The Dangerous Book of Heroes (39 page)

Bligh was also concerned about the crew themselves. There were only two malcontents, but two might have been enough to destroy them all. One was master and second in command of the
Bounty,
John Fryer, who had been shown in the previous sixteen months to have limited abilities. He was disliked by the crew, and even the mutineers had refused to have him. The second malcontent was carpenter William Purcell. Most ships
have a “sea-lawyer,” and in the
Bounty
it was Purcell. He was insubordinate, argumentative, and asserted his “rights” at every opportunity, spreading discontent in the crew. Yet when invited to stay in the
Bounty
he'd replied: “I'm not staying with a pack of mutineers,” and entered the launch with his tools.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

The remaining fifteen admired and liked their captain. They were William Peckover, William Cole, Thomas Ledward, David Nelson, William Elphinston, Thomas Hayward, John Hallett, Peter Linkletter, Lawrence Lebogue, John Smith, Thomas Hall, George Simpson, Robert Lamb, John Samuel, and twelve-year-old Robert Tinkler.

For his part, Bligh had lost his ship to mutiny, an almost unheard-of event. What was he thinking as he stared at his overcrowded command? Somehow he had to navigate his loyal men to safety, in a small boat on a vast ocean.

The next morning a gale overtook the launch, increasing to storm force and soaking them all. They bailed water continuously as they ran before heavy seas. It was a foretaste of the weeks to come, although bad weather helped them to survive. It was the southern winter, and the voyage was beset by fogs, rain, and cold nights. Yet they didn't suffer greatly from thirst because of the rain and suffered little from sunburn or heat or the madness that comes with those. You can last for a month without food as long as you have water. The damp and cold, the cramps from lack of movement—those were their greatest hardships. At times they craved tropical heat. The teaspoon of rum in the morning became a necessity rather than a luxury.

 

Back in the
Bounty,
there was a surfeit of rum. The mutineers were Edward Young, Peter Heywood, George Stewart, Isaac Martin, Charles Churchill, John Mills, James Morrison, Thomas Burkitt, Matthew Quintal, John Sumner, John Millward, William McCoy, Henry Hillbrant, William Muspratt, John Adams, John Williams, Thomas Ellison, Richard Skinner, Matthew Thompson, and William Brown, led by master's mate Fletcher Christian.

Fletcher Christian: the most famous name of them all. It was his third voyage with Bligh. They had met first on HMS
Cambridge,
on
which Bligh was fifth lieutenant and Christian a volunteer seaman. Christian was a Manxman and Bligh was then living on the Isle of Man. Bligh later sailed as captain on merchant ships for four years, and in 1786 Christian applied to sail with him as midshipman on the
Britannia.
All berths were taken, so he volunteered as seaman and was accepted. Nevertheless, Captain Bligh and First Mate Lamb instructed and taught Christian as an officer and to navigate.

 

Bligh sailed through the Cannibal Isles (Fiji) without stopping. Tales of brutality were legend in the area, and he would not risk another attack. Two canoes chased them and they rowed desperately to escape. While they threaded their way through the islands, the first white men to sail those waters, Bligh surveyed, named, and charted positions using quadrant and watch. “Boat Passage” still marks the reef through which the
Bounty
's launch entered the Fijis.

Succeeding days passed slowly, with incessant bailing, increasing hunger, and more aches and cramps than it seemed possible to bear. On May 12, Bligh observed: “At length the day came and showed to me a miserable set of beings, full of wants, without anything to relieve them. Some complained of great pain in their bowels, and everyone of having almost lost the use of his limbs. What sleep we got was no ways refreshing, as we were covered with sea and rain.” Botanist Nelson was already weakening.

Bligh discovered the Banks Islands, north of the cannibalistic New Hebrides (now known as Vanuatu). He sketched them, charted their positions, and named them after Sir Joseph Banks. He sailed west toward the Great Barrier Reef and the north of New Holland, as Australia was then known. He wrote on the twenty-third: “The misery we suffered this night exceeded the preceding. The sea flew over us with great force, and kept us bailing with horror and anxiety. At dawn of day I found everyone in a most distressed condition, and I began to fear that another such night would put an end to the lives of several. I served an allowance of two spoonfuls of rum.”

Bligh was forced to reduce rations further. They now received, twice a day, 1/25th of a pound of bread plus the usual quarter-pint of
water and any food they might catch. Several seabirds blundered into the sails, and this raw flesh—including eyes, claws, intestines, and stomach contents—restored a little interest in the weakening men. In navy fashion, the portions were offered by “Who shall have this?” while a man with his back turned called a name.

On the night of May 28, Fryer heard the breakers of the Great Barrier Reef. In daylight, Bligh navigated through a gap in the reefs and they were inside, in relatively protected water, with slight damage only to the rudder. The following day they stopped at an island. It was their first time out of the cramped launch in four weeks. They stumbled onto the sandy beach. Some collapsed, some fainted, others rested on their knees or staggered a few steps before falling. For two days they rested on the island Bligh named Restoration, eating oysters, hearts of cabbage palm, some berries that Nelson thought edible, and fern roots. When they weren't suffering from stomach cramps, they stretched out on the ground to sleep.

In the meantime, Purcell had repaired the rudder. Bligh put to sea hurriedly when a large party of naked Aborigines assembled on the mainland. They carried spears and shouted at the castaways. No one knew whether they were friendly or threatening, so wearily they sailed on, northwestward, inside the reefs. Bligh decided to stop again soon after, for Nelson's health had worsened and others were visibly weakening.

He beached the launch again on Sunday Island, where Nelson, Ledward, and Lebogue crawled up the sand and collapsed. The others argued bitterly about who was to forage for food. “I'm as good a man as you are!” Purcell argued with Bligh. They shouted at each other and Bligh flourished a cutlass. Why not after five weeks cooped up together in a twenty-three-foot boat? Bligh faithfully recorded this incident in his log. The amazing thing is that no one came to blows.

After two days recuperating on Sunday Island, Bligh sailed north to Cape York and on June 3 turned west through Endeavour Strait on a course for Dutch Timor—all from his memory of Cook's charts. In open seas again, they resumed bailing the launch. By then, the weather was hot, but they had enough water to continue the quarter-pint a day.

They caught a fish, their first, but the part given Bligh by “Who shall have this?” made him violently ill. He vomited again and again over the side of the boat, his head burning hot. When he'd stopped retching, he looked at the others, who very worriedly stared at him. Their legs were swollen, their joints bruised, their skin ulcerated. He said how sorry he was that they were all so ill. Boatswain Cole replied: “I really think, sir, that you look worse than anyone in the boat.” There was actual laughter.

Bligh's entry for June 12, 1789, reads: “At three in the morning, with an excess of joy, we discovered Timor bearing from WSW to WNW, and I hauled on a wind to the NNE till daylight.”

At dawn the launch was six miles offshore, so Bligh steered southwest along the coast through yet another gale. He wrote: “It appeared scarce credible to ourselves that in an open boat, and so poorly provided, we should have been able to reach the coast of Timor after leaving Tofoa, having in that time run, by our log, a distance of 3618 miles; and that notwithstanding our extreme distress, no one should have perished in the voyage.”

The eighteen men spent one more night at sea, and the
Bounty
's launch arrived at the town of Coupang (Kupang) on Timor the following morning. It was Sunday, June 14, 1789, forty-seven days after they were cast adrift in the South Pacific, 3,670 miles away.

Although himself sick with fever, the Dutch governor of Timor met Bligh and expressed his sympathy at the mutiny, incredulity at the voyage of the launch, and amazement that only the one man had died. A Dutch surgeon treated their sores, ulcers, cuts, and swellings, and they were given the only uninhabited house in Coupang in which to recuperate. Bligh ordered Fryer to give his bed to Nelson, who was still desperately ill. Bligh was determined to report the mutiny as soon as possible, but he had to wait for a ship to take him home.

Bligh wrote to his wife from Coupang, seven weeks after the mutiny: “Besides this young villain [Christian] see young Heywood, one of the ringleaders, and besides him see Stewart joined with him…. I have now reason to curse the day I ever knew Christian or a Heywood or indeed a Manks man.”

Nelson succumbed to the fever, which also killed the Dutch governor. He died on July 20, mourned by Bligh as a friend and as the only non-naval witness to the mutiny. After transport by ship to Batavia (Jakarta), all the castaways came down with fever, Hall the next to die. Bligh had brought his crew through an incredible voyage only to see them perish ashore. The first ship departing Batavia had only three berths. Bligh had to take one, but who else? He chose Samuel and Smith, ex-
Britannia
men, knowing the choice might condemn others to death.

It was so. Within a fortnight, Elphinston and Linkletter died. Lamb died during the voyage home, while Ledward's ship disappeared. Bligh had brought seventeen men safely over 3,670 miles, yet only eleven reached Britain. He, Samuel, and Smith arrived in Portsmouth on March 14, 1790.

In October, after the surviving launch crew returned, Lieutenant Bligh was court-martialed at Portsmouth for the loss of his ship. He was honorably acquitted. Purcell was court-martialed for refusing to obey orders and insubordination. He was found guilty and reprimanded.

William Bligh became a national hero for his brilliant navigation and command of that amazing open-boat voyage, the greatest ever completed. He was promoted to captain at last.

Many years passed before the fate of the mutineers was known. Bligh thought he had heard them cry “Huzza for Otaheite!” Morrison wrote that they were keen to return to Otaheite, where “they might get weomen without force.”

 

The
Bounty
had sailed first to Toobouai (Tubuai) Island, 350 miles south of Otaheite, arriving there on May 24, 1789. They stayed a week there before sailing to Otaheite for livestock—and women. Lies were told to deceive King Tynah, and in June the
Bounty
left with livestock, nine women, eight men, seven boys, and one girl. The mutineers lived for three months on Toobouai, fighting among themselves and fighting the islanders. In one battle, sixty-six islanders were killed. It was not the life of ease the mutineers had desired,
and in September the different factions agreed to return to Otaheite.

In the
Bounty
's final visit to Otaheite, Christian stayed aboard. The four loyal men, most of the Tahitians, and twelve mutineers went ashore, while other island women came aboard in welcome. According to Tahitian woman Teehuteatuaonoa (known as Jenny), who escaped from Pitcairn Island in 1817, all but three of seventeen Tahitian women were kidnapped by Christian when he cut the
Bounty
's anchor cable and sailed from Otaheite. Those kidnappings are confirmed in the Pitcairn journal of Midshipman Young.

In January 1790, after four months searching for a hideaway, Christian located Pitcairn Island, marked on the charts as “position doubtful.” The ship was stripped of valuables—including the chronometer and Christian's Bible—and then burned. There would be no going back, no change of mind.

The twelve mutineers left at Otaheite included Heywood, Stewart, Churchill, and Morrison. Churchill was murdered by messmate Thompson, who was in turn sacrificed by the Tahitians to their gods as a punishment.

A year later, in 1791, Captain Edwards in the frigate
Pandora
apprehended those fourteen who remained at Otaheite. Assisting the search for the mutineers were Hayward and Hallett of the
Bounty
's launch. Edwards locked loyal men and mutineers alike in a wooden cage on the
Pandora
's quarterdeck so that there could be no subversion of his crew. There was no sign of the others, and after three months of searching, he set sail for Britain. It was to be a troubled journey.