The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

by Caroline Alexander

  “The Honor and integrity of this young Man made the Wretches about him tremble” was Bligh’s approving summation.

  Bligh had learned much since his first tentative and ineffectual punishment of Purcell, all those months ago, in Van Diemen’s Land; this, or his patience had by now been worn so paper-thin that he had thrown his previous caution to the winds. In either event, his reaction to the new crisis had been to call instantly for the arrest of Purcell and Fryer by the Dutch authorities. Next, addressing his “tumultuous” men, Bligh publicly asked that those who had complaints to make against him step forward. Three men did so, John Hallett, William Cole and, surprisingly, Thomas Ledward, the assistant surgeon. Bligh requested the Dutch authorities to hold all men separately until questioning on the morrow, to ensure that they did not prepare complicit statements.

  The next day, an examination was held onshore, presided over by the commandant of the considerable Dutch troops, a captain of the marines and a third high-ranking Dutch official.

  “Have you anything to say against your Captain?” asked the commandant of John Hallett.

  Yes, replied Hallett: “He beat me once at Otaheite.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Because I was not got into the boat.”

  “Why did not you go into the Boat?”

  “The Water was too deep.” This is in all probability the event enigmatically referred to in Bligh’s index to the missing portion of his private log as “Mr. Hallet’s contumacy.”

  “Have you no other complaint against your Captain?”

  “None.”

  And so it went.

  To Mr. Ledward: “Have you anything to say against your Captain?”

  “I have nothing to say against my Captain only the first time the Boat went on Shore I ask’d leave to go with him & was refused until he came on board again.”

  To Mr. Cole: “Have you anything to say against your Captain?”

  To which Cole, suddenly addressing himself directly to Bligh, had replied, “I alledge no particular complaint against you, God forbid.” Thus had Fryer’s intent to rally resistance to Bligh ended with a whimper.

  Fryer himself, now confined, sent Bligh a series of contrite letters, begging forgiveness and declaring that all parties could unite as friends. This vacillating tendency in Fryer Bligh had long despised, having noted in his log, a month earlier, that the “vicious & troublesome disposition of this Man can be only equalled by his ignorance & meanness, always ready to make concession & supplicate my forgiveness in the most abject manner.” Fryer’s misdeeds were substantial. It was he who had set a bush fire on one of the landfalls by his stubborn insistence on having his own fire; it was he who had intervened in a squabble between William Cole and Robert Tinkler, by advising Tinkler “to stick his knife into the Boatswain.” When Bligh had stopped to make camp, Fryer loudly advocated moving on; when under way, he had advocated making landfall.

  Somewhere in Fryer’s brain there appears to have been lodged the fancy that he was Bligh’s equal with respect to all things nautical; that a mere quirk of command had placed one man on a higher footing than the other; that he, Master Fryer, was entitled not only to his own opinion on every observation and duty of ship life, but to the right to air and advocate that opinion. In Bligh’s handling of his cockleshell of a ship around the Horn; in his zealous and unremitting application of Cook’s most enlightened sea practices; in his successful transplanting of the breadfruit; in his excellent relations with the Tahitians, conducted over a demanding five-month period; in his abilities, widely acknowledged, to survey and chart and navigate; in the fact that at the age of twenty-one he had performed, with distinction, as Cook’s sailing master; above all, in his extraordinary leadership during a voyage by open boat so attenuating it had robbed men under him of their wits—in none of these accomplishments had Fryer perceived a man above his own modest and unremarkable stature. He, John Fryer, was not William Bligh, and against this adamantine fact the imperceptive master battered himself like a moth against a lighted windowpane.

  Ten days after arriving in Batavia, the Resource and launch were sold to a visiting English captain named Hogendor, at public auction and at a great loss. “The services she had rendered us, made me feel great reluctance at parting with her,” Bligh allowed in a later account, “which it would not have done, if I could have found a convenient opportunity of getting her conveyed to Europe.” The Bounty’s company dispersed throughout the town, the officers to the dirty and ill-ventilated hotel in which all visitors ended up, the men to the convalescent hospital, some four miles distant; William Purcell, who had arrived separately on a spice boat from Surabaya, was transferred at Bligh’s request to another ship, still under arrest. John Fryer had been released on Bligh’s receipt from him of a written apology for his behavior. Bligh himself, as Joseph Banks and other gentlemen had done before him, after spending six nights in the hotel, fled as soon as was feasible to “the country” outside the pestilential town. His offer to take his officers with him to the country hospital was declined—according to Bligh—with them professing that “they could not bear the Idea of being there.” Alone at the home of the surgeon general, close by his men in the convalescent hospital, Bligh nursed an intermittent fever and at times a crippling headache, and became convinced that he would not survive unless he took the first available passage to Europe; his complaint was probably malaria. But illness quite apart, it is transparently clear from his log that with no ship to claim his responsibility Bligh had become uncharacteristically disengaged from his surroundings and quite simply wanted to go home.

  About a week after arrival, while Bligh was convalescing in the country, John Fryer wrote to his wife, Mary, in Wells-next-the-Sea, with the news of his own adventures. The letter is remarkable not only for what it says but, given Fryer’s record of complaints against Bligh, for what it does not say. Written without outside interference, it is the master’s most sincere, private and unadulterated representation of all that had passed and contains no hint of dissatisfaction with his commander.

  “I have the pleasure to inform you that I [am] well & likewise Robert,” he began (Robert Tinkler was his wife’s young brother),

  but am sorry to tell you that we have lost our ship, by a stratagem that never happened before, in the memory of man. On the twenty eight of April at Day break the captain & me were surprised by Misters Christian, Stewart, Young & Haywood & the Master at Arms, with twenty one of the people. Christian & the Master at arms, went into Mr. Bligh Cabin, & tyed his hand behind him two men came into my cabin, with musquitts & Bayonets, told me if I spoke, that I was a dead man, that Mr. Christian had taken the ship and that they was intended to put us on shore upon one of the friendly Isles. I expostulated with them but all to no purpose, they hoisted the Long boat out, and all them that would not join with them in the mutiny they obliged to go into the boat. I was the last that received that order, when I was obliged to beg hard of Christian to let Robert come with me—he at last consented that he should go with me . . . they gave us about two Hundred pound of bread & sixteen small pieces of Pork, a compass and an old Quadrant with some few cloaths. . . .

  [At Timor] Mr. Bligh purchased a small Vessel to bring us to Batavia at which Place we are waiting to embark in a Dutch ship, which will sail in three weeks so that My Dearest Girl I hope to be with you in May . . . or the beginning of June. We have been at this place a week—our living here is very Dear it cost me Every Day for Robert and myself three Dollars, which in this country is fifteen shillings—and Cloaths likewise are very Dear. . . . I shall be very happy if one Hundred pounds besides my pay will clear me—but hope that Government will take our Misfortunes in consideration and make some allowance for our losses—I was obliged to draw on Mr. Wilson at Timor for 228 Rix Dollar—which is about forty five pounds I likewise gave Mr. Bligh a bill of sixteen pounds, which I was indebted to him for the Expense of the Mess as he wished all matters settled fearing that one of us might Die .
. . this letter come in a packit to Holland, which we suppose will be home some time before us—so that the People in England will hear of our misfortunes & forget them before we get home—I will not trouble you with any more of our Adventures. Robert join with me in Duty love & best wishes to all friends & conclude with prayers to the Almighty that my Dearest Mary may be well.

  from your Affectionate

  Husband.

  Back in the civilized world, where Dutch rix dollars and shillings had to be paid for all bodily needs, the men were soon smarting at the long lists of expenses they incurred just in the act of staying alive. The Dutch authorities had offered food, shelter and passages home—but, canny merchants all, had charged breathtaking sums for these services. His officers had borrowed from Bligh, or, like Fryer, drawn money on their own accounts, to be reimbursed on return; if any of the men who had borrowed from Bligh were to die before getting home—Bligh might be out of pocket. With the prospect of imminent departure, therefore, Bligh’s self-interest became highly practical, and he began methodically collecting “securities” from all those to whom he had advanced money. The extent to which these financial considerations worried Bligh is made brutally and unhappily clear in a letter Ledward the surgeon wrote to his uncle. “You will be surprised when you hear I am deprived of my own Ship with every individual thing I took out with me, besides effects to a considerable amount which I purchased at the Surgeon, Mr Huggan’s, Death,” he began.

  The sad affair happened early in the Morning Watch; as soon as I was informed fully how the matter stood, I instantly declared I would go with the Captain, let the consequence be what it would, & not stay among Mutineers. . . .

  There is one thing I must mention which is of consequence: the Captain denied me, as well as the rest of the Gentlemen who had not Agents, any Money unless I would give him my power of Attorney & also my Will, in which I was to bequeath to him all my property; this he called by the name of proper security. This unless I did, I should have got no money, though I shewed him a letter of Credit from my Uncle & offered to give him a Bill of Exchange upon him. In case of my Death I hope this matter will be clearly pointed out to my Relations.

  A ship due to leave in early October was found to have space for three passengers aboard. With no compunction, Bligh quickly claimed these for himself, John Smith, his servant and John Samuel, his clerk. His explanation, pleaded often in the log, was continued grave ill health, but it is also clear that for William Bligh, his duties to his troublesome, turbulent crew were over.

  “. . . I expected after all my distresses that I was finally to close my Carreer of life in this sad place Batavia,” he wrote on the very day after arrival. In all the long and debilitating days at sea he had never confessed to fear for his own life. Now, on dry land, with nothing much more to concern him, the prospect of early death by pestilence or fever seemed to haunt him like a specter. Having arranged with the Dutch authorities for his men to be sent out with the first ships on which space could be found, Bligh delegated John Fryer to take responsibility for them.

  “You want a taste of being commanding officer?” one can imagine Bligh thinking. “Here! You manage everything from now on!”

  In his last days in Batavia, Bligh busied himself with settling all accounts and arranging for his men’s care and passage, and in writing letters to Banks, Duncan Campbell and the Admiralty. He had by now also written a list and description of all the mutineers, which was translated into Dutch and disseminated to all ports, including Port Jackson and the Dutch East India Company posts, at which the Bounty might conceivably make call.

  “Thus happily ended through the assistance of Divine Providence without accident a Voyage of the most extraordinary Nature that ever happened in the World,” Bligh summed up in his log and letters, both private and official, regaining the tone of indomitable complacency that had characterized his early log, back when he had had a ship; “let it be taken in its extent, duration and so much want of the Necessaries of Life.” This extravagant claim would, in fact, be unchallenged for the next 127 years.

  On October 16, 1789, Bligh gathered up what few effects remained to him and with his small and threadbare entourage embarked on the Dutch East Indiaman Vlijt, bound for the Cape and then on to Holland. The men with whom he had endured the defining ordeal of his career he left behind him, so it seems, without a backward glance.

  The captain of the Vlijt had received special dispensation from the Batavian authorities to drop Bligh off in British waters, en route to Holland, and on Saturday afternoon, March 13, Bligh was landed at the Isle of Wight. Days later, he was presented to King George, and “laid his journal of the voyage to the South Seas before his Majesty.”

  In London, the news of Bligh’s ordeal, followed by the success of his Narrative, quickly inspired an anonymous and titillating sequel advertised as an account of the mutiny “To which are added, Secret Anecdotes of the Otaheitean Women, whose charms, it is thought, influenced the Pirates in the commission of the daring conspiracy.” The ingredients of beautiful, uninhibited island women, English sailors, mutiny and valor at sea, all set against the “paradise of the world,” made the story of the loss of the Bounty a great hit from the very outset. Even before Bligh’s publication, popular fascination with the romantic tale had been quickly exploited. By early May, London newspapers had begun advertising a new production at the Royalty Theatre entitled The Pirates; Or, The Calamities of Capt. Bligh. The elaborate catalogue of the new play’s offerings illustrated what would be the Bounty story’s enduring highlights: Otaheitean dances, and “the Attachment of the Otaheitan Women to, and their Distress at parting from, the British Sailors”; an “exact Representation” of Bligh’s capture in his cabin. There would be songs by the Dutch captain (“To relieve a fellow-creature”) while Miss Daniel would sing “Loose ev’ry sail”; the “whole to conclude with a correct view of that superb monument of British benevolence Greenwich Hospital,” the royal naval hospital for seamen. Ralph Wewitzer, a veteran of the London stage, would play Captain Bligh. Moreover, the production, so it was claimed, had been “rehearsed under the immediate Instruction of a Person who was on board the Bounty. . . .” It is impossible to know if this last claim held any truth.

  The fate of the Bounty was also discussed in more sober circles. In early May, Fanny Burney, the novelist and diarist and, at this period, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, was on her way to the House of Lords to attend the greatest entertainment in London at the time, the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, governor general of India, for alleged mismanagement of the East India Company’s affairs. Accompanied by her brother, James Burney, an erudite and well-connected captain who had sailed with both Cook and Bligh, she was accosted by William Windham, a member of Parliament active in Hastings’s impeachment.

  “But what officers you are!” Windham cried to Captain Burney. “[Y]ou men of Captain Cook; you rise upon us in every trial! This Captain Bligh,—what feats, what wonders he has performed! What difficulties got through! What dangers defied! And with such cool, manly skill!”

  James Burney had just come from breakfast with Sir Joseph Banks at his Soho Square residence. Banks, of course, had been one of the first to learn of the Bounty’s fate. There was no person or entity—not the lords of the Admiralty, not the West India merchants, not His Majesty’s government—to whom Bligh felt so accountable and apologetic as to Banks; especially grievous was the death of David Nelson, Banks’s handpicked emissary. Many others, too, felt for Banks (and, to a lesser extent, for Nelson) and a flurry of commiserative letters arrived at Soho Square from far-flung colleagues—from naturalists who hinted, discreetly, that it was hoped Banks would try a second breadfruit venture; from a German colleague who had been promised a Tahitian skull for his cranial studies; and of course from the West Indies: “[T]o have all these pleasing Prospects blasted by a set of Miscreants raises such Resentment in my Mind, that the only consolation I can receive on the occasion, is to hear that those Vil
lains have been all taken, and made to expiate their crime on the Gallows,” one planter raged in a letter from Jamaica.

  “The escape of poor Bligh by his companions is a miracle that has not been equalled these 1700 years,” wrote James Matra, the former midshipman who had been with Banks on the Endeavour. “Inglefield may now burn his old Blanket,” he added facetiously; Captain John Inglefield had been widely admired for an open-boat journey in the North Atlantic, following the loss of his ship in 1782, in which he had improvised a sail from an old blanket. There was no question but that Bligh was the hero of the Bounty saga. Fletcher Christian received scant public attention, being singled out only by one syndicated story, which had reported that the leader of the mutineers was “a man of respectable family and connections, and a good seaman.”

  A formal court-martial on the loss of the ship could not be held until all the Bounty’s men arrived from Batavia. In all, of the nineteen men who had left the Bounty, as Bligh later recorded, “[i]t has pleased God that twelve should surmount the difficulties and dangers of the voyage, and live to re-visit their native country.” Besides Bligh himself, those who survived to return were John Samuel, his quietly courageous clerk; John Smith, his loyal servant; Thomas Hayward and John Hallett, the two somewhat lacking midshipmen; William Peckover, the gunner and veteran, now, of four Pacific voyages; Lawrence Lebogue, the Nova Scotian sailmaker; George Simpson, quartermaster’s mate; William Cole, the boatswain; William Purcell, the cantankerous carpenter; John Fryer, Bligh’s querulous master, and his young brother-in-law, Robert Tinkler. The whereabouts of Thomas Denman Ledward, the surgeon, remained unknown. The ship he had embarked on in Batavia had been lost at sea and it was presumed he had gone down with her.