The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (55 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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Sipping their ale in the Crown and Sceptre, Edward’s colleagues had undoubtedly listened spellbound to the extraordinary story unfolding, witness by witness. As the dirty winter water lapped at the riverfront outside the window, they heard of hard life at sea, of Tahiti and its black beaches, of the promiscuous customs of the Tahitian women, of the erupting volcano filling the night skies over Tofua—all the rush of images that infused the story with romance and even glamour.
The details that Edward extracted from the
Bounty
men would remain some of the most memorable in all the tellings of this story. Bligh had called his officers “scoundrels, damned rascals, hounds, hell-hounds, beasts, and infamous wretches.” When the
Bounty
reached the Endeavour Strait, Bligh had declared, “he would kill one half of the people, make the officers jump overboard, and would make them eat grass like cows.”
Bounty
men would remain some of the most memorable in all the tellings of this story. Bligh had called his officers “scoundrels, damned rascals, hounds, hell-hounds, beasts, and infamous wretches.” When the
Bounty
reached the Endeavour Strait, Bligh had declared, “he would kill one half of the people, make the officers jump overboard, and would make them eat grass like cows.”
The general tenor of Edward’s published revelations obviously focused on his brother and made vivid the mental anguish that had driven the engaging young man to mutiny.
“What is the meaning of all this?” Bligh had asked indignantly, on being led on deck at bayonet point.
“Can you ask, Captain Bligh, when you know you have treated us officers, and all these poor fellows, like Turks?” Christian replied. Despite all previous testimony that Christian had claimed to have been in hell for “weeks past,” or “this fortnight past”—in other words since leaving Tahiti—new evidence now emerged that Bligh had abused Christian on the island and had done so, worst of all, in front of the natives.
“There is no country in the world, where the notions of aristocracy and family pride are carried higher than at Otaheite”—except England, Edward Christian might have added. The Downing Professor of Law was now an Otaheite authority. “[A]nd it is a remarkable circumstance, that the Chiefs are naturally distinguished by taller persons, and more open and intelligent countenances, than the people of inferior condition,” Professor Christian continued; hence, it was implied, their affection for Fletcher Christian.
“[T]hey adored the very ground he trod upon,” as one of the Bountys had declared. Remarkably, for all the energy invested in these proceedings, nothing emerged to suggest that the direct cause of Christian’s breakdown was anything more than the famous theft of coconuts.
“Damn your blood, you have stolen my cocoa nuts,” Bligh had said, accosting Christian when the loss was perceived.
“I was dry, I thought it of no consequence, I took one only,” Christian plaintively replied, according to one of Edward’s new witnesses.
“You lie, you scoundrel, you have stolen one half” and “thief” were Bligh’s responses.
(“What scurrilous Abuse!” Charles Christian wrote in his own, never published memoir. “What provoking Insult to one of the chief Officers on Board for having taken a Cocoa Nut from a Heap to quench his Thirst when on Watch—base mean-spirited Wretch!!”)
“[F]lesh and blood cannot bear this treatment,” someone had heard Christian say; the master’s mate had been driven to tears, the only time he had been known to cry. After the coconut incident, Christian first planned to set out from the
Bounty
on a raft—in itself a wonderful image—and had that afternoon set about shredding all his personal papers and giving away all his Otaheite souvenirs. But the fireworks over Tofua brought too many men on deck for him to effect this in secret, and so the idea was laid aside. There then occurred the conversation that, all Edward’s witnesses agreed, had triggered the mutiny. George Stewart, the husband of poor Peggy, the special friend and messmate of Peter Heywood, knowing of Christian’s plans for the raft, had said to him, “When you go, Christian, we are ripe for any thing.”
Bounty
on a raft—in itself a wonderful image—and had that afternoon set about shredding all his personal papers and giving away all his Otaheite souvenirs. But the fireworks over Tofua brought too many men on deck for him to effect this in secret, and so the idea was laid aside. There then occurred the conversation that, all Edward’s witnesses agreed, had triggered the mutiny. George Stewart, the husband of poor Peggy, the special friend and messmate of Peter Heywood, knowing of Christian’s plans for the raft, had said to him, “When you go, Christian, we are ripe for any thing.”
Passing back and forth from one representation to another, from event to event, the document Edward Christian eventually produced was a mass of vivid, confused, riveting statements and details, which had few counterparts in the court-martial testimony. When it was published in 1794, it also contained a number of embarrassments for the Heywoods. That George Stewart and Peter had been close friends had never been concealed; it was Stewart, Peter claimed at his trial, who had told him that he should leave the ship with Bligh. It was Stewart with whom he built his little cottage on Tahiti. How now to account for Stewart’s fatal words “we are ripe for any thing”? And how to account for the fact (which “ought not to be concealed,” as Edward allowed) that during the mutiny itself Stewart “was dancing and clapping his hands in the Otaheite manner,” and saying “It was the happiest day of his life”? Stewart was eventually appointed Christian’s second-in-command, although a number of the seamen, it had seemed, had favored Mr. Heywood for this position because of Stewart’s renowned “severity.”
Edward’s published report listed the name of each individual participant of his informal committee along with his address—“38 Mortimer Street,” “Lincoln’s Inn”—presumably so that each could be further questioned by interested readers. That Edward was confident he had reported the proceedings his colleagues had witnessed cannot be in doubt. What must be doubted, however, was his committee’s capacity to understand salient aspects of the story unfolded for them.
“Hence the resolution was taken to put the Capt in a boat, a small distance from Otahitee,” William Gilpin reported to a visiting cousin in May 1794, excitedly passing on what had transpired at the Crown and Sceptre; he himself had been present at “several” of Edward’s interviews. “Every proper precaution was taken with respect to the safety and convenience of those that went—Notwithstanding, the Capt. made a very contrary report when he came home, declaring their intention to drown him. It is true that afterward he was not suffered to land on Otahitee which was accounted for by Capt. B. on a former occasion having made himself odious to the inhabitants.”
That anyone on Edward’s panel could have sat through even a single interview and come away with the idea that “every proper precaution was taken with respect to the safety and convenience” of those in the
Bounty
launch must raise serious questions about the entire proceedings. Every man, loyalist and mutineer alike, had testified that to join the launch had seemed, in Peter’s words, “a kind of act of suicide.” Nor obviously had Bligh touched on Tahiti; nor had he been rebuffed there by the islanders; nor had he made himself odious to them. . . .
Bounty
launch must raise serious questions about the entire proceedings. Every man, loyalist and mutineer alike, had testified that to join the launch had seemed, in Peter’s words, “a kind of act of suicide.” Nor obviously had Bligh touched on Tahiti; nor had he been rebuffed there by the islanders; nor had he made himself odious to them. . . .
William Gilpin’s cousin was able to peruse a copy of Edward’s pamphlet at the time of his visit, noting that “it was ready for press.” Matters were, then, pretty far along at the time of this exchange. In the event, Edward’s published version of the inconvenient fact of the boat journey was that the launch had been dangerously laden only because “almost all Captain Bligh’s property in boxes and trunks was put on board.” Others who had gone voluntarily into the launch “were sure of getting to shore, where they expected to live, until an European ship arrived”—besides, they had the carpenter with them, and he could build a bigger boat. And although the sufferings in the boat were distressful, “they were not the occasion of the death of Mr. Nelson at Timor, or of those who died at Batavia.” In any event, Fletcher Christian had been heard to declare that “he would readily sacrifice his own life, if the persons in the launch were all safe in the ship again.”
Fletcher Christian’s tortured state of mind following the mutiny was another of the indelible images to arise from this new testimony. He was “always sorrowful and dejected after the mutiny; and . . . had become such an altered man in his looks and appearance, as to render it probable that he would not long survive this dreadful catastrophe.” After the mutiny, he assumed command of the ship reluctantly, and only after the men “declared that he should be their Captain.” Although he kept discipline on the ship, “he was generally below, leaning his head upon his hand.” When asked for orders, “he seldom raised his head to answer more than Yes, or No.” How could it be otherwise if he deserved the good character “which all unite in giving him”? In fact, severe as had been the sufferings of Captain Bligh and his boat companions, they were “perhaps but a small portion of the torments occasioned by this dreadful event.” Before returning to Tahiti for the last time, he had addressed his men in an emotional speech, seeking one favor: “that you will grant me the ship . . . and leave me to run before the wind.”
Reformers, men of the cloth, lawyers . . . with the single exception of Captain Wordsworth, the members of Edward’s committee were a lubberly crowd and appear to have had not an inkling of life at sea. With their eyes on such issues as social reform and the treatment of slaves, they would have undoubtedly been horrified by much that was matter-of-factly related by the agreeable and pliant seamen—the cramped conditions, bad rationed food and strong language.
“I have heard the Captain damn the people, like many other captains,” Lawrence Lebogue would later go on record as saying, “but he was never angry with a man the next minute, and I never heard of their disliking him.”
“I will by no means affirm, that I never heard Captain Bligh express himself in warm or hasty language, when the conduct of his officers or people has displeased him,” John Hallett would also declare, again on record. “[B]ut every seafaring gentleman must be convinced that situations frequently occur in a ship when the most mild officer will be driven, by the circumstances of the moment, to utter expressions which the strict standard of politeness will not warrant.” But he had never, he avowed, “heard Captain Bligh make use of such illiberal epithets and menaces” as Edward had attributed to him.
“I’m damned if I don’t sink you, you skulking son of a bitch; I mean to tow you until I work some buckets of tar out of the hawser”—thus another seasoned commander cheerfully reported his captain’s words on another, unrelated voyage. Commander James Gardner’s memoir of naval service on many ships, under many captains and lieutenants, encompasses exactly the same period of time as the
Bounty
voyage and its aftermath and so gives an excellent, straightforward touchstone for the kind of language commonly used at sea. With affectionate gusto Gardner recalled his various salty encounters: “The admiral, who had an eye like a hawk, would damn him up in heaps”; “No; damn my brains if you shall go,” from an “extremely passionate” commander; “you are a damned lubber . . . a blockhead”—this from Sir Roger Curtis, the
Brunswick
captain who had orchestrated the execution of the three mutineers; “I’ll hang the fellow”; “Where’s that little son of a bitch?”; “Go on the poop and be damned to you”; “such a rage that he swore he would flog the clerk and those who were under him.” One captain who “was a very good man at times, but often harsh and severe in his remarks,” had informed Gardner, who, as he confessed, had “never forgotten it,” that he would never be fit for anything but the boatswain’s storeroom.
Bounty
voyage and its aftermath and so gives an excellent, straightforward touchstone for the kind of language commonly used at sea. With affectionate gusto Gardner recalled his various salty encounters: “The admiral, who had an eye like a hawk, would damn him up in heaps”; “No; damn my brains if you shall go,” from an “extremely passionate” commander; “you are a damned lubber . . . a blockhead”—this from Sir Roger Curtis, the
Brunswick
captain who had orchestrated the execution of the three mutineers; “I’ll hang the fellow”; “Where’s that little son of a bitch?”; “Go on the poop and be damned to you”; “such a rage that he swore he would flog the clerk and those who were under him.” One captain who “was a very good man at times, but often harsh and severe in his remarks,” had informed Gardner, who, as he confessed, had “never forgotten it,” that he would never be fit for anything but the boatswain’s storeroom.
There was, then, much about life at sea that did not translate well into the civilian world—principally, that naval language was more often than not spiced with profanity, and that officers and men commonly did not like their captains. Ironically, the single incident that would undoubtedly have struck a nerve with naval professionals confronted with the same testimony heard at the Crown and Sceptre was probably the last thing Edward was capable of imagining.
“Damn your blood, you have stolen my cocoa nuts,” Bligh had accused Christian.
“I was dry, I thought it of no consequence, I took one only,” Christian had plaintively replied, according to Edward.
Bligh’s own response to this episode, drafted in the third person after Edward’s publication, but never published, was unequivocal and unrepentant: “A heap of Cocoa Nutts were between the guns under the charge of the Officer of the Watch, with orders for no one to touch them untill the Ship was clear of the land, when they would be issued equally and considered highly refreshing, without which caution some would have & waste one half, & others would have none. In one Night (the first) the Officers permitted the whole within a score to be taken away. As this was evidently done through some design Captain Bligh ordered all the Cocoa Nutts to be replaced—The Officers of the Watch declared they were taken away by stelth—Here was a publick theft; a contumacy, & direct disobedience of orders.”
Bligh did not require so thorough an explanation. Under the inexorable rules that governed the hierarchy of command and conduct on board a ship in His Majesty’s naval service, the removal of a single coconut from the ship’s store, if forbidden by order of the superior officer, was a criminal act. And to Bligh’s charge that he—the officer of the watch, the acting lieutenant, the second-in-command—had contravened his commanding officer’s infrangible injunction, Christian had, in essence, replied, with pain and bewilderment in his voice—“but I was thirsty!”
Bligh appears to have read some version of Edward’s report in October 1793, not long after his return with the
Providence,
when Joseph Banks passed along a packet of papers he had received from Edward. This seems to have included a number of letters, notes on Bligh’s narrative, perhaps some preliminary report of Edward’s interviews—and a narrative by James Morrison. It also apparently contained a number of “news” items containing wildly erroneous reports, such as that the
Providence
had mutinied and taken the ship to Batavia, where Bligh had been delivered up a prisoner.
Providence,
when Joseph Banks passed along a packet of papers he had received from Edward. This seems to have included a number of letters, notes on Bligh’s narrative, perhaps some preliminary report of Edward’s interviews—and a narrative by James Morrison. It also apparently contained a number of “news” items containing wildly erroneous reports, such as that the
Providence
had mutinied and taken the ship to Batavia, where Bligh had been delivered up a prisoner.
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