Coconut Chaos

by Diana Souhami

  The fracas of the mutiny had happened three and a half years previously in minutes of confusion and fear. No one seemed clear of its essential cause, nor was this dwelled on. Many of the prisoners were illiterate. All had endured hardship. They were at the mercy of the recollections of their witnesses – the men who’d survived the open boat journey with Bligh. Only Peter Heywood had the benefit of legal guidance.

  Witnesses were called singly to testify. They appeared according to rank – warrant officers then midshipmen. From their recall, a picture of that distant morning emerged: of swearing against Bligh – ‘Damn his eyes’, ‘Shoot the bugger’, ‘The boat’s too good for him’; of Christian lamenting that he’d been in hell; of Bligh without his trousers, his hands tied behind him; of a scramble to get things for survival – water, food and clothes.

  There were confused accounts of who’d been armed and who hadn’t, but Thomas Ellison and Thomas Burkett were both found guilty of being armed with muskets while aiding Fletcher Christian to take the ship. Ellison was fifteen when he’d signed up with the Bounty as an able seaman. He was living in Deptford at the time, needed employment, and the ship was there. He was five feet three, with dark hair and had his name and 25 October 1788 – the date he’d arrived in Tahiti – tattooed on his right arm. The charge against him was that, at Christian’s bidding, he left the helm of the Bounty, picked up a cutlass, ran towards Bligh and called, ‘Damn him, I’ll be sentinel over him.’ To the court he said:

  I hope your honour will take my inexperienced youth into consideration as I never did or meant any harm to anyone, much more to my Commander to whose care I was recommended. He took great pains with me and spoke to Mr Samuel his clerk to teach me writing and arithmetic, and I believe would have taught me further had not this happened. I must have been very ungrateful if I had in any respect assisted in this unhappy affair against my Commander and benefactor, so I hope honorable gentlemen you’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.

  Burkett was five feet nine with brown hair, many tattoos and a face pitted with smallpox scars. He could read and write and he’d left a son on Tahiti. It was testified that he held a knife over Bligh and helped drag him from his cabin.

  John Millward was also indicted for being armed, though evidence against him was confused. He was twenty-two at the time of the mutiny, five feet five, ‘very much Tatowed in Different parts’ and the son of an illiterate sailor. To the judges he said he’d only taken hold of a cutlass and pistols because he was afraid to disobey Christian’s orders. He’d thought Fryer intended to retake the ship. He’d thrown his jacket into the loyalists’ boat for his messmate George Simpson, ‘with my prayers for their protection’. He said he didn’t know how he could have acted differently.

  James Morrison’s defence was that Bligh begged him not to get into the boat, because it was so overloaded. He said he’d handed down cutlasses, pork and gourds of water, and Bligh had shaken his hand and promised he’d do him justice in England. John Fryer, the master, praised him as a steady, sober, attentive man and denied he was armed, but another witness swore he saw him with a cutlass. ‘Amidst such Crowd, Tumult and Confusion might not the Arms in the hands of another wedged by my side easily be thought to be in my possession?’ Morrison asked the court. A third witness said that as the boat was veered astern Morrison had called out, ‘If my friends inquire after me, tell them I am somewhere in the South Seas.’

  With William Muspratt, too, there was uncertain evidence as to whether he was armed. Two witnesses said he was. And he’d deserted while on Tahiti. He was tattooed, had a scarred chin and a black beard. His father had hung himself from an apple tree the year before the Bounty sailed and an inquest had ruled the cause to be lunacy. Muspratt, like Morrison, claimed Bligh asked him not to get into the overcrowded boat. He tried to discredit all the evidence as too contradictory to be reliable, and said it was a great misfortune no one had tried to rescue the ship. ‘It might have been done,’ he claimed. ‘Thompson was the only Centinel upon the Arms Chest.’

  Michael Byrne pleaded that he was almost blind and that he’d wanted to leave with Bligh but Churchill had threatened to lock him up if he did. And Christian had said, ‘We must not part with our fiddler.’

  Much of the trial centred on midshipman Peter Heywood. A whole day was accorded to his cross-examination. He had the advantage of being educated and articulate with influential friends. Not for the last time the law favoured the well-to-do. His lawyer, Aaron Graham, wasn’t averse to paying witnesses to give the desired evidence. Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, was a friend both of Heywood’s family and of one of the judges. Bligh, his most emphatic detractor, was at sea.

  The charges against him were that he helped hoist the launch, was armed with a cutlass and, when asked by Bligh to accompany him, laughed and remained in the ship. In mitigation Purcell the carpenter said he saw him drop the cutlass and go below and that he seemed confused by what was going on.

  Heywood swore before the court and the ‘tribunal of Almighty God’ that he was innocent. He said he was sleeping in his hammock and hadn’t the slightest intimation of what was going on. His ‘faculties were benumbed’ when he saw Bligh bound and pushed into a boat. He helped haul out the launch in order to assist Bligh, not Christian. He put provisions into it and ‘in doing this it was that my hand touched the cutlass’, his intention was innocent, he was in a state of stupor. His extreme youth and inexperience influenced his conduct. He thought that to go in the boat would mean ‘inevitable destruction’. He thought he’d be starved to death or drowned. He was at the time only sixteen, there was no one to advise him, he was ignorant of naval discipline, he hadn’t known he was committing a crime.

  He admitted he put saving his own life above other considerations but he’d never have betrayed Bligh. Only a ‘monster of depravity’ would have done that. He went below because he didn’t want to be identified with the mutineers … He hadn’t wanted to go to Tubuai, but Christian forced him in case he gave intelligence information when a ship arrived. He’d welcomed the arrival of the Pandora and had immediately given himself up. ‘Before God,’ he said, he was ‘innocent of plotting abetting or assisting either by word or deed in the taking of the ship’, All witnesses said he was of good and amiable character and that when the Pandora arrived on Tahiti he offered himself up voluntarily and gave all information on the whereabouts of the mutineers.

  Accounts of the mutineers’ trial in the daily papers were eclipsed by breaking news from France of the massacre of aristocrats and royalists. On 18 September the court acquitted Charles Norman, Joseph Coleman, Thomas McIntosh and Michael Byrne. All were released immediately. Charges were declared proven against Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Thomas Ellison, Thomas Burkett, John Millward and William Muspratt. They were condemned to die by being hanged by the neck on board a naval ship of war. The court gave the right to appeal for the king’s pardon to Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt.

  ‘We are in an Agony of Suspense – I can scarcely support my own misery, much less keep up poor Mama’s dejected spirits,’ Nessy, Heywood’s sister, wrote. Aaron Graham was quick to reassure them both. The king’s Attorney General, who’d attended the trial, told him that his friend Peter was ‘as safe as if he had not been condemned’.

  Two days later, on 27 October 1792, Heywood and Morrison were read the king’s pardon and recommended to atone for their evil conduct by future good behaviour. Heywood read a statement of gratitude for his sovereign’s mercy and gave an assurance that his future life would be faithfully devoted to his service. Morrison’s response was not recorded.

  On the morning of 29 October, a Monday, a crowd gathered in Portsmouth Harbour. At eleven o’clock Thomas Ellison, John Millward and Thomas Burkett were taken to the fo’c’sle of the ship Brunswick. Bags were put over their heads and nooses round their necks. At eleven twenty-six a gun was fired. ‘Thom
as Burkett was Run up to the Starboard Fore Yard Arm, Millward and Ellison to the Larboard and There Hung Agreeable to their Sentence.’

  Muspratt didn’t receive his pardon until 11 February 1793. The stress of waiting and the execution of his three friends so shocked him that in those interim four months he couldn’t speak to anyone ‘nor by any means be prevailed on to do so’.

  In 1794 Edward Christian, who was a lawyer, published the minutes of the court martial with an appendix giving a spirited defence of his youngest brother, Fletcher. Bligh gave a reasoned and bitter response, but he did not come out of the affair well and a taint attached to him of sadism and overly harsh command.

  Peter Heywood accepted an invitation from the presiding judge at his trial, Lord Hood, to sail with him on the Victory as his midshipman and he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Lord Hood was a friend of his uncle.

  36

  The rain set in. I lost count of the days and time took on a strange dimension. Lady Myre surfed the net or lay on my bed working her way through a thousand tunes and drinking exotic cocktails of her own devising. I felt I’d been on the island for ever. When I could get a look in on the computer I logged on to CNN news. I learned of car-bombings in Iraq, massacre in Burundi, the blowing-up of a bus in Israel, the banning of same-sex marriages in Missouri. The Scream was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo. At other times I sat in Christian’s cave in my waterproofs and made notes about significant happenings consequent on Christian’s theft of a coconut:

  1792

  18

  June. Survivors from the Pandora arrive at Spithead.

  12

  September. Court martial of the ten crewmen who stayed with Fletcher Christian on the Bounty.

  29

  October. Thomas Ellison, Thomas Burkett and John Millward are hung at Spithead.

  1793

  27

  January. Bligh arrives at the West Indies with the breadfruit.

  3

  September. The Providence arrives back in Britain.

  20

  September. Christian and four other mutineers murdered on Pitcairn.

  4

  October. All the remaining Polynesian men murdered on Pitcairn.

  Often I’d chat with Rosie in her kitchen. We’d cut bananas lengthwise, she’d put them in a drying machine, then we’d pack them in little polythene packets. The process was sticky, and a cloud of fruit flies hovered. She’d talk of the Resurrection and the prospect of the arrival of the Messiah. She said when He came the good would have eternal life and sinners would be damned. Only if they repented, admitted their sins and clung to the cross could they be saved.

  Sixteen public toilets had been erected on the island, all in places of natural beauty. They were white, cupboard-like structures, with flushes, water tanks and taps. One afternoon as I passed one of them Lady Myre dashed out, her turquoise shorts round her knees. She was batting at herself and quacking. Her lips had gone blue and I feared she was going to die. Wasps swirled round her. She’d opened the cover of a hymnal, which she supposed had been left for its paper, and there was a nest of them in it. One stung her on her hand, another on her bottom. In my body belt I had antihistamine cream and I tended to her as best I could.

  ‘You’re my saviour,’ she grizzled. ‘I want to go home.’

  Her mishaps were frequent. On the day she dug for hours in Bang Iron Valley with a garden trowel, hoping to find the Bounty’s gold ducats, she lost the Cartier watch Sir Roland had given her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We searched among ferns and gunnera, twisted branches and tangled weeds, but couldn’t find it. When we picnicked at St Paul’s Point her panama hat blew over the cliff and floated on the waves like a signal of distress. When she fished in Bounty Bay she fell into the sea. She dangled a baited hook at the end of a piece of wire in the water and within seconds snared a large nanwee. Inspired by such quick success, she again straggled the wire in the bay. Jackie the frigate bird flew off with the caught fish. Lady Myre turned and exclaimed, the wire caught round a bollard and tightened and she didn’t let go of it. I wondered at her smile as she clambered to the shore.

  Her searches for her husband and passage off the island were always unrewarding. Replies from shipping companies and the Pitcairn Commissioner’s Office in Auckland were consistent. No ships were scheduled to stop at Pitcairn. If anything came up she’d be notified. Disappointment made her wilt. At a time of intense depression she wore the same outfit for an entire day. Her horror of cockroaches meant she seldom used the bathroom. She abluted with Wet Ones, colognes and lotions. Each night she slept under my mosquito net and I in her room with her luggage. Often she’d wake me to say someone was watching her through the window or that a creature was rustling under the bed or to ask if she could come in with me for a cuddle.

  Rosie cracked coconuts in half with one blow from her machete, grated the flesh and mixed it with green bananas. She chopped sweet potato and butternut squash and stewed leftover roast lamb and wild beans.

  Over the intercom came a public announcement from the shop: bread, ham, bacon, frozen pastry and chicken pieces had been priced and entered into the day books. Each household had a book in which all purchases were recorded. No individual was allowed more than six of anything. Every few months the books were collected for auditing. I remarked that I thought Adventism forbade the eating of pig. Rosie spoke of the decline of standards: smoking, drinking, trading on the Sabbath. ‘But we still look out for each other,’ she said again. They exchanged oranges for coconuts, pawpaws for vegetables, fish for bread and cake, they saved each other’s lives and the lives of strangers. They interdepended.

  She rued the suspicion and animosity that publicity for the trials aroused, the division between families, the depression of mothers at the violation of their daughters. She longed for it all to be finished and for the spotlight of interest to be turned elsewhere. The crimes of which the island’s men were now accused had happened twenty years previously. She favoured a truth-and-reconciliation process, a learning of respect for women. She said you couldn’t be a girl on Pitcairn and not have sex. It seemed it all went back to Fletcher Christian and those barefoot pirates with cutlasses and tattoos.

  Rosie was wistful about joining her daughters in New Zealand and seeing her grandchildren. But Hank loved his island, its traditions and memories, where the sun rose, the church, the longboats and the cliffs. For him it was where God lived and spoke.

  She talked of the island’s more recent history – how in 1856, when there was a population of 194, it was overcrowded, so the British government sent a transport ship and moved them all to Norfolk Island, an abandoned penal colony ten times the size of Pitcairn, 3500 miles west, and close to New Zealand. Most adapted and preferred it, but some yearned to go home, the way some people do, however hard home might be. Sixteen returned, drawn to the life they knew.

  I thought how the gene pool needed mixing. How they’d all intermarried for far too long and that it was a worn-out island, its earth eroded, its native trees felled.

  Rosie didn’t mention the names of the men on the island accused of sex crimes, but details were on the internet. Investigations began after a Kent policewoman, Gail Cox, went to Pitcairn in 1999 to train an islander in community policing. She gave the Pitcairn girls leaflets about sexual harassment. One of them then told her how Randy Christian, the man who saved Dr Scantlebury’s life, had used her for sex for a decade from when she was a young girl. Many allegations of sex abuse followed: twenty-one accusations of rape, forty-one of indecent assault, two of gross indecency with a girl under fourteen. British police investigated. They called it Operation Unique.

  A picture emerged of men who, when the chance was there, preyed on girls, like they caught fish when they went to the shore: of rape in bushland or in a boat in Bounty Bay; of a girl accosted when sent to collect firewood; of a schoolgirl groped when she came out of a public toilet; of a ten-year-old molested as she played tag. It seemed
that sex wasn’t much different from abuse by the mutineers of the Polynesian girls they’d abducted. One plaintiff said she’d tried to object to rape but there was no point. ‘I just lay there and let him get it over and done with. The quicker he did it the quicker I was able to go.’

  Steve Christian, the mayor, was charged with five rapes including that of a twelve-year-old girl. One victim said, ‘He seemed to take it on himself to initiate all the girls and it was like we were his harem.’ His son Randall, chairman of the Internal Committee of the Island Council, was accused of four rapes and five indecent assaults. Len Brown, Steve Christian’s father-in-law – the quiet man helping Bea build her boat – was charged with two rapes in a watermelon patch. His son Dave Brown was charged with nine indecent assaults including molesting a fifteen-year-old girl on a spear-fishing trip. It was all, he said, ‘a normal part of Pitcairn life. It didn’t seem wrong.’ The postmaster Dennis Christian faced two charges of sexual assault and one of indecent assault against young girls. Terry Young, a descendant of midshipman Edward Young, was charged with one rape and six indecent assaults.

  I wondered about unwanted sex in small closed communities and the breaking of silence, so necessary and terrible. Girls didn’t talk about it because what was the point? They were treated the same as their mothers and great-great-great-grandmothers before them. The abusers felt they themselves were now abused by a distant colonial power. Some of the island’s men accused British police of pressurising the women to lay charges. Steve Christian’s wife Olive, mother of Randy, daughter of Len, said sex on the island was a Polynesian tradition: ‘We all thought sex was like food on the table.’