I’d arrived at my chosen destination no matter how random the reasons for choosing it. With all that voyaging there was now no turning back. ‘Hello,’ Rosie Christian said with a relief and smile I echoed. ‘So glad you’ve made it. In this terrible weather, all this way and after all this time.’ I sensed her kindness, that common bond, and I realised with disappointment that I’d made a mistake in my choice of blouse.
III
ON PITCAIRN
The interplay of different rhythms produces a special version of chaos
25
Bligh returned to England in March 1790 to a swathe of publicity. He’d been away two years. His account of the mutiny was unequivocal. He told Sir Joseph Banks he’d have had to be ‘more than human’ to have foreseen what happened. ‘To the last I never lost that presence of mind or professional skill which you have been pleased to allow was the first cause of my being honoured with your notice … My Character & Honor is Spotless,’ he wrote. ‘My Conduct has been free of blame.’ He said if he’d had commissioned officers and trained marines, ‘most likely the affair would never have happened. I had not a spirited or brave fellow about me.’
He singled out Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood as the main culprits. He’d every day
rendered them some service … It is incredible! These very young Men I placed every confidence in, yet these great Villains joined with the most able men in the ship, got possession of the Arms and took the Bounty from me with Huzzas for Otaheite. I have now every reason to curse the day I ever knew a Christian or a Heywood.
Bligh capitalised on his ordeal. On 1 April the London Chronicle advertised publication of Captain Bligh’s Journal of his Wonderful Escape at Sea in an Open Boat for 49 Days. George Nicol, ‘Bookseller to His Majesty’, published the first part with the title A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty; and the Subsequent Voyage of Part of the Crew in the Ship’s Boat from Tofua, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in the East Indies. A sequel published anonymously promised ‘Secret Anecdotes of the Otaheitean Women Whose Charms it is thought Influenced the Pirates in the Commission of the Daring Conspiracy’. At the Royalty Theatre there was a sell-out musical The Pirates, Or the Calamities of Captain Bligh. Ralph Wewitzer starred as Bligh and Miss Daniels sang ‘Loose Ev’ry Sail’. A less successful musical followed, Tar Against Perfume or The Sailor Preferred.
Neither Heywood’s mother nor his sister Nessy believed their Peter could be guilty of mutiny or dishonour. He’d been fifteen when he joined the Bounty. Mrs Heywood wrote an imploring, desperate letter to Bligh on behalf of her son. Bligh’s reply was nasty:
Madam
I received your Letter this Day & feel for you very much, being perfectly sensible of the extreme Distress you must suffer from the Conduct of your Son Peter. His baseness is beyond all Description, but I hope you will endeavour to prevent the Loss of him, heavy as the misfortune is, from afflicting you too severely. I imagine he is, with the rest of the Mutineers, returned to Otaheite.
The Admiralty authorised a frigate, the Pandora, with twenty-four guns and 160 men, under the command of Captain Edward Edwards, to seek out the mutineers. Edwards was to sail first to Tahiti and if the men weren’t there, or only some of them, he was to call at the Society and Friendly Islands and other islands in the Pacific to round up as many of the ‘delinquents’ as he could discover. ‘You are’, his orders read, ‘to keep the mutineers as closely confined as may preclude all possibility of their escaping, that they may be brought home to undergo the punishment due to their demerits.’
That punishment was hanging. Article 19 of the Naval Articles of War was unambiguous. ‘If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make or endeavour to make any mutinous assembly upon any pretence whatsoever, every person offending herein and being convicted thereof by the sentence of the court-martial shall suffer DEATH.’
Edwards was also to fulfil the ancillary task that had been assigned to Bligh: ‘To survey the Endeavour Straits to facilitate the passage of vessels to Botany Bay’.
Bligh’s own court martial for the loss of the Bounty was a necessary formality. It was held on board HMS Royal William at Spithead on 22 October before Admiral Samuel Barrington and eleven captains. Asked by the court if he had ‘objection or complaint’ against any of the men who survived the open-boat journey, Bligh said he had none, except minor instances of impudence and non-compliance from Purcell the carpenter. In turn, under cross-examination, all the men swore they’d no objection or complaint concerning Bligh, they’d known nothing of the mutiny before it occurred and they’d done everything in their power to recover the ship. John Fryer, the master, kept quiet about his loathing of Bligh. He said he’d tried to reason with Christian as he held a bayonet over Bligh, whose hands were tied, and that Christian had told him to hold his tongue and said he’d been in hell for a week. Midshipman John Hallett described how Bligh was held at knifepoint, ‘naked all to his shirt and night cap’, and how his servant ‘was ordered to go below for his trowsers and to haul them on for him’.
The testimony was consistent and the court concluded that ‘the Bounty was violently and forcibly seized by the said Fletcher Christian and certain other mutineers’. They honourably acquitted Lieutenant Bligh, and those tried with him, of responsibility for her loss. The only punishment meted out was a reprimand to Purcell for not complying with orders while on Tahiti: refusing to hoist water out of the ship’s hold when instructed to do so and refusing to cut a grinding stone for one of the chiefs.
Cleared of all wrongdoing, Bligh was extolled as a hero and officially promoted. He remained on full pay from the Admiralty from the time of his return until the trial. He was presented to King George the Third who asked how his cheek had come to be scarred. Bligh told him it was from a childhood accident when his father, in their orchard in Plymouth, had thrown a hatchet at a horse to try to make it turn so that he could catch it.
On 7 February 1791 Bligh put in an expenses claim to the Admiralty of £283/1/6d for possessions lost with the Bounty. This included £47/0/6d for his personal books and charts, £121/12/0d for his clothes, and £59/13/6d for liquor. On 15 April he set sail in HMS Providence with another Admiralty commission to take breadfruit from Tahiti to Britain’s starving slaves in the West Indies. This time he had the rank and pay of captain.
26
Rosie stayed at the jetty to help unload the island’s sodden supplies. Smiley took me up the Hill of Difficulty on his quad bike. I gripped the seat and my polythene-covered bag. Red mud splattered as Murray had warned. Beyond the noise of the bike and the swirling rain was the stillness of the land after the turbulent sea. There was a tropical warmth, though this was Pitcairn’s winter.
Smiley had been three months on the island, supervising the building of the prison. He wanted to finish and go home to Christchurch, but now the required wood and materials and the perimeter fence were bound for Panama. ‘Here it is.’ He stopped his bike by what looked like a Swiss chalet. ‘The guys who stand to be holed up in it are building it with me. Now there’s nothing for them to do. It won’t ever be finished on time.’
It was a smart building in tongue-and-groove, with a deck round it and individual front doors to what I supposed were the six cells. ‘It’s really nice,’ Smiley said, with a good workman’s pride. ‘Each unit’s got its own shower, basin, urinal and power points. It’s all built to EEC standards. It’s much better than the Pitcairners’ houses.’
I asked why the defendants had agreed to build it, as if digging their own graves.
‘It’s good money,’ he said. ‘They figure if they don’t get it, some outsider will. The British government pays. Anyway, they won’t ever be banged up in it, they’ll get off on a technicality. And even if they do get sent down, they’ll be allowed out to work the longboats and go fishing and whatever. The island can’t manage without them.’
Prison warders were to be brought from New Zealand to supervi
se them. ‘It’ll cost,’ he said, ‘they’ll have to charter a ship, and then there’s accommodation for them and food and everything.’
It all seemed bizarre. He then talked about quad bikes – how they were the only transport and the only possible way to get over Pitcairn’s rough terrain. He said they were inherently unstable and going down hill in the rain, with the wheels all caked with mud, was a gas. He knew how to pull a wheelie and loop the loop but he wouldn’t show me right now.
We drove on. ‘That’s October Christian’s house’ – he waved at a derelict shed. ‘He was Fletcher Christian’s son and guess when he was born. That’s the shop’ – he waved again. ‘It’s open Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour. That’s the church, that’s the school, that’s the post office and that’s the courthouse.’ Then we stopped outside a low-built wooden house. ‘And that’s about it really. That’s Pitcairn. You wait here till Rosie arrives. I’ve got to taxi more stuff. Nice to meet you. Bye.’
I stood among ferns and coconut palms. Beyond the house was a tangle of banana trees, passion fruit and yams. Bees buzzed round hives. The sky had changed to blue in an instant. Semi-feral cats scampered to a safe distance then sat and watched, hoping I’d provide food. The front door was open and I looked into a hallway stuffed with coats, boxes, boots, baskets, papers, tools, spades, sticks, bottles, all tinged with red mud. I felt alarm for I like to live in an orderly way. I realised I equated island life with simplicity and an absence of possessions. At the side of the house was a mass of washing hanging under a tin awning. A wood fire burned between stones to heat a blackened tank from which pipes ran into the house.
Another quad bike, top-heavy with Lady Myre’s luggage, drew up driven by Ed the Scottish policeman. His accent was broad and I wondered if the Pitcairners managed to understand him. As he unloaded her cases and boxes he said he was leaving next time the Braveheart, the government chartered transport ship, called. He’d done three months’ community policing on the island and he too wanted to go home.
Lady Myre arrived on Rosie’s bike. She was clutching her round the waist and had wrapped her feet in bin bags. She looked bedraggled and her pizzazz had deserted her.
‘What’s my luggage doing here?’ she said. ‘I told them to take it straight to my hotel.’
‘What hotel’s that?’ Rosie asked.
‘The Beachcomber, Waikawa,’ Lady Myre said.
‘I don’t know what this is about,’ said Rosie. ‘There’s no hotel on Pitcairn.’
‘My agent booked it from Kensington.’ Lady Myre sounded frosty. ‘With a sea view and my own jacuzzi.’
‘It’s a room in my house or a room in Suzanne’s house,’ Rosie said. ‘Shirley must have told you that in Auckland. Thirty-five dollars a night including breakfast and dinner. Fifty if you want all the tours and a midday picnic.’
‘I don’t know any Shirley,’ Lady Myre said, and I wondered again about her mental state. ‘There’s a misunderstanding. I’ve a reservation at the Beachcomber.’
A black cloud scudded into the blue sky and again there was a sudden and terrific deluge of rain. ‘Come inside,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s here or here. It’s my house or the rain. There ain’t no hotel or jacuzzi on Pitcairn.’
27
A mile offshore from Pitcairn Fletcher Christian ordered that the Bounty be emptied and stripped. Everything of conceivable use was unloaded to the boats, then to a raft made from the ship’s hatches and hauled by ropes. Animals, wood, plants, books, gold ducats, hammocks, rum, wine – all were dragged to the stony beach where no boat could moor. The contents of the ship and the produce of the island were all these colonisers would have. Armaments, the cannon, knives, axes, tools, masts, the forge, sails, yardages, tinder boxes, compasses, fishing gear – all were carried up the Hill of Difficulty to the Edge, a flat bit of land overlooking what they called Bounty Bay.
The mood of the community was of factional resentment and deep distrust. Even while Christian was reconnoitring the island John Mills had tried to persuade the others to sail off to Tahiti and leave him stranded without supplies. Christian wanted to keep the ship’s bare hull. The others suspected he’d refurbish it, move on and maroon the rest of them, so on 23 January 1790, less than a week after their arrival, Matthew Quintal torched it. He was vengeful towards Christian, who on Tubuai had accused him of mutiny and drunkenness, threatened him with a pistol and put him in irons. The women wept as they watched the Bounty burn. Into the flames went their chance of returning home.
Christian warned all those with him that death would be the penalty for trying to escape. They were to be invisible to passing ships. At first they all camped in tents made from sail-cloth. Goats, pigs and hens were let loose to multiply. Melons, plantains, sweet potatoes, arrowroot, bananas and yams were planted. William Brown, who’d trained at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, had the practical skills to establish crops. Edward Young kept a journal, subsequently lost, in which he wrote of building houses, fencing in and cultivating gardens, fishing, catching birds and cooking Polynesian fashion on hot stones in the ground.
The mutineers – the ‘whites’ – divided the entire island’s usable land among themselves and claimed all its fishing points. Each took a woman for his own use. The six Polynesian men – the ‘blacks’ – were denied any rights. They were used as slaves like the West Indians who might have been the recipients of the breadfruit cargo. Their food was not as choice, they inhabited inferior quarters, were beaten if they disobeyed and accorded only the three women not wanted by their masters.
Their indigenous expertise was needed though: for building, farming and dyeing cloth, for identifying edible plants and fruits. They knew the disposition of the seasons, the lore of the weather, the habits of birds and fish. They were the architects of the wooden houses, which were double-storeyed, rectangular and thatched with palm branches laced to rafters. One side was removable in hot weather. Downstairs was the living and eating area. A trapdoor and ladder led to the bedroom.
They were afflicted and traduced and they had two options: to build a boat and sail away on a moonlit night when the sea was calm, or to murder their oppressors.
28
There was a room each for Lady Myre and me. I conceded that the larger must be hers. It had a chest of drawers, patterned lino, a bedspread with red lilies on it, an array of teddy bears wrapped in cellophane on a pelmet above a small window. By the time we’d brought in all her luggage there was no room to move.
Rosie went back to the jetty to help sort more stuff. I put my rucksack in my room. There was a bare bulb above a single bed and on the wall a framed print of a bearded saint and magazine cut-outs of three puppies and two cats. I turned down the floral sheet, peered at the mattress and feared its history. There was a pink net curtain at the window and a chair with yellow stuffing coming out of it. I fixed a hook in the ceiling above the bed, hung my mosquito net, sprayed the room and myself with mosquito repellent, sprinkled bug powder in the bed and in my silk sleeping bag, put purifying tablets into my water bottle and arranged my neat possessions: a black notebook, my Pelikan pencil, Swiss army knife, compass, camera, travel clock. I opened the window and looked out on a tangle of fallen branches and terns that swirled and swooped. There was the hum of insects and the sound of sawing timber, perhaps from the building of the prison.
I explored the house. Lady Myre had assumed a jacuzzi and room service. I’d anticipated tranquil simplicity: crude wood structures and vernal beauty. I’d overlooked a basic Pitcairn rule: discard nothing. All the grunge of human life was stored. Everything might have a lateral use: broken freezers, boxes that once contained soap powder, tins that once contained beans, empty sacks, bottles and plastic tubs, bubble-wrap, flex, cardboard, sticks, broken chairs, carpet remnants, glass, magazines, building boards – all of it might come in handy one day. And then there were all the provisions because the ship of plenty might never arrive: sacks of flour, cartons of everlasting milk, freezers filled with food that f
roze and thawed and froze and thawed. Sell-by dates were a foible of another place. Self-sufficiency meant anticipating every eventuality.
The house was unfinished, though its basic structure was intact. Doors, banisters, dowelling, railing for an upper terrace might all perhaps one day arrive. There was a bucket to catch the rainwater that came through the roof, flexes that trailed to ham radios, fans, fires. There were stacks of Pitcairn T-shirts, woven baskets, and carved wooden curios of dolphins and the Bounty to sell to passengers if and when the cruise ship came.
Everything was a habitat for some creature. Cats and kittens shot through. Cockroaches paraded in dark corners. Small retiring beasts scuffled in the storage and left their marks. Black, noiseless, indigenous mosquitoes sucked new blood undeterred by Deet. There was an oppressive humidity even in what passed as winter, a wet, fusty-smelling heat, loved by insects and rodents and which made mould grow.
Back in my room I felt dejected. The mutineers and Polynesian settlers had gone from my mind. I thought how buildings insulate us and how I wanted to impose my own marks and style and usurp all other occupants of this space.
Lady Myre came in with the hypodermics and flu vaccines Captain Dutt had entrusted to her. She asked if I’d ever been a user and if I thought whatever it was would get her through this. I took the vaccines from her and told her to have courage. She was all in white except for a scarlet headband. She eyed my mosquito net and asked if she might share my bed because she was afraid of murder. I said I didn’t think that was a good idea and we must try to adjust to the customs of the island. She said she was in a real pickle and did I think God had a reason for sending her to the end of nowhere. I said I thought not, but that she should’ve done her research better if she’d really wanted to go to Picton. ‘You must’ve known,’ I said. ‘Enough people must’ve told you.’ She made a strange sort of noise as if blowing little kisses at me, and vowed she wasn’t going to let me out of her sight. Fate had sent her not to Garth but to me.
Coconut Chaos Page 9