The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (40 page)

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Authors: Caroline Alexander

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

BOOK: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
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Previous to Purcell’s testimony, it had appeared that all of the defendants were more or less accounted for in terms of where they had physically stood during the approximately two and a half hours the events unfolded. But now, here was Peter Heywood wandering at will around the deck when the clear loyalists had been confined or guarded; here was a loose bayonet that had not been used in defense of the ship; here was Peter dawdling on the booms after the launch had been lowered into the water—dawdling for close to two hours, by Purcell’s own reluctant arithmetic.
 
Others significantly affected by the carpenter’s testimony were Morrison and Muspratt; Morrison had desired Purcell “to take Notice in the face of the whole of the Mutineers that he was prevented from coming into the Boat.” This Purcell stated with some vigor. On the other hand, he had not seen Muspratt under arms but
had
seen him handing “some Liquor up to the Ship’s Company.”
 
Michael Byrn, as was his wont, used his right of cross-examination to pepper Purcell with questions that did nothing to advance his cause; he appeared not to comprehend that things were going well enough for him as they were. As always, his cross-examination seemed only to irritate the witness from whom he was beseeching support.
 
“Do you recollect my saying, ‘Mr. Purcell, if you live to go home, I hope you will go to my Friends and let them know, I know nothing of this Transaction, nor had any hand in it?’ ” he now asked, in what appears to have been a shameless mimic of Coleman’s parting plea to seek out his friend in Greenwich.
 
“No,” said Purcell. All of Byrn’s questions were similarly dismissed. Perhaps cowed by this example, if not stunned by the new turn the testimony had taken, none of the other defendants were inclined to raise their voices, and the court was adjourned until the morrow.
 
 
 
The testimony of the warrant officers completed, the
Bounty
’s midshipmen were now introduced. Of all the
Bounty
’s young gentlemen, only Thomas Hayward and John Hallett had officially been midshipmen. Captain Pasley had indicated to Peter Heywood that he intended to speak to these young men, but there is no evidence that he had actually done so. Although the socially inferior warrant officers had been found, in his view and presumably Aaron Graham’s, to be “favorable,” both Hayward and Hallett had sent very clear advance messages that they thought Peter culpable. It had been Thomas Hayward’s father who advised Nessy to seek all “interest” she possibly could on her brother’s behalf. Similarly, John Hallett had informed Nessy that notwithstanding his former friendship to Peter, he would if called upon “be strictly bound by Oath to adhere to Truth.”
 
One of the most striking facts to emerge from the evidence given thus far was that from the very outset the mutineers had planned to put Hayward and Hallett in the boat with Bligh and his clerk, Samuel. Every witness testified that he had learned of Bligh’s intended fate in the same breath he learned of that of the two midshipmen. Perhaps no other circumstance so clearly betrayed that the actions of Christian and his fellows had been purely personal, and had little to do with professional complaints against their commander.
 
Hayward and Hallett had hardly been favorites of Bligh. It was Hayward who had been on watch when the Tahitian prisoner held for theft had made his escape; he was subsequently turned before the mast and confined in irons for a full month by way of punishment. No other officer, not even Purcell, had been treated so harshly. Bligh referred in the notes to “Mr Hallett’s contumacy” and, even more pointedly, commented to his wife that Hallett “has turned out a worthless impudent scoundrel.” There had been no clique around Bligh—or if there had been, Hayward and Hallett had manifestly not been part of it.
 
But the two young men stood sharply apart from the other young gentlemen in one important respect: they were both young professionals who had gone to sea by choice. Sons of prosperous middle-class families, they had other careers open to them. Christian and Heywood, on the other hand, were the sons of bankrupts under the shadow of debtor’s prison, while Edward Young was the illegitimate son of a noble family. A career at sea was the only way out for these men, whether or not this had been the path of choice.
 
Whatever his reasons, Christian had not got along with his middle-class colleagues and, as the day’s testimony would show, neither had other of the defendants. The mutineers’ decision to dump these three officers—Bligh, Hayward and Hallett—into one small boat seems to have had no basis except that the three men were individually not liked.
 
These considerations must have weighed somewhat heavily on the minds, if not the consciences, of the ten defendants as they were ferried in their own small boat from the
Hector
back to the
Duke
on the third day of their trial. The court called Lieutenant Hayward, “late 3rd Lieut. of His Majesty’s ship ‘Pandora,’ and formerly Midshipman belonging to His Majesty’s Armed Vessel the ‘Bounty.’ ” Uniquely, Thomas Hayward could bear witness to the events of both sagas for the prosecution.
 
On the morning of April 28, 1789, Hayward said, he had been on Christian’s watch and actually spoke with him only moments before the mutiny. Christian had relieved the previous watch at four in the morning, as was usual; an hour later, “after giving Orders to prepare for Washing Decks,” he ordered Hayward to take the lookout “while he went down to lash his Hammock up.” Minutes later, while Hayward was watching a shark following in the wake of the ship, he had looked up to see, “to his unutterable Surprize,” Fletcher Christian and eight others coming aft, “[a]rmed with Musquets and Bayonets”; of these men, only Thomas Burkett was among the prisoners.
 
“On my going forward to prevent their Proceedings I asked Fletcher Christian the Cause of such an Act, he told me to hold my Tongue instantly.” Ordering Isaac Martin to stand sentry, Christian had gone below to Bligh’s cabin.
 
“At the time that this happened the People on Deck were Mr. John Hallett, myself, Robert Lamb, Butcher, Thomas Ellison (the Prisoner) at the Helm; and John Mills at the Conn.” Mills claimed total ignorance of all that had happened—although he later gleefully joined with the mutineers—but Ellison left the helm and took up a bayonet.
 
“The Ship’s Decks now began to be thronged with Men,” Hayward told the listening court, among whom were the prisoners John Millward and William Muspratt, both under arms.
 
“Peter Heywood one of the Prisoners, George Stewart and James Morrison one of the Prisoners, [were] unarmed on the Booms.”
 
“Murder!” came Bligh’s voice from his cabin, and shortly afterward he was led with hands bound on deck, where he was quickly, menacingly, surrounded by most of the men. Some of the other officers, such as Purcell and Fryer, now also came up as Christian gave the order to prepare the cutter.
 
“We remonstrated against it,” Hayward recalled, “she being too small and very leaky to contain us, and he gave us the Launch.” As soon as the launch was readied, Christian “order’d Mr. John Samuel, the Clerk, Mr. John Hallett, Midshipman, and myself into her.” After asking permission to collect some clothes, Hayward and Hallett were allowed down to their berths one last time. With sentinels placed around the hatchway and another below standing guard over the arms chest, the two midshipmen had made their way with some difficulty. Passing through Bligh’s small dining area, they had arrived at their own berths, where they had found “Peter Heywood the Prisoner in his Birth”: apparently he too had returned below.
 
Hayward told the court, “I told him to go into the Boat, but in my hurry do not remember to have received any Answer.”
 
“Mr. Hayward ask’d me what I intended to do,” Peter had written to his mother from Batavia of this same moment. He had already, as he told her, mulled over the fact that if he went onshore he risked death at the hands of natives. “I told him to remain in the Ship.”
 
Hayward bundled a few clothes into a bag and went back on deck. His request to take his instruments and charts—proof to his patron, William Wales, of his diligence as a navigator—was “positively refused” by Christian.
 
Bligh, brought to the gangway by Christian, was then surrounded by a sizable, rambunctious crowd.
 
“Damn him, I will be Centry over him,” Ellison had sworn, brandishing a bayonet. Apparently swept up by the mounting hysteria and confusion, Ellison was transformed from dutiful helmsman to enthusiastic mutineer within the space of two hours.
 
Once in the boat, the mutineers told Bligh they would give him a tow toward land, but the situation on board the
Bounty
was swiftly deteriorating. A jeering crowd gathered on the taffrail, or stern rail, the better to watch the small boat’s humiliating and precarious progress.
 
“Go see if you can live upon a Quarter of a lb. of Yams per Day,” Millward called after them. Hayward’s last sight of his ship was of Ellison loosing the topgallant sails, in obedience to Christian’s orders.
 
“Were all the People that were in the Boat ordered or did they go Voluntarily?” the court asked.
 
“I know no one ordered in except Mr. John Hallet Mr. John Samuel, and myself,” Hayward replied, thus confirming the very particular antipathies that Christian had acted upon. Hayward’s tough line of testimony fully and unambiguously exonerated only Coleman and Byrn; even Norman and McIntosh, whom he did not “suppose” to be party to the mutineers, he would not personally vouch for. The other six prisoners, armed or not, Hayward supposed to be guilty.
 
He had not seen Morrison under arms, but was of the opinion that the boatswain’s mate had been in league with the mutineers; this was because while he was assisting to launch the boat, Morrison’s countenance was “rejoiced,” not “depressed” like those of the loyalists.
 
“What was Mr. Heywood employed about in his Birth when you went below?” the court now pressed.
 
“Nothing but sitting with his Arms folded on his own Chest,” Hayward replied evenly.
 
“Did you from his Behavior consider him as a Person attached to his Duty or to the Party of the Mutineers?”
 
“I should rather suppose after my having told him to go into the Boat and he not joining us, to be on the side of the Mutineers,” Hayward replied, with one suspects something of the same haughty tone with which he had greeted Peter on the
Pandora.
(“He like all other Worldlings when raised a little in Life received us very coolly,” Peter had reported in his letter to his mother.) But, Hayward allowed, this “must be only understood as an Opinion as he was not in the least employed during the active part of it.”
 
The cross-examination from the prisoners began with Morrison in full growl.
 
“You say that you observed Joy in my Countenance and that you are rather inclined to give it as your Opinion that I was one of the Mutineers,” the boatswain’s mate began. “[C]an you declare before God and this Court that such Evidence is not the result of a private Pique?”
 
“No it is not the result of any private Pique,” returned Hayward icily, “it is an Opinion that I formed after quitting the Ship, from the Prisoners not coming with us when he had as good an Opportunity as the rest, there being more Boats than one.”
 
“Are you certain that we might have had the large Cutter to have accompanied you?” Morrison demanded pragmatically.
 
“Not being present at any Conference between you, I cannot say, but perhaps you might,” said Hayward, giving the court a strong hint of something suggestive of personal pique.
 
Morrison concluded his examination with another pertinent query: Did Hayward recollect calling upon him “to give any Assistance to retake His Majesty’s Ship?”
 
“I have a feint Remembrance of a Circumstance of that Nature,” Hayward allowed grudgingly.
 
“Relate the Circumstance,” directed the interested court.
 
“It is so very feint that I can hardly remember it or the Person it was,” Hayward stalled, “but on seeing Charles Churchill upon the Booms I thought that had I had a Friendly Island Club, of which there were many on board, I could, had I not been observed, have gone forward, which was behind Churchill, and knocked him down.”
 
“What answer did I give to you?” demanded Morrison.
 
“I do not remember.”
 
“Did I say, ‘go it I’ll back you, there is Tools enough’?”
 
“I do not remember.”
 
Hayward’s testimony concluded with a final question from the court: On what basis had he determined that Coleman had been detained involuntarily?
 
“From hearing from among the Mutineers their Intention to detain him,” Hayward replied. They had also planned to detain Ledward, the acting surgeon, but then changed their minds, “saying that they would have Little Occasion for Doctors.”

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