The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (39 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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“I do not remember seeing him,” Cole sniffed, addressing himself as protocol demanded to the court and not to Byrn. “[H]e may be there, he is a Person whom I should take very little Notice of upon such an Occasion being nearly blind.” Once again, Morrison was more successful. “Do you recollect when you came upon Deck after you called me out of my Hammock, that I came to you abaft the Windlass, and said, ‘Mr. Cole, what is to be done?’ and that your Answer was, ‘By God, James, I do not know, but go and help them with the Cutter’?” “Yes,” said Cole, he did remember this.
 
Cole’s testimony completed, he was asked to withdraw and William Peckover was sworn in. It was Peckover who had sought to accompany Bligh back to Tahiti in the
Providence
and been summarily rejected.
 
Peckover’s testimony began with a bang, with the “confused Noise” that had yanked him out of sleep in his cabin in the hold, next to the breadroom. As he was pulling on his trousers, he met Nelson at the door, who told him that “the Ship was taken from us.”
 
“We are a long way from land” was his amazed response; he was thinking they were victims of the Friendly Islanders.
 
“Mr. Nelson answered, ‘It is by our own People and Mr. Christian at their head,’—or ‘has got the command,’ I don’t know which—‘but we know whose fault it is,’ or, ‘we know who is to blame’—I do not know which of those Expressions it was,” Peckover reported coyly. Attempting to go on deck, the men were at first stopped by two of the mutineers holding fixed bayonets. Shortly afterward, the dogged Mr. Samuel came up and informed the two men that he, Hallett and Hayward were going in the small cutter with Bligh, and asked advice on what he should bring with him.
 
“I told him that if I was in his Place, I should take but very few things” was Peckover’s somewhat insensitive response. While the fated Samuel was stuffing a pillowcase with shirts and socks, Fryer came down to the quarters in the cockpit and asked Peckover what he intended to do.
 
“[I replied] that I wished to get Home if I possibly could, for by staying behind we should be reckoned as Pirates.” It was a while before Peckover, Nelson and Samuel were allowed to leave their quarters and go on deck. When he was finally summoned up, Peckover saw “Captain Bligh, and Mr. Christian standing alongside of him, with a naked Bayonet.” He also saw Burkett “in Arms on the Quarter Deck” and Muspratt upon the fo’c’sle; the fact that Muspratt had been free to move about while others were detained was once again noteworthy. Now he appeared to Peckover to be busy with something in the woodpile.
 
Stepping onto the gangway, Peckover had gone over the ship’s side and into the launch, which was already filled with about ten or twelve people. Some five minutes later, the rest of the boat’s passengers appeared with Bligh. When the overfilled boat was veered astern of the
Bounty,
Burkett leaned over the side of the ship and called down to Peckover, asking if he wanted anything.
 
“I told him, I had only what I stood in, a Shirt, and a pair of Trowsers; he told me if I would send my Keys up, he would go and get me some Cloaths.” Mistrustful, Peckover had replied that he had lost his keys. Nonetheless, Burkett duly returned some ten minutes later “with a Handkerchief and different Cloaths,” which he tossed into the boat. Coleman called out that he wished to come, and begged Peckover to “call upon a friend in Greenwich and acquaint him of the matter.” Cole now pressed Bligh to cast off, and so the boat had drifted away from the
Bounty.
 
Questioned by the court, Peckover stated, and then was asked to repeat, the names of all those he had seen under arms—of those so named, only Thomas Burkett was a prisoner.
 
“What were your particular reasons for submitting, when you saw but four Men under Arms?” asked the court. The strangely passive, bloodless acquiescence to the handful of mutineers confounded these veterans of many battles as much as it had Christian.
 
“I came naked upon the Quarter Deck with only my Trowsers on,” replied Peckover.
 
One by one, the court now went through the names of the defendants:
 
“Did you on that Day see Joseph Coleman?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“What was he doing when you saw him?”
 
“Looking over the Stern.”
 
“Did you see Peter Heywood, Midshipman on that Day?”
 
“No.”
 
“. . . In the former part of your Evidence in Conversation with Mr. Nelson the Botanist he said to you that you knew whose fault it was, or Words to that effect—do you apprehend that Mr. Nelson alluded to any of the Prisoners?”
 
“No,” Peckover replied. He himself had of course been alluding to Bligh; but now, having successfully directed the court’s attention to this conversation Peckover backpedaled, adding, unconvincingly, “It is impossible to judge what he meant.”
 
“Those Men who remained in the Ship did you believe them to be of Mr. Christian’s Party, except Coleman Norman McIntosh and Byrn?”
 
“We had every reason to suppose so,” Peckover replied. The point-by-point examination of who had been seen where, who was under arms, was ultimately beside the point. No, Peckover had not seen anyone under arms apart from those he had named; but, yes—he believed that, with the noted exceptions, everyone who had remained with the ship was “of Mr. Christian’s Party.”
 
The final question put to Peckover revealed how far the court still stood from grasping the reality of conditions on board the
Bounty.
 
“Were there any Centinels usually placed on board the ‘Bounty’ in any part of the Ship at Sea?” Commanders of 74-gun ships, these naval judges were accustomed to the services of divisions of marines and hundreds of seamen. Bligh, with his sparse company divided into three watches for their healthful repose, had scarce men enough to spare for sentinels, a role normally assumed by marines, so conspicuously absent from the
Bounty.
In any case, so confident had Bligh been of the security of his small ship that he had slept with his cabin door open.
 
“No,” was Peckover’s simple answer to this uncomprehending question.
 
The day was still young when William Purcell, the carpenter and one of Bligh’s most stubborn adversaries, was summoned by the court. Pasley had complacently deemed his account “favorable” to Heywood, but now the Heywoods would discover what Bligh had long ago learned to his great cost—namely, just how independent this bloody-minded and fearless seaman could be. Until Purcell’s performance, things had drifted along promisingly for Peter Heywood, with few mentions of his name to snag the attention of the listening judges. But Purcell’s electrifying testimony would turn all this on its head.
 
His account began with the now familiar images: the sudden announcement that the ship was taken, Bligh with his hands lashed behind him and Christian brandishing his naked bayonet.
 
“Mr. Christian has the Command—the Captain is confined all resistance will be in vain, if you attempt it you are a Dead Man,” as Matthew Quintal had informed him. Purcell had been in his quarters in the fore hold, with Cole and Lebogue, when he learned the news. On going up the companionway ladder, he passed the midshipmen’s quarters and saw Heywood and Stewart “in their Birth abreast of the Main Hatchway on the Larboard Side.” Sentinels posted at the hatchway entrances controlled who came and went by way of the ladders.
 
After arguing with Christian about which boat was to be given to Bligh, Purcell went straight to work on preparing the more seaworthy launch. Of all the people who claimed responsibility for obtaining the bigger, safer boat, Purcell was the most likely really to have done so. Without immediately saying as much, he had, it seems, determined to join Bligh from the outset.
 
“I asked Mr. Christian if he meant to turn us adrift in the Boat, to let us have the Launch and not make a Sacrifice of us,” he now told the court. Purcell’s facing down Christian caused the mutineer to flinch. He had done nothing, he told Christian, “to be either ashamed or afraid of,” and he wished to see his native land.
 
In his workmanlike way, Purcell had gone about procuring “such Things as I thought would be useful”—a bucket of nails, saws, a looking glass and clothes. He then approached Christian and asked for his tool chest, “[w]hich after much Altercation he granted.” By “Altercation,” one gathers Purcell stood toe-to-toe with Christian and fearlessly argued with him, naked bayonet notwithstanding. Fryer now came on deck and, addressing the men under arms, begged them “in the Name of God to lay down their Arms,” asking them what they were about and “if the Captain had done anything to confine him.”
 
“No, Damn you,” Churchill had growled in reply, “you ought to have done that Months ago.”
 
During this exchange, Purcell went into the boat and was busy stowing the considerable supplies he had managed to gather. Suddenly, Isaac Martin—a thirty-year-old able seaman from Philadelphia, and one of the mutineers who had been under arms—appeared in the boat with a bag of possessions and told Purcell he was coming along.
 
“I replied if ever we get to England, I’ll endeavour to hang you myself,” Purcell responded. Hearing him, two of the mutineers “presented their Pieces” at Martin and ordered him out of the boat; the sailor reluctantly complied. More ominously, other mutineers began to harangue Christian to order Purcell out of the boat as well, claiming that if the carpenter was allowed to leave with his tool chest, Bligh’s party would “have another Vessel in a month.” Like Coleman, the armorer, Purcell was highly valued for his skills. Christian, however, may have reflected upon the undesirability of having the uncompromising carpenter along as a reluctant passenger, for when the boat finally cast off from the
Bounty,
Purcell was in her.
 
“When the Boat left the Ship,” Purcell told the court, “she had about 7½ Inches amidships above water.”
 
Of the prisoners before the court, Purcell had seen Ellison, Burkett and Millward under arms, but he repeated the incident described by Cole when Millward expressed his fear that he would be compelled to join the mutineers on account of the “former foolish Affair.”
 
“When you came upon Deck did you see any one of the Prisoners?” the court asked Purcell.
 
“I did,” he replied.
 
“Did you see Mr. Heywood?”
 
“No.”
 
“Had you any Conversation with him?”
 
“Not at that time.”
 
It was this vaguely qualified response that prompted a fatal query: “At any other time?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Did you see Mr. Heywood standing upon the Booms?” This was following up on Cole’s recollection that Heywood had helped launch the boat.
 
“Yes,” said Purcell.
 
“Had he a Cutlass in his Hand?” This startling question from the court came from nowhere—no hint of such a thing had been given in any of the other evidence.
 
“He was leaning the Flat part of his Hand on a Cutlass on the Booms,” said Purcell, “when I exclaimed, ‘In the Name of God Peter what do you do with that?’ when he instantly dropped it. One or two of the People had previous to that laid down their Cutlasses, being Armed with Cutlasses and Pistols to assist in hoisting the Launch out.”
 
Under the ensuing intense cross-examination from the court, Purcell attempted to undo some of the obvious damage wrought by his almost offhand statement: He had looked upon Mr. Heywood, he now explained, “as a person confused and that he did not know that he had the Weapon in his Hand, or his Hand being on it, for it was not in his Hand.” Probably Heywood had gone below “to collect some of his Things to put into the Boat.”
 
“How long was it after the Launch was hoisted out before she went from the Ship?”
 
“I think it must be near two Hours.”
 
“Do you think then,” came the skeptical query from one of the court, “that Mr. Heywood was so long employed in collecting his Things as you have before supposed?” And Purcell, whose characteristic blunt clarity was becoming ever more fuzzy, backtracked to say that Heywood had not after all left immediately, but had stayed to help other people with their things, and then only gone below “but a very short time, ten Minutes or a Quarter of an hour,” before the launch pulled away from the ship.
 
For the next fifteen minutes, the court hammered away at the cutlass. Where was the arms chest in relation to Heywood’s berth? Did he drop the cutlass accidentally or on purpose? Did others do the same? Were the mutineers aware of Heywood’s having a cutlass? Would they have permitted him or any other “well disposed Person to the Captain” to have touched a weapon? Were they so careless of the arms as to leave them unattended for anyone to pick up? Had Heywood expressed “any Desire or Inclination to follow his Commander?”

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