The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (22 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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“One day, or even one hours negligence may at any period be the means of destroying all the Trees and Plants which may have been collected,” Banks had written in his final orders to Nelson with characteristic directness, noting earlier, “You will take care to remind Lieutenant Bligh of that circumstance.”
 
On March 27, Bligh ordered all cats and the two dogs disembarked in preparation for bringing the plants on board, an operation that he characterized as “tedious.” Now firmly rooted in boxes, tubs and pots, they had all to be sorted by size and arranged in their appropriate holdings.
 
“Thus far I have accomplished the Object of my Voyage,” Bligh wrote, days later, when the operation was finished. Complacently surveying his flourishing plants neatly arrayed in the great cabin, he noted he had managed to stow 309 additional breadfruit to what had originally been planned; he was, then, safely covered for any losses.
 
With the ship crammed—“lumbered,” to borrow Morrison’s term—with gifts of cocoa nuts, yams and plantains, the men made their good-byes. Tynah and Iddeeah wept bitterly, begging Bligh to spend one last night in Matavai, but this he gently declined. He had grave misgivings about leaving his friends, knowing, as did they, that once the protection of the
Bounty
was removed they would be vulnerable to attacks from other chiefs from other parts of the island, jealous of the many gifts that the English visitors had showered upon them.
 
“I hope,” Bligh had logged earlier, “that they will never be forgot by us.” He had complied with Tynah’s wish to be left two muskets and two pistols for protection. Purcell, unexpectedly, had thrown in an American musket that was much appreciated; Iddeeah in particular had impressed the
Bounty
’s men with her proficiency in firearms (as she had done with her surfing and wrestling).
 
“If therefore these good and friendly people are to be destroyed from our intercourse with them, unless they have timely assistance,” Bligh logged by way of a pointed note to the Admiralty, “I think it is the business of any of his Majestys Ships that may come here to punish any such attempt.” As he noted, he and his men had for twenty-three weeks been “treated with the greatest kindness: fed with the best of Meat and finest Fruits in the World.”
 
In the early afternoon of April 5, Bligh, with his officers, took affectionate leave of Tynah and Iddeeah on board the
Bounty,
and then ordered the cutter to carry them ashore near Point Venus. As the ship rode at anchor in the lee of the outlying reef, all on board could watch the small, bobbing boat make its way to the black shore one last time. The weather was squally, the palms clattering unheard across the water as Tynah and Iddeeah bade good-bye to the boatmen, and then turned to face the
Bounty
and the sea.
 
MUTINY
 
Everybody, according to Morrison, “seemd In high spirits and began already to talk of Home”; but one must wonder how true this was, and if he was not merely at pains, writing with hindsight, to show that no man had left his heart on the island. The returned cutter, full of coconuts as a final gift from Tynah, was hoisted aboard, and the
Bounty
made sail. Tynah’s request to have the ship’s guns fired as a salute had to be denied, as Bligh was concerned that this might hurt the plants; instead all hands gathered and shouted three cheers across the darkening water. Some hours later, Tahiti lay behind them, and when dusk descended, the green, cloud-tipped peaks were gone.
 
A week after departing Tahiti, traveling west and following heavy rain, an unknown island was spotted through the persistent cloud. Outlying reefs and the unsettled weather made it too difficult to go ashore, but from visitors who paddled out to the ship Bligh learned that his discovery was called “Whytootackee.” The island, some ten miles in circumference, had beaches of dazzling white sand and appeared to be covered with trees. While Bligh compiled a short working vocabulary of their language, some of his men contracted with the island men to bring women with them the next morning.
 
In the years to come, Lawrence Lebogue, the
Bounty
’s Nova Scotian sailmaker, claimed that he clearly remembered that Bligh “came on deck one night and found fault with Christian, because in a squall he had not taken care of the sails. It was after we left Whytootackee.” Bligh himself, denying the charge that he had “frequent” quarrels with Christian, maintained, “I had never one untill after I left Otaheite.” At this point, yet another account comes to bear; in a highly uneven narrative, commencing with the events immediately before the mutiny, Master John Fryer substantiated Lebogue’s memory: While working the ship “to exercise the People” on April 21, Fryer recalled, close to midnight of a dark, brooding day that had seen much rain, “Mr. Bligh and Mr. Christain had some words—When Mr. Christain told Mr. Bligh—Sir your abuse is so bad that I cannot do my Duty with any Pleasure. I have been in hell for weeks with you.”
 
With these, the first recorded words of Fletcher Christian in the entire course of the voyage, the tensions between Bligh and his chief officer leap into focus. Fryer’s account is not to be taken entirely at face value—Christian’s claim that he had been in hell would become a famous set piece in the telling of the
Bounty
’s story, placed by different people at different places. Nonetheless, something of Christian’s state of mind had been reliably evoked.
 
Perhaps the most telling fact about the various narrations of the
Bounty
’s voyage up until this point is how little overlap there is between them. Bligh’s rages against his officers while at Tahiti are generally only hinted at by Morrison, or ignored. Fryer’s narration commences after the departure from Tahiti, and rarely looks back at past events. Complaints made by Morrison of the outward voyage have no counterparts in the other accounts. But now, as the
Bounty
continued westward, approaching Anamooka, in the Friendly Islands (Tonga), there is a dramatic and unequivocal convergence of narratives. To everyone looking back, this—not on the outward voyage, not on Tahiti—was where the trouble really began.
 
Bligh had nostalgic reasons for wishing to visit Anamooka, where he had come with Cook in 1777, and on arrival he made inquiries “after our old Friends.” The
Resolution
had stayed here for two weeks and in the Friendly Islands for nearly two months, where Bligh joined Cook in making observations and surveys. Cook, by the time of this third and, as it would turn out, final voyage, had acquired the reputation of being an immaculate navigator and seaman, and a brilliant manager of men. His far-ranging accounts of his voyages, moreover, revealed a remarkable respect for the foreign peoples he met, and a striking reluctance to condemn outright even those alien practices that his own culture held to be immoral.
 
And yet, by consensus, Cook was not entirely “himself” on this third voyage. It had been here in the Friendly Islands that his new disposition had first become most disturbingly apparent. On Anamooka itself Cook had flogged a minor chief for some small theft, and then had the offender bound and taken unceremoniously onshore, where he was ransomed for the price of a hog. In Tongatapu, Cook had punished theft and stone throwing by administering floggings by the dozen and then, in a fury of impotent exasperation, slashed crosses on the thieves’ naked arms. After he journeyed onward to Tahiti, Cook’s punishments had become more severe. The theft of a goat prompted him to order the destruction and plunder of an entire village; the loss of a sextant led him to outright cruelty, ordering the thief’s head shaved and both his ears cut off. Aghast, Cook’s officers expressed their disapprobation, but for the most part were powerless to do more than mutter discontentedly in their journals. When a Tahitian prisoner escaped, Cook had his own men turned before the mast and disrated, and the errant sentinel flogged over three successive days. It is interesting to speculate what might have happened had Cook lived to return to England. Would his officers’ journals have been read and searched for evidence of their captain’s unworthiness to command? Would the great man have suffered the humiliation of a reprimand? Or, would he have been knighted for the accomplishment of a third magnificent voyage?
 
This was the man with whom William Bligh had worked side by side for almost two and a half years, and from whom he had learned some of his most valuable lessons of command. But in one respect, at least, Bligh proved himself the better man. Even in his most towering rages, Bligh was incapable of the vengeful brutality that characterized Cook at his worst on his final voyage. Bligh’s threat to Tynah on Tahiti, that if the deserters were not returned he “should make the whole Country Suffer for it,” had been modeled on Cook’s punitive campaign through the villages; but one must doubt whether Bligh could have found it in him to destroy the pretty houses and plantations he had so enjoyed, any more than he could have cut and maimed any offender. And because of his fundamental humanity, Bligh had fewer defenses than Cook to counter the exasperating and increasingly sinister thievery and provocation that he now encountered on Anamooka Island.
 
From the moment Bligh arrived onshore he was unfavorably struck by the appearance of the island’s people. “We met frequently both Men and Women with dreadfull Sores on their Legs, Arms and Breasts,” he wrote. A woman who had recently given birth and her child were stained a macabre yellow. Many people, even children, bore the dreadful self-inflicted wounds of ritual mourning, their heads bloodied, their hair torn out by the roots and whole fingers amputated.
 
“Several fine Boys about 6 Years Old had lost both their little fingers,” Bligh observed with horror.
 
On landing, Bligh dispatched two work parties: four men to go for wood under the command of the mate of the ship, William Elphinstone, who had already disgraced himself on arrival at the island by allowing the bower anchor buoy to sink “for want of a little exertion”; and eleven men for water under the command of Fletcher Christian.
 
“To the Waterers I ordered Arms,” Bligh logged, “but to be Kept in the Boat & there only to be Used, considering them much Safer on Shore without them, unless I could have encreased the Party.” He also strenuously enjoined the parties “to keep themselves unconnected with the Natives. . . . I not only gave my Orders but my advice,” Bligh noted. Needless to say, both were ignored; the Indians were allowed to crowd around and distract the men, and an axe and an adze were shortly stolen.
 
As so often, Bligh made a distinction between the culpability of his men and of his officers. The men, he allowed, could not simultaneously do their duty—fell trees and keg water—and keep all their tools in hand. But “[a]s to the Officers I have no resource,” Bligh wrote, with a kind of deadly resignation. “[O]r do I ever feel myself safe in the few instances I trust them.”
 
Christian and his men had been harassed by a crowd at the watering place; it is not clear if they had actually been prevented from accomplishing their job. Bligh’s response, on being informed of these circumstances, is vividly recorded by both Morrison and Fryer. Bligh damned Christian “for a Cowardly rascal, asking him if he was afraid of a set of Naked Savages while He had arms,” according to Morrison, “to which Mr. Christian answerd ‘the Arms are no use while your orders prevent them from being used.’ ”
 
The following day, Christian was sent back with his party to finish the work. Somewhat later, Fryer was sent ashore to “Hurry Mr Christian off with the Launch.” On landing, Fryer had to ask the way to the watering place of a man and woman who stood nearby. Pointing to meandering lanes that led between plantations, the couple encouraged him to follow them. A short distance along the path, Fryer, feeling, one senses, very much alone, encountered Matthew Quintal rolling a barrel of water toward the boat. After delivering the cask, both men turned back for the watering place.
 
“Quintal call’d out Mr Fryer there a man going to knock you down with his club,” Fryer recalled. “I turn myself round rather surprised, when I saw the Man Brandishing his club over my head.” The man escaped into the plantations, and Fryer, “not arm’d even with a stik,” arrived at the watering place, about a quarter of a mile from shore. Here Fryer found “Mr Christain was getting the water fill’d as fast as he could—but there was a number of Natives about him some heaving stones frequently and one cheif with a Very long spare [spear] frequently point’d at Mr Christain.” (It would be at Anamooka that Lieutenant Corner of the
Pandora
was also to run into trouble, also while getting water; when clubbed on the back of his head, Corner turned and shot his assailant.) With some panic, Fryer told Christian to get the casks to the waiting cutter, “empty or full,” while he fobbed off the milling crowd with gifts of nails. On reaching the cutter, it was discovered that her crew, according to Fryer, “in stead of complying with my orders in keeping the Boat off with their oars—had let the grapnail go—and got playing tricks with the Boys & Girls that came into the water.” While the diverting children gamboled in the water, the grapnel, or small anchor, was slipped off its line by an enterprising diver and stolen.
 
“[H]e was very warm about the lost of the Grapnail,” was how Fryer described Bligh’s reaction to this piece of news. Immediately, Bligh proposed a plan for its recovery; he would “detain” some of the chiefs who were on board until the theft was made good. This ploy, of course, had been used with mixed success by Captain Cook. Badly rattled by events onshore, Fryer weakly informed his commanding officer that, as there were several more grapnels on board, the “loss was not very great.”

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