Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  In a moment of blurred fury, other Natives rush forward and deal further blows.

  Cook falls, face first, into knee-deep clear water.

  A dark red stain spreads around him like an ink blot.

  But from the Captain himself, the only movement is a slight rising and falling from the wavelets.

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea …

  Captain James Cook is dead.

  •

  With Cook’s death, Captain Clerke, who has been ill for some time, is now in command of the voyage.

  After the last retreated sailor is on deck, the urgent task is to retrieve Cook’s remains, and give them a Christian burial, before getting out of this duplicitous bay.

  And so, at 4 o’clock on the day of Cook’s death, Lieutenant King, along with all the boats of the two ships, filled with armed men, proceeds slowly towards the shore ‘with view to bring the natives to a parley’.53

  Gathering and reassembling their Captain’s corpse will prove to be a nigh on impossible task, however, as Lieutenant King soon learns that Cook’s body has not only been hacked to pieces but then ceremonially presented to different Chiefs, who quickly take the chunks back to their own villages as prizes, to do with as they please.

  Remnants are painstakingly retrieved and buried at sea, and at 8 o’clock on the evening of 22 February the two European ships leave Karakakooa Bay to find safe harbour elsewhere, before making their second attempt, later in the spring, to find the Northwest Passage.

  In the absence of the noble Cook, the chronically ill Captain Clerke removes to the lead ship, the Resolution, and is nominally left in charge of the voyage.

  And yet Bligh will proudly record the actual situation: ‘C. Clerke being very ill in a decline he could not attend the deck & thus he publicly gave me the power solely of conducting the ships & moving as I thought proper.’54

  As it happens, being in charge is something that William Bligh feels proper from the first. Though saddened by the death of Cook, he feels no responsibility for it. Certainly, it was on his orders that the shot was fired that began the battle, but if only other officers and Marines had shown the same forthrightness, courage and daring, then they would have quickly won the day, and all would have been well. It is an opinion that Bligh is more than happy to share with other officers under his command, just as Bligh is very free with his opinions on all of their failings (something that takes some time). Such forcefully expressed views do not make Bligh popular among his command, but what care he? He is not here to be popular, and he is at least convinced his command will overcome their jealousy long enough for them to observe the consummate skill with which he runs his ships and makes his charts.

  On their arrival home, in October 1780, all ship’s officers are promoted, with just one exception: William Bligh. The man who ordered the shot that started the fray, which led to the death of Captain James Cook, keeps his current rank.

  It does not sit well with Bligh.

  But, then again, very few things do.

  He is a man who, by his very nature, is dissatisfied, quick to anger and slow to forgive. And everywhere he looks, there are things that make his normal mood move from merely furious to apoplectic with rage.

  Ah, but he has seen nothing yet …

  CHAPTER ONE

  IN THE BEGINNING

  The natives … use it for bread. They gather it, when full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an oven, which scorcheth the rind and makes it black, but they scrape off the outside black crust, and there remains a tender thin crust; and the inside is soft, tender, and white, like the crumb of a penny-loaf.1

  William Dampier, 1688, describing bread-fruit

  Late November 1787, Portsmouth, England, brothers in arms against a sea of troubles

  Those two men, huddled closely together on the table in the corner of this seamen’s tavern, The Ship and Castle, at the Royal Navy’s anchorage at Portsmouth, have a certain look about them. Clearly, they are peas in a pod, two of a feather, cut from the same cloth, and it is not just the common handsome cut of their uniforms that marks their similarities, nor even the same kind of distinguished, nigh, aristocratic, faces, nor their strong and athletic builds. No, it is that windswept look that all seamen have about them, that slightly squinty gaze that all men possess who have sailed the Seven Seas for many and many a moon, and even more blazing suns, who have faced storms, been through howling gales, and seen sights beyond telling.

  It is the intimate way they speak to each other, the instant understanding, the fact that neither man has any hesitation in his words, as they have so many things to say, so little time to say it, and no need for any caution.

  If you can’t trust your brother, who can you trust?

  Fletcher Christian has always been like that with his older sibling, Charles, just as they both have been with the eldest brother, Edward, such an accomplished barrister he is to become a Professor of Law at Cambridge. They have loved spending time together even though an occasion like this, when both of their ships are in the one port at the one time, is rare indeed. In a very short time, Fletcher must leave on his ship, the Bounty, bound for the South Seas, while Charles is just returned from a mercantile voyage of 20 months to Macao and Madras aboard the East India Company’s ship Middlesex.

  The elder Christian is impressed by just how much Fletch has grown into a man, ‘full of professional ambition and hope’, in his absence, not to mention actual physical growth, which he delights in showing off!

  ‘This,’ says the younger brother, rolling up his sleeves to display his thick forearms, ‘has been acquired by hard labour. I delight to set the men an example, I not only can do every part of a common sailor’s duty, but am upon a par with a principal part of the officers.’2

  Charles is not surprised to hear it. In recent times he has come across men who’d sailed with Fletcher, and their reports had been universally glowing – ‘he was strict, yet as it were, played while he wrought with the men – he made a toil a pleasure and ruled over them in a superior, pleasant manner to any young officer they had seen’.3

  Indeed, the sight of Fletcher’s familiar, curiously bow-legged walk on deck – it looks like he was born in the saddle, on a fox hunt – brings a smile to the face of any sailor; Fletcher Christian is a friend and a confidant first, an officer second.

  Right now, however, he is a brother first and foremost, and, as the drinks flow, the two inevitably trade stories of their adventures upon the Seven Seas, of the things they’ve seen and done, the women they’ve loved and lost. (Young Fletcher has always been one for great passions, most particularly since his late teens when he had fallen hard for a beautiful cousin, Isabella Curwen, only to see her marry another man. Her loss has seen him try his considerable luck with dozens of beauties since, but he has found none who can replace her.) But now the conversation turns and Charles Christian makes quite a confession to Fletch, almost by way of warning – a strange tale of mutiny and mayhem on the High Seas. For you see, Fletch, ‘when men are cooped up for a long time in the interior of a ship, there oft prevails such a jarring discordancy of tempers and conduct that it is often on many occasions repeated acts of irritation and offence to change the disposition of a lamb into that of an animal fierce and resentful’.4

  And so it was, Charles confesses, just shy of three months ago, on 5 September 1787, that certain lambs aboard the Middlesex had turned to fierce animals. A sailor named Greace had pulled a loaded pistol out of his pocket and aimed it at Captain John Rogers’ chest! Greace, maddened by endless minor but multiplying irritations, worsening every day with no relief, shouted that he would kill any man who tried to interfere. Captain Rogers was able to talk him around, and get him to put down the gun, but soon discovered that Greace was not alone! First Captain Rogers found out that his First Officer, Mr Aitken, had been part of the conspiracy to unleash mutiny, which saw Rogers immediately dismiss him from his post and lock him in his cabin. Three hours later,
the Second Officer, Mr Fell – appalled at what had happened to both Greace and Aitken – aims a drunken punch at the august form of Captain Rogers, and quickly finds himself also dismissed, and locked in his cabin.

  What now?

  Captain Rogers had written the answer in his personal journal:

  At this time I dismissed the Surgeon, also in the conspiracy.5

  Fletcher Christian is startled to hear the news. For the surgeon of the Middlesex is, of course, his own brother, and the narrator of this tale: Charles Christian.

  How on earth, then, is dear Charles here, now, free to tell the tale? Charles has the answer.

  Once tempers had cooled, and sobered, you see, Captain Rogers had decided not to report the mutiny to the East India Company!6

  In the extremes of life on the ocean, craziness happens, and men lose their bearings. Rogers had been a brute to his men, and had provoked them to the extremes of mutinying against him. But why have all that come out? Why make an official report on it, which would see all the Mutineers hauled before the courts, and give very damaging testimony against him?

  And so, for the moment at least, it had all gone away.

  Fletcher listens to the account, transfixed, and his brother is almost amused at how unthinkable his younger sibling finds the whole idea of mutiny.

  ‘I am persuaded,’ Charles Christian would recount of the gentle Fletcher, ‘that few men had a stronger propensity to beneficence or possessed a greater share of benevolence, or a more anxious disposition to be pleasing and serviceable to all classes of the community, [than he …]’7

  The following morning, Fletcher hurries back to the Bounty, with much to do, as he must help the Master, John Fryer, ready the ship for its 18-month journey to the other side of the world.

  But, in truth?

  The Bounty is only just a ‘ship’. Much smaller and it would have been rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub. For, even allowing for the fact that, at 90 feet long and 215 tons, she is already on the tiny side – some 20 feet shorter than Captain Cook’s HMS Resolution, and a lot less than half as heavy – no less than a third of that length has been completely refitted so it will no longer hold the crew’s crucial berths, but something far more important, a supremely valuable bounty: bread-fruit plants.

  Since this extraordinary plant had been discovered and reported back in England, a particular idea had gained enormous traction among merchants and planters in the West Indies. Why not get a thousand or so of the plants from the South Seas and take them to the West Indies, transplant them, and so have a sure and cheap source of food for the slaves working the sugar plantations there? It made sense!

  Yes, of course you could continue to feed the slaves with grains bought from America, but that was expensive because they had to be brought from so far, grown by others. Much better to feed the slaves with already proven black man’s food that could grow right there in the West Indies!

  After all, had not Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to North America completely revolutionised the cuisine of all of Great Britain simply by bringing the humble potato plant back to England from Virginia in 1586?

  HMS Bounty

  Well then, bread-fruit is the answer here – cheap and self-sustaining. But how to get King George to agree to the plan?

  They know just the man …

  •

  Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist and botanist who, as a young man, had accompanied Captain James Cook to Botany Bay, had returned with so many new flowers, plants, reptiles and mammals – not to mention memories, as exotic as they are erotic – that his reputation had been made forever. His advancement in the esteem of his country has grown steadily, and he is now one of the most eminent men in England, even becoming a favourite of King George III, and helping His Majesty to establish the wondrously diverse Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, before going on to advise on several voyages of discovery.

  Now installed as the President of the Royal Society, Banks is the eminence grise, the acknowledged leader and patron of science in Britain. But yes, very grise, he now is. Where once was lustrous tousled blackness, all is now greying curls, at least adding to his air of wisdom. This air is helped by his now jowly countenance – where all was once chiselled precision – bespeaking one who has lived well, and richly, if not always in moderation. Residing in Soho Square, London, he is a wealthy man, a Baronet no less.

  Now, though there has been a good gestation period for this grand idea to transport bread-fruit plants to the West Indies, in February 1787 Banks has come up with the grand plan – in fact, it is a plan within a plan – sure to win his country further fame and fortune.

  You see, at this time, Britain, after being defeated in the war in which the Americans had won their independence, was losing a means ‘for effectually disposing of convicts’,8 whom they had previously shipped off to Virginia’s plantations.

  What better place could there be as a substitute destination than New South Wales?9

  On 31 August 1786, Lord Sydney had written to the Lords of the Admiralty, advising: ‘The King having pleased to signify his Royal Commands that 750 of the convicts now in this kingdom under sentence of transportation should be sent to Botany Bay …’10

  And so Sir Joseph Banks’ first grand plan was set in motion. The government, with the blessing of the Crown, decides to send the well-regarded Captain Arthur Phillip, in charge of a fleet of 11 ships, to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay.

  Even as, in the early months of 1787, the fleet at Portsmouth was readied for departure, Banks – pulling the strings in the background, as ever, gliding through the corridors of power – begins to activate his other grand plan: organising a ship to go to Tahiti to secure bread-fruit plants, which can then be taken and transplanted in the West Indies. Perhaps, Governor Phillip could assign one of the ships of the First Fleet to the task, after dropping off its load of convicts at Botany Bay!

  On paper, it worked. Two splendid plans combined, very neatly.

  Alas, on close inspection, the logistical problems – most particularly how Governor Phillip and his men could turn a floating prison into an airy greenhouse, all in the nether regions of the globe – are overwhelming. And to have them ready to do so, regardless, before their pending departure in just two or three months’ time?

  In the end, it all proves too much. Reluctantly, Banks realises that getting the bread-fruit will require a separate mission. On 30 March 1787 he writes to the 1st Baron of Hawkesbury, President of the Board of Trade, with the new plan:

  My Lord,

  It is fully my opinion that the plan of sending out a vessel from England for the sole purpose of bringing the bread-fruit to the West Indian Islands is more likely to be successful than that of dispatching one of the transports from Botany Bay, & I am inclined to believe it will be at least as economical.11

  Of course, he also has specific ideas about the route they should follow.

  Her track should be around Cape Horn to the Society Isles [of which Tahiti is a part] … Thence round the Cape of Good Hope to the West Indies, where she may deposit one half of her cargo at his Majesties Garden at St. Vincent’s … & carry the remaining half down to Jamaica.12

  Banks, with supreme confidence in the power of his advocacy, has already taken the liberty of hiring a man who will be key to the voyage’s success. Enter the gentle soul of silent David Nelson (if the subject is nothing to do with plants, he has nothing much to say) – the very man Banks had recommended as botanist on Captain Cook’s third fateful voyage, who has spent his time since working as silently as a monk in the garden of the King’s palace at Kew.

  Banks, who has taught Nelson much within the realms of botany, wants him now for his knowledge of the Tahitian language, his capacity with plants and, most particularly, his capacity in ‘the art of taking care of plants at sea, and guarding against the many accidents to which they are liable’.13

  Within weeks, Sir Joseph’s whole plan is approved and he gets to work, advising the Admir
alty, which then directs the Navy Board. First, he personally approves a collier, Bethia, organising for the Royal Navy to buy it for £1950 on 26 May 1787. Within days of its purchase, the ship is at the naval dockyard – Deptford Yard – on the River Thames, with workmen crawling over it like ants, executing myriad tasks, based on Banks’ detailed instructions.

  The key, as Banks explains to the shipwrights, is to give the plants as much shelter from the salt water and vicious winds as possible, while also giving them a maximum of light, and air, and drainage. Under his guidance, the ‘Great Cabin’14 – normally reserved for the Captain’s quarters, where the ship’s officers usually eat, meet and make all of the key decisions affecting the course of their venture – is slowly transformed into an aquatic ‘greenhouse’.15 By removing one of the bulkhead walls, the Great Cabin is ‘extended as far forward as the after hatchway’,16 making it a third of the length of the ship. Two large skylights are cut into the deck above to let in sunlight, along with stout square windows at the back of the cabin, while three ‘scuttles’,17 holes, are cut into either side of the ship to let air flow through. Meanwhile a ‘false floor cut full of holes to contain the garden-pots in which the plants were to be brought home’18 is placed upon the structural floor, which in turn has had a layer of lead sheeting placed upon it, to stop whatever water drips from the pots from seeping to the deck below. Instead, draining holes are cut into the corners, with pipes fitted beneath to gather the excess water to tubs beneath, where it can be recycled to water the plants once more. They also install a heater to be used ‘in the case of cold weather in going round the cape’, so that the cabin is kept at ‘a temperature equal to that of the intertropical countries’.19

  No expense or effort is spared to make sure the plants will be looked after, and that includes an enormous expense to the comfort of the crew, who are inevitably to be squeezed into a much smaller area than usual.