Coconut Chaos

by Diana Souhami

  I hoped that in making the same journey as I, Lady Myre would not invade the solitary, dreamy lonely place in my mind. I feared that like my mother and Verity, she threatened to oust my new-found interest in eighteenth-century mariners who traversed the world when it was an unknown globe of wonders and adventures.

  14

  Bligh wrote in his log that the mutineers called ‘Huzzah for Tahiti’ as they jeered at his plight and turned from their crime. That they sailed in the wrong direction – west-northwest – he took as a feint to deceive him. But Christian knew he’d find no safety on Tahiti. A ship would seek him and take him in irons to England to a sensational trial and a public hanging with his family vilified. And the Tahitians would view with suspicion his return without Bligh. Suspicion led to retribution. He knew how ominous Polynesian hostility could be: the clapping of conch shells, the grouping of pirogues, the slinging of stones with the force of cannon, the hacking to pieces of a man deemed an enemy. There was fear in the Polynesian soul of these light-skinned, brazen strangers who killed with gunfire while hidden from sight. Staying alive was more important to Christian than meeting again with one or several Tahitian women whose names he’d not learned to say.

  He took command of the Bounty. He was its captain now. He occupied Bligh’s cabin and wore Bligh’s clothes: his dimity waistcoats, silk stockings and shirts, silver buckles and nankeen breeches. He took Bligh’s sword, pistols and fowling piece. Crucially, he appropriated his charts, maps, notes and books. Among these were James Cook’s Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, John Hawkesworth’s Account of Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, William Dampier’s Discourse of Voyages and Discourse on Winds, both George Anson’s and Louis Bougainville’s Voyage Round the World and Alexander Dalrymple’s Voyages and Discoveries in the Pacific Ocean.

  These works had informed Bligh’s skill as a navigator. With them Christian had enough reference to find his way to wherever he chose to go. He also had plans of harbours, two sextants, a spyglass, three compasses and books on The Scurvy, The Health of Seamen, Hot Climates, on Euclid, chemistry, and electricity. He had David Hume’s History of England and the Bounty’s Bible and Prayer Book.

  The Bounty was on no commercial venture now. Christian ordered that any two men in conversation be joined by a third. He pocketed the keys to the liquor store to avoid drunkenness and to safeguard the supply of port, brandy and three hundred gallons of Tenerife wine. And with hatred for Bligh he had the entire cargo of breadfruit plants thrown into the sea.

  Christian’s survival now depended on lies and cunning. He’d taken a coconut to quench his thirst and consequences followed. He needed a place to hide. He chose the island of Tubuai as his destination. His plan was to go there to reconnoitre and map out an area of settlement, then return to Tahiti with some contrived explanation, abduct women and builders, and collect essential supplies.

  Charted by Cook, Tubuai was 398 miles south of Tahiti and circled by a barrier reef with only a single pass through it. Christian sighted it on the afternoon of 28 May 1789, a month after the mutiny. He sent an armed cutter, with the midshipman George Stewart in charge, to explore the opening through the reef. Stewart was a small-faced, dark-eyed, skinny man, with a heart and arrows tattooed on his left arm. Tubuaians in their canoes approached to guide him. That done, they pilfered what they could from his boat. Stewart terrified them with gunfire and they sped to the shore and the cover of trees.

  Next day the Bounty passed through the gap in the reef and anchored in the lagoon. Christian observed the stretch of the island, the wide lagoon, the fringe of silver sands and coconut palms. Here was a lush place of fertile valleys, concealing mountains, streams and waterfalls, another Paradise of the World.

  Tubuaian tribesmen grouped on the sand armed with stones, spears and lances. They blew into conch shells and approached the Bounty in canoes. A chief, an old man, ventured on board and marvelled at the ship. Christian gave him nails and red feathers. The chief seemed honoured but was afraid of the creatures he’d never seen before – pigs, dogs and goats, the stench of them and the despairing noise they made.

  In another canoe young women garlanded with flowers sang, clapped, moved in rhythm and enticed the sailors who responded with beads and propositions. Fifty more canoes quickly circled the ship. The men in them blew conch shells, beat drums, clambered on to the ship and took what they could. One grabbed the ship’s buoy, another the main compass. Christian snatched the compass back and lashed at the man with a rope. The islanders leapt into the water or back into their canoes. They made a terrific noise, waved lances, showered the ship with spears and stones and drove their canoes at it. The mutineers responded with fire from pistols and muskets. Within minutes a dozen Tubuaians, among them a garlanded woman, lay dead or dying in the bay.

  Christian then rowed to the shore. He explored the concealing mountains, the lush wooded valleys, the protection of the reef, the rich larder of fish and fruit. He tried to offer the islanders reparative gifts of axes, goats and pigs, but they ran away when he approached. Undeterred, he kept to his plan to return to Tahiti to procure provisions and women, then come to this perfect place to build a fortress as a settlement. The Tubuaians renamed the bay where he’d arrived the Bay of Blood.

  15

  I had a cabin to myself, the ‘master’s cabin’, adjacent to Captain Dutt’s. Pandal the steward showed me to it. He rightly thought it grand, with its private bathroom, wardrobe, seascapes on the walls, sofa, reading lamps, fridge filled with bottled water, juices and cola. In an opposite room was a Zanussi washing machine and tumble-dryer. Pandal smiled with pride and kept asking, ‘Good?’ I didn’t know a word of Hindi. ‘Good,’ I repeated. ‘Good. Very good.’

  Captain Dutt was plump, with small hands and feet and delicate gestures. He wore a baseball cap and when he was worried the skin on his scalp wriggled, which made the cap move backwards and forwards. He was thirty-eight but looked older. He pined to be home in Mumbai with his wife and eight-year-old daughter. He’d joined the Tundra Princess seven months previously in Cape Town and was scheduled to fly home from Panama.

  He was agitated by the arrival of Lady Myre and me, the flu vaccine that had to be refrigerated, the prospect of delays and complications because of the Pitcairn stop. He wanted a swift, trouble-free journey, but his deep courtesy prevailed.

  Melancholy was behind all he said, a disappointment with his fate. He was tired of the constraints and demands of life at sea. He spoke of missed opportunities and the regrets these provoked. ‘We have to seize our chances,’ he said. ‘Our opportunities are few.’ His head jiggled with memories. He’d earned the rank of captain when he was twenty-nine. Three years ago his employers had promised him a shore job, but it hadn’t materialised and now he’d heard it wouldn’t. He was a good captain, so it was in their interest to keep him in charge of a ship. He needed more crew but was allowed only the minimum. The workload was tiring for a complement of twenty-two men and they had little rest. And this ship had a broken bilge keel, bent on one side, missing on the other, which made it roll to starboard if the weather was bad. Extra vigilance was required to keep the kiwi fruit from damage. A repair would mean putting the ship in dry dock at great expense. He’d make two more voyages for this company then leave. He’d take a year’s course in Cardiff then work in marine insurance.

  He told me I might send and receive email from his computer via the ship’s satellite. If I wrote out what I wanted to send, he’d sort it for me. I was free to go to the bridge to look at the navigation charts and radar screens. I’d eat with him and his officers in their mess room. If I didn’t like Indian food his cook, who was from Goa and very good, was happy to serve continental food too.

  From the quarterdeck I watched two pilot boats tow the Tundra Princess from the quayside at Tauranga to the deep water of the Pacific. It was a cold late-afternoon. A mile out, the clutter of the harbour receded and the wind and swell picked up. The pilots waved as they cast off the ropes and tu
rned their boats to the shore. The sea looked dark blue and a reflection shimmered over it of the setting sun. Captain Dutt told me the horizon was sixteen miles away and that was the limit of our vision.

  Nothing was familiar except the excitement and melancholy of departure. I thought how some people have difficulty reconciling their inner self with the outer world, and perhaps I was such a person. I wondered why I didn’t live by an abiding connection to someone or some place when I so yearned for home. I drafted an email for Verity and my brothers: ‘I am safely at sea. My quarters are very comfortable. You can email me if you want.’

  Supper in the officers’ mess began at six. There was chicken curry, daal and vegetables. Men drifted in, ate what they wanted, then left. Da Silva, the chief engineer, welcomed me. He was from Goa and a Catholic. He told me that most of the crew were Hindus and that there were no Muslims on board. He had sleek black hair and knife-edge creases in his trousers. He crossed himself before he ate and said he had to have meat or fish with every meal. His cousin had recently been killed in a motorbike accident, so he wore a black sleeve band of mourning. His wife and daughter were in hospital when this happened. His daughter had dysentery after eating potato balls bought from a roadside stall, and a bolt had lodged in his wife’s head when her pressure cooker exploded. She had to have thirty stitches.

  Lady Myre didn’t listen to these familial troubles. She wore a luminous yellow lifejacket over a puce T-shirt and avidly ate her pot noodles. She kept summoning Pandal for chapatti and fruit and she talked to the second engineer, Harminder Palsingh, who was from the Punjab, about her time in Calcutta with the viceroy and her punkah wallah.

  There was a mood of order and reserve among the company in which I found myself. Harminder piled his plate with food and had a kirby grip in his beard. Both Da Silva and the first officer, Jaswinder Singh, were silent when he talked and didn’t look at him. Jaswinder’s wife Soni was the third woman on board. They’d been married two years and for the first year he’d been away at sea. This time she was sailing with him. She’d put on a stone in weight after seven months on the ship, with three meals a day and no exercise. She’d never been separated from her parents before and was terribly homesick. At home she had a guru who taught her how to pray, and she missed his guidance. Each day she offered different prayers for the ruling god of the day: Krishna, Kali, Shiva, Shakti, Indra, Brahma and Ganesh, the one that looked like an elephant. Her life, she said, was in service to her gods, her guru and her husband. Above all things she wanted to please them.

  Three days a week she ate only vegetarian food in deference to the gods that appreciated this. She offered to show me the devotional paintings she’d done on this voyage. She seemed happy with her husband and respectful of him, though he shared none of her religious interests. The polite reserve between them was like liberation from the test of intimacy.

  Captain Dutt sat at the head of the table and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. He ate only orange segments, so I wondered why he was overweight. He explained that on Wednesday 7 July the ship would cross the International Date Line, which meant we’d have two Wednesdays. This news discombobulated Soni, who would like to have consulted her guru as to whether she should eat only vegetables two days running in deference to Wednesday’s god.

  After supper Lady Myre went to the officers’ mess to watch a video of Ben Hur. She asked me to join her, but I said I was going to my cabin to work. What work was that? she asked, and the question discomfited me. Two A4 sheets of email, marked for my attention, had been slipped under the door. One was from my brother. Mother was now in Sunset View on the Aurora floor. Her room was pleasant, though small, and the staff were sensible, but her delusional state had worsened. She wouldn’t take her medication or eat any food because she thought she was being poisoned. She’d thrown her washing things out of the window then accused the staff of stealing them. They felt they couldn’t cope with her. She kept phoning 999 to say she’d been beaten up. With guilt I felt it ought be in my power to put things right, though I knew that wasn’t true.

  Verity emailed that she was pleased I was safe at sea. She was taking a research job in Wivenhoe and would move there within a month. Our stuff would be stored and she was glad I had Mill Cottage to go to in the interim.

  Work seemed a refuge. I made a chronological list of important dates:

  1754

  9 September. William Bligh born in Plymouth.

  1764

  25 September. Fletcher Christian born in Cumbria.

  1767

  2 July. Captain Philip Carteret, in HMS Swallow discovers Pitcairn Island.

  1779

  14 February. Bligh sees Captain Cook hacked to pieces by islanders in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii.

  1780

  May. Fletcher Christian’s mother declared bankrupt. She moves her family to Douglas on the Isle of Man.

  June. Bligh returns home to Douglas after the fateful journey with Cook.

  1781

  4 February. Bligh marries Betsy Betham.

  1785

  July. Christian writes to Bligh and asks for a place as midshipman.

  1786–7

  Bligh and Christian voyage together.

  1787

  23 December. The Bounty sails from Spithead for Tahiti.

  1788

  2 March. Bligh makes Christian his acting lieutenant and executive officer.

  28 March. Terrible storms at Cape Horn.

  22 April. Bligh gives up trying to round the Horn. He turns the Bounty and heads for Tahiti via Africa and the Cape of Good Hope.

  26 October. The Bounty arrives at Matavai Bay, Tahiti.

  November. Breadfruit potting begins.

  9 December. Dr Huggan the surgeon dies of alcohol poisoning.

  1789

  January. The Bounty nearly wrecked as it runs aground when shifting harbour in Tahiti. Anchor cable cut, probably by a Tahitian.

  5 January. Charles Churchill, William Muspratt and John Millward desert, but are recaptured.

  February. Stored sails are found to be rotten. Discipline erodes. Resentment at Bligh’s contempt and floggings.

  4 April. The Bounty sails from Tahiti for the West Indies.

  22 April. The Bounty anchors at Nomuka Island for supplies. The islanders are hostile to Christian and steal the anchor of his boat.

  27 April. Coconut Day. Christian makes raft. Plans to jump ship.

  28 April. Mutiny. Bligh and eighteen others set adrift in an open boat.

  I doodled little boxes on my chronology. In my smart cabin I couldn’t see the ocean, though I heard the boom from the engine room and felt the ship juddering against the waves. I pondered that it was a misapprehension to think the past could be discarded. Christian consigned his captain to the ocean, murdered Tubuaians, then supposed he could move away and start again. But he took mutiny and murder with him. He was not in a state of grace, though he might have hoped to find his new world pure.

  And I … Historically daughters cared for their deranged ancient mothers. And it wasn’t unreasonable of Verity to want a settled relationship, a partner to depend on and to wake up beside.

  Wanting company, I braved Ben Hur and Lady Myre. She was sprawled alone on a leather sofa, had turned down the video’s sound and was listening to her iPod. ‘Don’t you love Charlton Heston’s legs?’ she shouted. ‘I’d die for legs like his.’ I tried to watch soundless images of chariots and men in togas, but they enhanced my sense of confusion. ‘The only line I like is “Your whole life is a miracle”,’ Lady Myre yelled. ‘It makes me cry. I don’t listen to the rest of it.’

  Up on the bridge Captain Dutt worried about the weather. He’d received a shipping-forecast fax that warned of imminent gales and violent turbulence. He took off his baseball cap and his hair jiggled. He showed me the storm on the radar: swirling flecks of yellow, like in a kaleidoscope. We were heading into it. To avoid it, he’d have to alter course and go north then east, which would add two days to the
journey to Pitcairn. He spoke again, and with anxiety, of eight thousand tonnes of kiwi fruit with a value of ten million dollars. He told me to hold on to the banister, go back to my cabin and be careful not to fall.

  The Tundra Princess began to roll mightily. I banged against cabin furniture but knew that even with a damaged bilge keel this ship was untroubled by a force eight gale. I lay on my bed for safety and thought of the Bounty on its seemingly mundane breadfruit mission to Tahiti. The storms at Cape Horn … storms of wind, hail, sleet and tremendous waves, where the crew kept a fire alive day and night to dry their clothes, and the ship ‘began to complain’ and needed pumping every hour, and the decks were so leaky that hammocks had to be dried in the great cabin where all the plant pots were. I thought of the crew’s relief when, after struggling for thirty days in this tempestuous ocean, Bligh turned the ship and headed east for the Cape of Good Hope. Bligh had no radar, email or satellite phone – no communication with anyone except a prayer to a god who was not often there …

  Raja Arjunan, the second officer, knocked on my door with a lifejacket and a safety familiarisation card. The radar screen showed we were in the middle of the storm, but nothing bad would happen, Raja said, because the gods were caring for this ship. But if there was an emergency I should muster on the boat deck by lifeboat number one. I’d be given a thermal suit and high-protein biscuits. The worst weather experience he’d known had been on a voyage from India to New York transporting marble for the twin towers memorial. A forecast from America warned of a hurricane. They’d gone north to avoid it but it changed direction and they steered into its eye.