The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (45 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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Short and unprepossessing, with the look and accent of “the common herd of uninformed illiterates,” as the officer commenting on the trial had put it, Ellison faced his judges. But for all his peculiarities of spelling and diction, Ellison’s account was to be one of the most graphic and gripping.
 
At four o’clock in the morning of April 28, 1789, Ellison had gone to take his turn at the wheel with John Mills at the conn. An hour later, Ellison saw Charles Churchill go aft and speak to Christian “in Close Conversation about ten Minutes,” although what they had spoken of he could not hear. A half hour later still, at 5:30 A.M., Ellison saw Christian “and Party” go aft under arms, and return five minutes later with Bligh captive.
 
“[T]his Proceeding greatly amaz’d and Terifyde me,” Ellison told the court, going on to conjure one of the most riveting images of the whole trial proceedings:
 
“[M]y terror was more Increas’d, at the site of Mr. Christain, he looked like a Madman is long hair was luse, his shirt Collair open.” It is extraordinary that no one else in his testimony commented on Christian’s appearance, or state of mind. Only Bligh had done so: “As for Christian,” he had written in his log, not long after the astonishing turn of events, “he seemed to be plotting instant destruction on himself and every one, for of all diabolical looking Men he exceeded every possible description.”
 
Standing with bayonet in hand, Christian, distraught, his shirt undone, his long hair flowing, was quickly surrounded by armed men.
 
“Captn. Bligh Wanted to talk with him,” Ellison told the court. “I heard Mr. Christian say two or three times, ‘Mammoo, sir,’ which the meaning of the word is,” he elaborated for those ignorant of the Otaheite tongue, “sillence, sir.”
 
Bligh then looked around, Ellison claimed, and seeing the ship was standing off the distant land, “he Disirid me to clap the helm down,” or bear up to the wind. Ellison promptly obeyed this order. Ellison’s aim was to show the court that he had been obedient to his captain. However, no one else reported this exchange or even suggested that Bligh had been in any position to give any orders whatsoever—although, this being said, such an action would have been entirely characteristic.
 
Ellison lashed the helm “a lee,” and while the cutter was being precariously launched, he had made his way to Lawrence Lebogue, the sailmaker from Nova Scotia, who was now sailing with Bligh on the
Providence,
back in the South Seas. Ellison and Lebogue had been shipmates in the West Indies days, and Ellison turned to him, under pretext of going to the head, or lavatory. “I oney pretended to go to the head For the purpose to speke to him and ask his advice,” Ellison told the court, earnestly, “he being an old seaman and had Been many years in His Majtys. Servace. He being wex’d, I believe, answerd me in a Sharp surly manner, told me to go to hell and not bother him; this Reception from my old ship mate quite Disheartened me from making an application to any One else.”
 
Meanwhile, the tension and confusion was mounting around Christian. Hayward and Hallett, ordered into the boat, “weep’t Bitterly and Mr. Hayward begged to know what he had done to be sent out of the Ship.” All the while Bligh was attempting to speak to Christian, who “with many threats” told him to be silent. Pleas were being made for the launch instead of the leaky cutter. As the second boat was being readied, Christian had continued to look “very severe and by Continual threats Keep every one in fear of him.”
 
Somewhere in this mayhem, young Ellison got hold of a musket or bayonet and in a heady rush of excitement and adrenaline waved it around, shouting over Bligh, “Damn him, I will be Centry over him.” Apparently, Ellison’s unexpected zeal startled even Christian, and a subsequent report would relate that on seeing the boy brandishing the weapon Christian snapped at him, “You little monkey, what business have you with that?”
 
“Captn. Bligh, seeing [a] Great many still wanting to come begged for gods sake that no more come In,” Ellison now told the court, describing the boat heavy with people and equipment. Bligh, having followed his officers into the boat, called back to the ship, “[M]y lads I will do you all Justice for I know whos and who.” Omitted was the fact that Ellison had jumped to answer Christian’s command to tend to the sails. The sight of Ellison loosening the main topgallant was the last image many of the loyalists recalled of the
Bounty.
 
“This honourable Gentlemen is the reale Truth of all I know about this unhappy affair and I hop your honours will take my Inexpearence’d Youth into Consideration,” Ellison now begged the court, wrapping up his defense. “I never did or ment any harm to any one much more to my Commander, to whose care I Was recommended by Mr. Camble.” It was also on account of Mr. “Camble,” it now transpired, that Bligh “took great pains with me and spoke too Mr. Samule, his Clark, to teach me Writing and Arithmetick.” So, indirectly, Ellison owed his ability to prepare his defense to William Bligh.
 
“. . . and I believe Would have taught me further had not this happend,” he added miserably. The enormity of what Ellison had thrown away seems to have finally caught up with him. “I hope, honorable Gentlemen yo’ll be so Kind as to take my Case into Consideration as I was No more than between Sixteen and Seventeen Years of age when this was done,” Ellison concluded, with what was almost an abject confession. “Honourable Gentlemen I leave my self at the Clemency and Mercy of this Honourable Court.”
 
Ellison called only one witness, John Fryer, who was asked if he had seen him under arms on the quarterdeck or the larboard gangway, or jeering from the taffrail.
 
“[H]e possibly might have been there,” Fryer told the court, “but from my Attention to other Things, I had not an Opportunity of seeing him.” And with this unhelpful testimonial, Ellison’s defense was ended.
 
 
 
After Ellison’s desperate bid, the appearance of Thomas McIntosh, formerly carpenter’s mate of the
Bounty,
brought a welcome change in tone, McIntosh being the last of the men that most witnesses—including Bligh—had exonerated.
 
McIntosh, now aged thirty, was from North Shields, a “poor miserable place” strung along the river Tyne, in which it was said there was “scarcely a single house roofed with tiles, and none slated.” Nonetheless, it was here McIntosh’s mother kept a public house. At some point, perhaps immediately before the
Bounty
voyage, McIntosh had changed his name from “Tosh” to “McIntosh,” suggesting that although he had grown up in Northumberland, he felt his allegiance to lie north of the Scottish border.
 
According to Bligh, the mutineers had prevaricated over whether to retain Purcell or McIntosh for his valuable carpentry skill, and had decided in favor of the latter, knowing Purcell to be, in Bligh’s words, “a troublesome fellow.” At five foot six, McIntosh was of middle height, slender, with fair, pockmarked skin and light brown hair. He was also the only one of the four men detained against their will who was “tatowed,” Coleman’s preexisting memento excepted.
 
McIntosh’s testimony was short and uneventful. On the morning of the mutiny, he had been awoken by Cole with the news that “the people had taken the Ship.” As he was getting dressed, he was called by Purcell to help prepare first the cutter and then the launch, and he was thus wholly occupied in getting the various parts out of the storeroom. He had also brought up tools and other articles that he “thought might be of Service in the Boat.” He heard Christian call to Churchill to prevent him, Norman and Coleman from getting in the boat; Churchill’s orders to “detain them,” which Peter Heywood had claimed for himself, would seem to have applied to these loyalists.
 
“I stood by the Gangway alongside of Norman Untill the Captain was Ordered into the Boat, When we both told him that Christian would not suffer us to go with him,” McIntosh told the court, “upon which he told us he would do us Justice.”
 
Like Norman, McIntosh was fortunate to be able to produce a letter from Bligh, in this case to his mother, giving reassurance that her son had “remained on board contrary to his inclination” and that she would be unlikely to hear anything more until the return of the
Pandora,
“which will be 18 Months or two Years.”
 
Purcell and Fryer, called upon as witnesses, confirmed both McIntosh’s general claim and his character. “I have nothing to say against him,” said Fryer. “He always did his duty with Cheerfulness.” As had Norman, McIntosh steered clear of calling any of the
Pandora
officers as witnesses. One of the questions never asked was why both men, if innocent, had fled from the
Pandora
on her arrival at Tahiti.
 
Outside, the fair, fine day had become overcast. The afternoon was wearing on, and still there remained three men to tell their stories. A decision seems to have been made that the court would not adjourn this day until every man had been heard.
 
William Muspratt, the cook’s assistant, now thirty-one, was a striking figure, of medium height and slender, but with dark skin and “a very Strong Black Beard.” As well as being noticeably scarred under his chin (hence the beard?), he was also tattooed. Muspratt, with Churchill and his fellow prisoner Millward, had been one of the three men who had so ill advisedly deserted in Tahiti, only to be captured, flogged and imprisoned for their pains. This much, then, could be stated with some assurance: Muspratt would have preferred to have remained on Tahiti.
 
He had been born in Bray, a parish of Maidenhead on the Thames, where it was busy with the inland barge trade, and was one of his parents’ seven surviving children. The year before the
Bounty
sailed, Muspratt’s father committed suicide by hanging himself from an apple tree; the subsequent inquest had ruled the cause of death “lunacy.”
 
Muspratt was the only man other than Peter Heywood to enjoy personal legal counsel, and his need for a good lawyer was acute. Two witnesses, Hayward and Cole, had testified to having seen him armed with a musket. And, although the desertion on Tahiti was not formally part of the prosecution’s case, the fact that he had on at least one occasion attempted to avoid returning to his native country would suggest a motive for taking the ship.
 
Aaron Graham’s cleverness notwithstanding, it was Muspratt, through Stephen Barney’s tactics and language, who was to give the most coherent legal defense. This began with a bold move, a petition to the court to call upon two fellow prisoners, Byrn and Norman, as witnesses; as he noted, it was “every day’s practice in the Criminal Courts of Justice on the Land” when trying a number of prisoners for the same charges to acquit those whom “the Evidence does not materially Affect . . . that the other Prisoners may have an Opportunity to call them if advised to do so.” In other words, if the innocence of Byrn and Norman was sufficiently proven to justify their acquittal, then, under civil law, he could call on them as witnesses.
 
At this unexpected turn, the court withdrew to consult, returning only to announce that they were “of the Opinion that they cannot depart from the usual Practice of Courts Martial and give Sentence on any particular Prisoner, until the whole of the Defences of the Prisoners, are gone through.” The other might well be a daily practice in courts on land—but on board the
Duke,
this court was at sea.
 
Apparently undeterred, William Muspratt handed the court his prepared defense to be read by the Judge Advocate. Whereas the defense Aaron Graham had prepared for Heywood had attempted to shroud its legalistic maneuvering behind a smoke screen of sentiment and confusion—as if young Heywood himself were speaking his own words—Muspratt’s defense took the legal nature of the proceedings at face value. No attempt was made to obscure the fact that this was his lawyer speaking.
 
After observing his satisfaction to be “tried under the most Benign Laws, and by a Court attentive equally to the Life and Liberty of the Subject, as to the Honor of the Crown,” Muspratt declared, with “God to Witness,” that he was innocent of the charges laid against him.
 
“I was Assistant to the Cook of the ‘Bounty,’ ” he began, matter-of-factly describing how between five and six in the morning of April 28, he had been splitting wood by the starboard fore scuttle.
 
“Michael Byrn came up just after and asked me what I was about, making such a Noise when the People were just turned into their Hammocks.” Hayward then ran by, calling for a hook for the shark that had been spotted. Somebody said that Christian had gone below for a musket to shoot the shark, and shortly after, William McCoy came “up the fore Hatchway with a Musquet in his hand and gave two or three hard thumps with its But-end upon the Deck saying ‘bear a hand.’ ” Other men came on deck and ran aft, and Muspratt learned that Bligh was a prisoner.
 
Ordered by Churchill to help clear the cutter, with the threat that it would “be the worse for” him if he did not, Muspratt assisted Norman at this task. Having finished, he was sitting on the booms behind the fore hatchway when Millward approached and told him that Fryer was going to attempt to retake the ship.

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