, Peter’s “strange conduct” would probably make it rather difficult for him to return to England any time soon.
 
“[T]he only consolation I can hold out to you is that when he does return, his general good conduct & Character previous to this unhappy Business, may with some Allowance for the unbridled Passion of youth plead for his Pardon; You must have the Philosophy for the present to consider him as lost forever,” Mr. Heywood concluded, echoing in gentler terms Bligh’s more bluntly expressed opinion that young Peter was best forgotten. “[B]ut I trust that Providence will restore him to you & enable him to make Atonement.” With such philosophical reflections, Nessy and the rest of Peter’s immediate family had to console themselves for the next two years.
 
On October 22, 1790, the court-martial was finally held on the loss of the
Bounty,
the last of the loyalist company having arrived from Batavia. The purpose of the court-martial was “to enquire into the Cause and Circumstances of the seizure of His Majesty’s armed Vessel the
Bounty
. . . and to try the said Lieutenant Bligh and such of the Officers and Ship’s Company as are returned to England for their conduct on that occasion.” Essentially, what the court required was official reassurance that Bligh and his men had done all that was possible to prevent the loss of the ship. This was the specific point over which Bligh agonized with an almost morbid intensity. Every one of the depositions he had made to the various Dutch authorities had stressed the fact that he personally had done all he could, and he came back to the same point again and again in his log and in all letters.
 
“My conduct has been free of blame,” he had told his wife, in his long letter from Timor. “I showed every one, that tied as I was, I defied every Villain to hurt me.”
 
“My Character & honor is spotless when examined,” Bligh wrote to Duncan Campbell, shortly before his departure from Batavia. “I shall stand to be tried disspising mercy or forgiveness if it can be found I have been guilty of even an error in Judgement.”
 
But while close inquiry made among the men in the course of the boat journey had satisfied everyone that there had been no discernible hint of approaching disaster prior to the mutiny, Bligh appears not to have been as easy in his mind that the loss of the ship was inevitable. Once captured, he had shouted himself hoarse, had given ignored commands, had implored, had incited bystanders to knock Christian down, all this while securely bound and guarded at the mizzenmast. But had Fryer, who had kept a pistol in his cabin, really done all he could? What if all the young officers had behaved with determined resistance? Four loyal men were known to have been forced to remain with the mutineers on the
Bounty
—might there have been more potential loyalists among the seamen who could have been swayed by a show of determination on the part of the officers? The image of the compliant men filing meekly into the waiting launch was difficult to exorcise. The fact that “out of forty-five men eighteen should suffer themselves to be pinioned and put on board a boat, at the almost certainty of death, without the least resistance” was one of the striking circumstances, as a disquieting article in the
Times
had put it, that were perhaps “unparalleled in the annals of mutiny.”
 
“I had not a Spirited & brave fellow about me & the Mutineers treated them as such” was Bligh’s private assessment to his wife. The loss of the ship, then, could have been prevented, in Bligh’s opinion, although not by William Bligh. But it would do him personally no good if any hint of fecklessness should be discovered in his men at the court-martial; the Admiralty would not be investigating the cause of the mutiny—an act that was by definition indefensible—but only seeking reassurance that once the mutiny broke nothing had been left undone to quell it. All participants would have to put aside their most secret doubts, as well as animosities, to present for this solemn occasion a united front.
 
The court-martial was held at Spithead, on board the
Royal William,
presided over by Admiral Samuel Barrington. The first to be examined was Bligh, who when put the traditional question of whether he had “objection or complaint” against any man or officer, had replied that, William Purcell excepted, he had not (the carpenter had remained a prisoner since Surabaya). All the other officers played their parts; no one had anything to say against anyone else. Hallett and Hayward, who had been on watch when the mutiny broke, were not quizzed or reprimanded for failing to sound the alarm. John Fryer corroborated Bligh’s account that he had been bound and held under armed guard by Christian himself.
 
“I asked Mr. Christian, who had then hold of Mr. Bligh with a bayonet in his hand, what he could think of himself or what he was after, or words to that effect,” Fryer told the court. “[H]e told me to hold my tongue for he had been in hell for a week.” The court appears to have expressed no interest in this insight into Mr. Christian’s state of mind; the cause of the mutiny was, after all, not the point under examination. In any case, there was for every mutiny a presupposition that some mutineer had found his breaking point for one reason or another.
 
The court deliberated and concluded that “the
Bounty
was violently and forceably taken from the said Lieutenant William Bligh by the said Fletcher Christian and certain other Mutineers” and that Lieutenant Bligh and his officers and men were thereby honorably acquitted.
 
William Purcell alone was made to face the music. On the same day that Bligh and the other loyalists were acquitted, Purcell was brought onto the
Royal William
to face six charges that ranged from his insolence at Adventure Bay to an astonishing mutinous episode that had occurred toward the end of the boat voyage. Unusually, Bligh had not edited this last event out of his published narration, which in itself indicates its seriousness—and how ably Bligh believed he had handled it. The incident had occurred at a small island on which Bligh had sent his men out to scavenge for oysters.
 
“On this occasion their fatigue and weakness so far got the better of their sense of duty, that some of them began to mutter who had done most, and declared they would rather be without their dinner than go in search of it,” Bligh had written in his
Narrative.
“One person, in particular, went so far as to tell me, with a mutinous look, he was as good a man as myself.” This person had been William Purcell. Swiftly determining that he would “preserve my command, or die in the attempt,” Bligh took up his cutlass. “I ordered him to take hold of another and defend himself; on which he called out I was going to kill him, and began to make concessions.”
 
“I could not help laughing to see Capt. Bligh swagering with a cutless over the carpenter,” was how Fryer described his reaction to this fraught moment; his sniggering tone apart, his record factually accords with Bligh’s. “I said—no fighting here—I put you both under an arrest,” Fryer had unwisely intervened. To which Bligh had responded, as might have been expected, “By God Sir if you offerd to tuch me I would cut you Down.”
 
George Simpson, John Samuel, Thomas Hayward and John Fryer were called upon to give evidence of Purcell’s insolence. No one contradicted Bligh’s charges and most were in strong agreement that, as Samuel put it, the “general Tenor of [Purcell’s] Conduct has not been such as is usual in the Service from an inferior to a superior Officer.” Even Fryer reported that Purcell would “sometimes drop improper words.”
 
The court placed most emphasis upon the first incident at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, and the witnesses seem to have been chosen because of their presence at this event. The court was clearly interested to know whether Purcell had been called upon to perform tasks beyond the duties of his warrant.
 
“Was it absolutely necessary for every Man to assist in the Duty of the Ship?” the court asked John Samuel at one point.
 
“It was,” the clerk replied. How difficult to conjure now, snug in home port, the sweaty multitude of tasks—gathering and billeting wood, foraging for greens, washing laundry in the bay, filling keg upon keg with water from the grudging stream, all the while on guard for a surprise appearance from the island’s natives.
 
“I could not bear the loss of an able Working and healthy Man,” Bligh had logged at the time of his showdown, “otherwise I should have committed him to close confinement.”
 
The surprise witness was William Peckover, the gunner, who both substantiated the charges against Purcell, and added some background color of his own. At Adventure Bay, he reported, Mr. Purcell said to Bligh that he had come “on shore for nothing but to find fault”; when the carpenter had been ordered back to the ship, Bligh called after him, “I’ll put a Rope about your Neck.”
 
At the end of the inquiry, the court found that “the Charges had been in Part proved against the said William Purcell and did adjudge him to be Reprimanded.” There are several possible reasons for this relative leniency, one being that survival of the boat journey was in itself deemed a mitigating circumstance. Bligh himself was awarded a rapid and unorthodox promotion to the coveted position of post-captain after his court-martial; now officially “Captain Bligh,” his professional future was more or less secure, since he had only to stay alive and his further advancement would proceed as senior captains died above him. This swift promotion, aided by the “interest” of Joseph Banks, was clearly a reward for his achievement. On the same principle, it may have been thought most just to allow Purcell to get on with his career. Bligh hints as much in a letter to Banks, in which he noted that a “great part of my evidence was kept back as it affected his life,” adding, however, that this magnanimous gesture was “all thrown away on the Wretch, for he began to abuse & threaten some of the evidences as soon as he got on shore.” In later years, it would be said of Purcell that he too had obtained his position on the
Bounty
through Banks, a claim that is impossible to prove or disprove—but if true, it would explain a great deal.
 
The exact terms upon which Bligh and Master Fryer eventually parted remain unclear. Subsequent events would show that their mutual antipathy was never overcome. Yet Bligh did not bring Fryer to court-martial as he had done Purcell. This may have been simply because two courts-martial ordered on two of his officers could only have raised eyebrows. Additionally, despite his continued ill will, Fryer had made a formal apology to Bligh, even signing a letter of contrition that had been drafted by Bligh.
 
Still, all was not over between the two men; and it was sometime after these trials that Fryer set down to write his own narrative of events, the straightforward intent of which appears to have been the denigration of Bligh—perhaps as a guard against future charges Bligh might make against him. Strikingly, however, for all its ill will, apart from its citation of mismanaged events at Anamooka Island, the document recorded nothing more damaging than Bligh’s passionate outbursts of temper against his inept officers. Fryer made no mention at all of the books he had so conspicuously refused to sign on the outward voyage, for example, or of the allegations he had spread in Coupang that Bligh’s receipt books would not be honored in England. Rather, his memoir is characterized by a litany of petty personal slights and oversights: Mr. Bligh took the only paper and ink in the launch, so he, John Fryer, had been unable to keep a log; a bedstead intended for him in Coupang had been given by Bligh to someone else (the soon-to-die David Nelson!); Bligh had not solicited his opinion about the location of a reef—one pictures Fryer, tight-lipped and self-righteous, sitting in pious, wounded silence less than twenty feet distant from his captain with the sea rising around them, steadfastly refusing to offer an opinion because he had not been formally asked to do so. In a typical entry, concerning an order Bligh had given Fryer to keep the carpenter at his duties, Fryer’s tedious and roundabout defense mostly serves to illustrate just how wearisome Bligh’s responsibilities had become by the end of the voyage. No, Fryer had responded to Bligh’s query, he had not been down to check on Purcell’s work, contrary to his orders, because he was unwell.
 
“What is your complaint?” said Bligh.
 
“I told him the prickly heat was much out on me & that the Doctor told me to take care, and not catch cold.”
 
“Is that all your complaint?” was Bligh’s incredulous response—medical excuses were usually reserved for scurvy, the flux, fever, injuries, wounds.
 
“I told him the Doctor was the only man to prescribe on that matter. He said ‘Sir it’s my order that you see the Carpenter at work every morning by Day break & keep him at work.’ I said, Sir I am not a judge of Carpenter work neither do I think it my Duty to attend the Carpenter. He said ‘it is your Duty Sir & you shall do it,’ ” and so on.

Other books

FLASHBACK by Gary Braver
Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St John
Ashes - Book 1 by Johnson, Leslie
An Affair of Honor by Scott, Amanda
Tangled Mess by Middleton, K.L.