The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
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In the meantime, while recovering with his now large family, Bligh was also in contact with the shocked and horror-stricken families of the men still with the Bounty. Privately, Bligh met with Captain Hugh Cloberry Christian (a relation of the Cumberland Christians); with Fletcher’s brother Edward; with Captain John Taubman, who had married one of Fletcher’s cousins and first recommended that Fletcher apply to Bligh for a position; and with Fletcher’s first cousin John Christian Curwen, now married to one of the wealthiest heiresses in northern England and a well-connected and reform-minded member of Parliament—Curwen was a future patron of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. To some of these men, Bligh had unfolded his theory that Christian’s mishandling of the Bounty in the storm off Whytootackee had been deliberate; that Christian had intended “to cripple the ship, that they might be obliged to return to Otaheite to repair.” Evidently, Bligh had mulled over all the events leading to the mutiny in the course of the long boat voyage; he would never believe that the mutiny had not been planned well in advance. Whether Bligh’s theory was correct or not, it is illuminating, as it indicates that Christian’s actions at the time had been so wildly uncharacteristic as to have, in retrospect, raised suspicion—this was the period, of course, when he had been “in hell.”
Still, despite many long months of speculation, no rational explanation for the mutiny could be given. Fletcher’s brother Charles had written an agonized letter to Bligh’s father-in-law, Richard Betham, prophesying that “it would be found that there had been some Cause not then known that had driven Fletcher to this desperate Step.” The Christians and Bethams, along with the Heywoods, could expect to bump into one another on the Isle of Man.
“Fletcher when a Boy was slow to be moved,” Charles recalled agonizing over the events, but drawing on his memories of the Middlesex, acknowledged that “when Men are cooped up for a long Time in the Interior of a Ship, there oft prevails such jarring Discordancy of Tempers and Conduct that it is enough on many Occasions by repeated Acts of Irritation and Offence to change the Disposition of a Lamb into that of an Animal fierce and resentful.”
To Captain Taubman, who had asked straight out “what could possibly have been the Cause” of Christian’s actions, Bligh had replied simply, “Insanity.”
Although the newspapers had not made great play of the Christian family’s involvement, the mutiny could only be perceived as a blight upon the family reputation; nor does it appear that the Christians put up any public resistance to Bligh’s report, bowing their heads as it were, and quietly submitting to the unwelcome notoriety. Charles Christian’s feelings “were so harrowed up with this unlooked for and unhappy Intelligence,” he had written to Richard Betham, that he would have him believe that “instead of Ink, it was my Heart’s Blood I wrote with.”
No family, however, responded with more visible anguish than the Heywoods. When the news of the mutiny had reached Peter’s recently widowed mother on the Isle of Man, she “in a State of Mind little short of Distraction,” according to a Heywood family report, had written an imploring letter of inquiry to Bligh, who responded with characteristic, unmitigated directness:
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.
To a similarly anxious letter from Colonel James Holwell, one of Peter’s several concerned uncles, Bligh replied in much the same tone:
SIR,
I have just this Instant received your Letter; with much Concern I inform you that your Nephew, Peter Heywood is among the Mutineers: his Ingratitude to me is of the blackest Dye for I was a Father to him in every Respect & he never once had an angry Word from me thro’ the whole Course of the Voyage, as his conduct always gave me much Pleasure & Satisfaction. I very much regret that so much Baseness formed the Character of a Young Man I had a real regard for & it will give me much Pleasure to hear his Friends can bear the Loss of him without much concern.
I am Sir, your Obt. servant . . .
Such reports threw the Heywoods into a state of bewildered despair. They were under an enormous obligation to Bligh who, as they were keenly aware, had taken on young Peter out of compassion for his family’s fallen circumstances. Bligh and his wife had cared for Peter in their own home while the Bounty was being readied. And if Bligh himself had been taken aback by Peter’s actions in the fraught and fateful hours of mutiny, having previously, by his own admission, had only pleasure in the young man’s conduct—how much greater was the wounded incredulity of Peter’s doting family. Uncles, family friends, naval colleagues were all approached with anguished entreaties to find out something, anything, that would ameliorate the charges, that would, in short, allow them to continue to believe in Peter’s character and “honour.”
Around this time, Bligh met personally with James Modyford Heywood, a fourth cousin of Peter’s father, who had earlier interested himself in young Peter. Mr. Heywood’s written report of the meeting was not made to Peter’s mother, who was by now too despairing to absorb anything more to do with the lamentable affair, but to Peter’s older sister, Hester, or “Nessy” as she was known to the family; Nessy had also approached Thomas Hayward for news, but the young midshipman, questioning the propriety of answering any question before the court-martial on the loss of the Bounty had taken place, had his father return a private letter in his stead.
At their meeting, Bligh “expressed his Astonishment” at Peter’s involvement, Mr. Heywood told Nessy, adding, along with expressions of sympathy, his hope that Peter’s mother would remain “ignorant of the true cause of your Brother’s not returning.” The true cause had to be conveyed with some delicacy to a young maiden of only twenty-two, such as was Nessy, for it seemed that “Mr. Bligh, & the whole of the Ship’s Crew who came away with him are unanimous in ascribing the cause of this horrid Transaction to the Attachments unfortunately formed to the Women of Otaheite.” Bligh would almost certainly have informed Heywood that young Peter, like Christian, had been treated for “venereals” in Tahiti. At any rate, Mr. Heywood continued, as tactfully as he could, Peter’s “strange conduct” would probably make it rather difficult for him to return to England any time soon.
“[T]he only consolation I can hold out to you is that when he does return, his general good conduct & Character previous to this unhappy Business, may with some Allowance for the unbridled Passion of youth plead for his Pardon; You must have the Philosophy for the present to consider him as lost forever,” Mr. Heywood concluded, echoing in gentler terms Bligh’s more bluntly expressed opinion that young Peter was best forgotten. “[B]ut I trust that Providence will restore him to you & enable him to make Atonement.” With such philosophical reflections, Nessy and the rest of Peter’s immediate family had to console themselves for the next two years.
On October 22, 1790, the court-martial was finally held on the loss of the Bounty, the last of the loyalist company having arrived from Batavia. The purpose of the court-martial was “to enquire into the Cause and Circumstances of the seizure of His Majesty’s armed Vessel the Bounty . . . and to try the said Lieutenant Bligh and such of the Officers and Ship’s Company as are returned to England for their conduct on that occasion.” Essentially, what the court required was official reassurance that Bligh and his men had done all that was possible to prevent the loss of the ship. This was the specific point over which Bligh agonized with an almost morbid intensity. Every one of the depositions he had made to the various Dutch authorities had stressed the fact that he personally had done all he could, and he came back to the same point again and again in his log and in all letters.
“My conduct has been free of blame,” he had told his wife, in his long letter from Timor. “I showed every one, that tied as
I was, I defied every Villain to hurt me.”
“My Character & honor is spotless when examined,” Bligh wrote to Duncan Campbell, shortly before his departure from Batavia. “I shall stand to be tried disspising mercy or forgiveness if it can be found I have been guilty of even an error in Judgement.”
But while close inquiry made among the men in the course of the boat journey had satisfied everyone that there had been no discernible hint of approaching disaster prior to the mutiny, Bligh appears not to have been as easy in his mind that the loss of the ship was inevitable. Once captured, he had shouted himself hoarse, had given ignored commands, had implored, had incited bystanders to knock Christian down, all this while securely bound and guarded at the mizzenmast. But had Fryer, who had kept a pistol in his cabin, really done all he could? What if all the young officers had behaved with determined resistance? Four loyal men were known to have been forced to remain with the mutineers on the Bounty—might there have been more potential loyalists among the seamen who could have been swayed by a show of determination on the part of the officers? The image of the compliant men filing meekly into the waiting launch was difficult to exorcise. The fact that “out of forty-five men eighteen should suffer themselves to be pinioned and put on board a boat, at the almost certainty of death, without the least resistance” was one of the striking circumstances, as a disquieting article in the Times had put it, that were perhaps “unparalleled in the annals of mutiny.”
“I had not a Spirited & brave fellow about me & the Mutineers treated them as such” was Bligh’s private assessment to his wife. The loss of the ship, then, could have been prevented, in Bligh’s opinion, although not by William Bligh. But it would do him personally no good if any hint of fecklessness should be discovered in his men at the court-martial; the Admiralty would not be investigating the cause of the mutiny—an act that was by definition indefensible—but only seeking reassurance that once the mutiny broke nothing had been left undone to quell it. All participants would have to put aside their most secret doubts, as well as animosities, to present for this solemn occasion a united front.
The court-martial was held at Spithead, on board the Royal William, presided over by Admiral Samuel Barrington. The first to be examined was Bligh, who when put the traditional question of whether he had “objection or complaint” against any man or officer, had replied that, William Purcell excepted, he had not (the carpenter had remained a prisoner since Surabaya). All the other officers played their parts; no one had anything to say against anyone else. Hallett and Hayward, who had been on watch when the mutiny broke, were not quizzed or reprimanded for failing to sound the alarm. John Fryer corroborated Bligh’s account that he had been bound and held under armed guard by Christian himself.
“I asked Mr. Christian, who had then hold of Mr. Bligh with a bayonet in his hand, what he could think of himself or what he was after, or words to that effect,” Fryer told the court. “[H]e told me to hold my tongue for he had been in hell for a week.” The court appears to have expressed no interest in this insight into Mr. Christian’s state of mind; the cause of the mutiny was, after all, not the point under examination. In any case, there was for every mutiny a presupposition that some mutineer had found his breaking point for one reason or another.
The court deliberated and concluded that “the Bounty was violently and forceably taken from the said Lieutenant William Bligh by the said Fletcher Christian and certain other Mutineers” and that Lieutenant Bligh and his officers and men were thereby honorably acquitted.
William Purcell alone was made to face the music. On the same day that Bligh and the other loyalists were acquitted, Purcell was brought onto the Royal William to face six charges that ranged from his insolence at Adventure Bay to an astonishing mutinous episode that had occurred toward the end of the boat voyage. Unusually, Bligh had not edited this last event out of his published narration, which in itself indicates its seriousness—and how ably Bligh believed he had handled it. The incident had occurred at a small island on which Bligh had sent his men out to scavenge for oysters.
“On this occasion their fatigue and weakness so far got the better of their sense of duty, that some of them began to mutter who had done most, and declared they would rather be without their dinner than go in search of it,” Bligh had written in his Narrative. “One person, in particular, went so far as to tell me, with a mutinous look, he was as good a man as myself.” This person had been William Purcell. Swiftly determining that he would “preserve my command, or die in the attempt,” Bligh took up his cutlass. “I ordered him to take hold of another and defend himself; on which he called out I was going to kill him, and began to make concessions.”
“I could not help laughing to see Capt. Bligh swagering with a cutless over the carpenter,” was how Fryer described his reaction to this fraught moment; his sniggering tone apart, his record factually accords with Bligh’s. “I said—no fighting here—I put you both under an arrest,” Fryer had unwisely intervened. To which Bligh had responded, as might have been expected, “By God Sir if you offerd to tuch me I would cut you Down.”
George Simpson, John Samuel, Thomas Hayward and John Fryer were called upon to give evidence of Purcell’s insolence. No one contradicted Bligh’s charges and most were in strong agreement that, as Samuel put it, the “general Tenor of [Purcell’s] Conduct has not been such as is usual in the Service from an inferior to a superior Officer.” Even Fryer reported that Purcell would “sometimes drop improper words.”
The court placed most emphasis upon the first incident at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, and the witnesses seem to have been chosen because of their presence at this event. The court was clearly interested to know whether Purcell had been called upon to perform tasks beyond the duties of his warrant.
“Was it absolutely necessary for every Man to assist in the Duty of the Ship?” the court asked John Samuel at one point.
“It was,” the clerk replied. How difficult to conjure now, snug in home port, the sweaty multitude of tasks—gathering and billeting wood, foraging for greens, washing laundry in the bay, filling keg upon keg with water from the grudging stream, all the while on guard for a surprise appearance from the island’s natives.
“I could not bear the loss of an able Working and healthy Man,” Bligh had logged at the time of his showdown, “otherwise I should have committed him to close confinement.”
The surprise witness was William Peckover, the gunner, who both substantiated the charges against Purcell, and added some background color of his own. At Adventure Bay, he reported, Mr. Purcell said to Bligh that he had come “on shore for nothing but to find fault”; when the carpenter had been ordered back to the ship, Bligh called after him, “I’ll put a Rope about your Neck.”
At the end of the inquiry, the court found that “the Charges had been in Part proved against the said William Purcell and did adjudge him to be Reprimanded.” There are several possible reasons for this relative leniency, one being that survival of the boat journey was in itself deemed a mitigating circumstance. Bligh himself was awarded a rapid and unorthodox promotion to the coveted position of post-captain after his court-martial; now officially “Captain Bligh,” his professional future was more or less secure, since he had only to stay alive and his further advancement would proceed as senior captains died above him. This swift promotion, aided by the “interest” of Joseph Banks, was clearly a reward for his achievement. On the same principle, it may have been thought most just to allow Purcell to get on with his career. Bligh hints as much in a letter to Banks, in which he noted that a “great part of my evidence was kept back as it affected his life,” adding, however, that this magnanimous gesture was “all thrown away on the Wretch, for he began to abuse & threaten some of the evidences as soon as he got on shore.” In later years, it would be said of Purcell that he too had obtained his position on the Bounty through Banks, a claim that is impossible to prove or disprove—but if true, it would explain a great deal.
Still, all was not over between the two men; and it was sometime after these trials that Fryer set down to write his own narrative of events, the straightforward intent of which appears to have been the denigration of Bligh—perhaps as a guard against future charges Bligh might make against him. Strikingly, however, for all its ill will, apart from its citation of mismanaged events at Anamooka Island, the document recorded nothing more damaging than Bligh’s passionate outbursts of temper against his inept officers. Fryer made no mention at all of the books he had so conspicuously refused to sign on the outward voyage, for example, or of the allegations he had spread in Coupang that Bligh’s receipt books would not be honored in England. Rather, his memoir is characterized by a litany of petty personal slights and oversights: Mr. Bligh took the only paper and ink in the launch, so he, John Fryer, had been unable to keep a log; a bedstead intended for him in Coupang had been given by Bligh to someone else (the soon-to-die David Nelson!); Bligh had not solicited his opinion about the location of a reef—one pictures Fryer, tight-lipped and self-righteous, sitting in pious, wounded silence less than twenty feet distant from his captain with the sea rising around them, steadfastly refusing to offer an opinion because he had not been formally asked to do so. In a typical entry, concerning an order Bligh had given Fryer to keep the carpenter at his duties, Fryer’s tedious and roundabout defense mostly serves to illustrate just how wearisome Bligh’s responsibilities had become by the end of the voyage. No, Fryer had responded to Bligh’s query, he had not been down to check on Purcell’s work, contrary to his orders, because he was unwell.