Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  ‘Now, sir, sign those books,’67 orders Bligh.

  The crew leans forward to see the result, to not miss a word, or a grimace. This is high drama on the High Seas and, whatever else, a wonderful break from the dreadful monotony.

  Well, Mr Fryer, what is it to be?

  For all of ten seconds there is no movement at all, not even a flicker of the Master’s bushy eyebrows as he mulls over the humiliating decision before him.

  Finally, Fryer steps forward, takes the proffered quill, stoops over, dips it in the ink and signs, even as he announces to all in an icy voice, ‘I sign in obedience to your orders, but this may be cancelled hereafter.’68

  Insolence! Damn the man.

  Nevertheless, Fryer can be dealt with later. The main thing is that the books are now signed. Mr Fryer’s bluff has been called, the Captain has won, and the matter, like the book, is closed.

  ‘You are dismissed,’ the Captain tells the men. ‘Return to your duty.’69

  Bligh returns to his chamber to write up his Log, all about Fryer, that ‘troublesome man’70 who will not dine tonight at the Captain’s table, or indeed, ever again. From now on, they will speak when it is their clear duty to do so, ‘and even then with much apparent reserve’.71

  •

  Captain, wake up.

  Captain …?

  Bad news.

  It is just after midnight on the following day when Bligh is roused from his slumbers to be told that Valentine is dead. Furious, stupefied and saddened – in that order – the Captain dresses and goes to the lad’s hammock to gaze down on the pallid, limp remains of one who was once the strongest man on the ship. After paying his respects, and saying his prayers, Bligh orders that Valentine’s body be prepared for a burial at sea on the morrow.

  Now, the death of one of his sailors requires a formal record that will be perused by his masters upon the ship’s return to England and Bligh frames it carefully in the Log. Not a single word is false, but he is certain to leave out all detail to do with drink, deception and incompetence. For those things to have flourished under his command, to the point of a sailor dying, would reflect badly on him as a commander, and so he must put a much more dignified face on proceedings:

  The loss I met with this day by the Death of James Valentine was of equal surprise and regret. This poor man was one of the most robust People on board, and therefore the surprise and shock was the greater to me …72

  Such is Bligh’s disgust with the failure of the drunken Dr Huggan to have properly cared for the tragic Valentine, and so public does he make that disgust, the so-called ‘Surgeon’ has dined for the last time at the Captain’s table.

  You, sir, may retire to your cabin, and have your meals there, no doubt washed down by several bottles of wine. Already in an ill-humour, Bligh is now constantly finding furious fault with this wretched bunch of incompetents, low-life scoundrels, frightening fools and bloody blackguards the Admiralty has cursed him with to make up his crew of second-rate sailors.

  At least he still has Fletcher Christian to share his table, but Fletcher’s regular position on the Captain’s table is envied by few. For who wants to be near Bligh when he rolls with rage throughout repast?

  •

  Bligh remains truly shocked by the death of Valentine, and is intent on watching Dr Huggan very closely from this day forward – observing just how much he drinks, when he does so, and how much it affects his medical care of the crew. They have already lost one man to illness and Bligh is determined there will be no more. In the meantime, Bligh ensures that Valentine’s meagre possessions are divided equally between his two sailor friends who actually did care for him, while Huggan was a drunken sot in his cot.

  Alas, for Bligh, his determination to watch Dr Huggan more closely does not remotely end the problem. For, feeling himself in exile, the drunken doctor now determines to make his presence felt more than ever. No, not by curing the crew’s enduring ailments, but by exercising the one bit of power he has over the Captain: declaring a sailor too ill to perform his duties. Once so declared by the official doctor on a voyage, a Captain risks court martial if he forces any sailor so deemed to work.

  Dr Huggan declares man after man in the small, over-stretched crew to be sick, when Bligh can see nothing wrong with them at all!

  Nevertheless, as Morrison notes, ‘several of the seamen, particularly the oldest, began to complain of pain in their limbs’.73

  Surely not?

  Bligh cannot believe it.

  Dr Huggan insists it is so. Scurvy, Dr Huggan informs the Captain on the 14th of October. Three men struck down with it.

  On Bligh’s ship! The captain is appalled as he has prided himself on having learnt from the pioneer in the field, Captain Cook, and it is for this reason that, from the beginning of the voyage, he has gone to such great lengths to insist on obsessive cleanliness – always ordering the cabins aired and surfaces swabbed with vinegar – as well as the consumption of vegetables or sauerkraut and portable soup in lieu of anything fresh, and daily dancing for exercise. And it had worked! Due to his knowledge, and the discipline he had instilled, there have been no cases of scurvy at all. But now, Dr Huggan swears, absolutely swears, he can spot the subtle symptoms of scurvy: aching limbs, a pain in the gums, general fatigue … all the things that can be claimed, without being proven.

  So now, not only does Bligh lose manpower on a ship already strained for lack of it, but the official record risks showing scurvy present on Captain Bligh’s ship, to go with the death of a crew-member to illness.

  He orders the men be given a treatment for scurvy, a rather unpleasant ‘decoction of Essence Malt’.74

  Four days later, the Captain inspects the three men himself. Just as he thought!

  Bligh has a rather different diagnosis: ‘on examining the Men who the Doctor supposed had a taint of the Scurvy it appeared to be nothing more than the prickly heat. However their decoction I desired to be continued.’75

  Yes, whatever their protests, Bligh insists, if you say you have scurvy, then you really must continue to take Dr Huggan’s wretched potion. No matter, by the following day, the ‘illness’ spreads … as does the insubordination.

  On Sunday 19 October Bligh is told by Cole76 that two men, John Mills and William Brown, are ‘refusing to dance this evening’.77

  They too, are now sure they have … scurvy.

  No, you damn well don’t, Bligh insists. You will dance, gentlemen, and dance well.

  ‘I ordered their grog to be stopped with a promise of further punishment on a second refusal. I have always directed the Evenings from 5 to 8 o’clock to be spent in dancing and that every man should be obliged to dance.’78

  But it’s odd. Despite doing the dancing, and having no grog, and being ordered not to have scurvy, Brown continues to insist – with Dr Huggan’s full and public support – that he has scurvy.

  Scurvy, you say?

  Bligh is sure he means ‘Rheumatic Complaints’, and writes in the Log as such, only adding afterwards, ‘the Doctor insists upon it that it is Scurvy. But I can discover no symptoms to lead me to be apprehensive of it.’79

  For what would Dr Huggan know?

  The same doctor who let Valentine die?

  The same one who is yet again drunk, right now?

  Bligh demands to see the sick list. Come, come now, Dr Huggan. You have your own official Log to present to the Admiralty and, as Captain, I have the right to see it. Now, sir, where is it?

  Dr Huggan hums, he hahs, he drinks some more and delays but, ‘with some difficulty I got a Sick list from him’.80

  And what, in fact, does it demonstrate?

  Why, exactly as Bligh had thought all along. That is, that despite all of the Doctor’s hand-wringing, his worrying words and the whimperings of Brown, there is one – just one, you may see for yourself, sir – just one man, McIntosh, ‘in it under a Rhematic complaint, the others he now seems to think nothing about’.81

  With proof
now of Huggan’s deliberate deceptions, Bligh does not hesitate to formalise his accusations in the Log that the Admiralty will read: ‘The Doctors Intoxication has given me much trouble these last five days.’82

  For all that, Bligh still orders that all the sailors with rheumatic complaints keep up the treatment for scurvy. And he orders the Surgeon to give him another, full sick list, for his records.

  Either way, Bligh is not too anxious. They are but days away from Tahiti, and he is sure that, once there, all the malingerers, once they see a beautiful woman swaying with open arms and more, and beckoning them to come hither, will rise from their sick beds like lepers cured by the healing hand of Jesus Christ, and make full and miraculous recoveries in a matter of minutes.

  It takes Huggan two full days, but when at last the sick list is pushed under Bligh’s cabin door and the Captain retrieves it, he can’t help but notice that the name on top of the list is … Dr Huggan. Yes, apparently the Surgeon himself now has rheumatic complaints! So bad, the Captain is informed, the unfortunate fellow has taken to his bed, and can no longer rise. A very red-nosed rheumatism to be sure, and one that makes him sway, and slur his words, but he is certain of it. Dr Bligh, however, offers a second opinion in his Log: ‘The Surgeon’s complaint has been owing to constant state of intoxication.’83

  With that, Bligh sends a message to Dr Huggan, and ‘in a most friendly manner requested him to leave off drinking, but he seemed not sensible of anything I said to him and it had little effect’.84

  So little effect, in fact, that, as Bligh finds at nightfall, Dr Huggan has failed to appear at table for dinner, and for a very bad reason. He had already drunk his meal, in his own tiny quarters.

  The Surgeon kept his Bed all this day and always drunk, without eating an ounce of food.85

  Curse that man!

  Making a snap decision, in his ever snappy manner, Bligh stands Dr Huggan down from his post, and replaces him officially with his assistant, Thomas Ledward.

  As it happens, just three days without Dr Huggan’s medical care really does produce a remarkable result.

  ‘It is with much pleasure,’ Bligh records on 24 October, ‘that I find the few invalids recovering very fast.’86

  And this time, Mr Ledward is in full agreement with Bligh that not a single man is showing signs of scurvy! They have no ‘eruptions’ or ‘swellings’ and ‘Their Gums are as sound as any can be expected after such a length of Salt Diet.’ Why, their health is so good that ‘their breath is not offensive neither is their teeth loose’.87

  In truth, however, Mr Ledward is telling an outright lie about one patient – none other than Dr Huggan. Though he has been telling Bligh that Huggan is getting better and taking the air, he must soon confess he has been, as Bligh recounts, ‘deceiving me in respect of the Surgeon’s illness. It was now four days since he has seen light and in bed all this time intoxicated.’88

  Huggan is now officially on the list as suffering ‘Paralytic Affection’.

  An apoplectic Bligh can bear it no more. Cole! The Bosun, the keeper of discipline, is sent for immediately.

  Go to Dr Huggan’s cabin. Search it, and see that all liquor is removed. The best way to cure this physician is to remove the liquid illness that so plagues him. It is a moot question whether, in response, Dr Huggan is more surprised, outraged, or … drunk. It is probably drunk, though outrage runs it close, and ‘the operation was not only troublesome but offensive in the highest degree’.89

  Later that same day, despite his official diagnosis, Huggan is clearly not nearly so paralysed as he claims, when, shortly afterwards, ‘The Doctor … was discovered to be able to get out of bed and look for liquor, although represented to have almost lost the use of one side [of his body].’90

  Fed up, and with nothing left to do to help the insufferable, hopeless old Sawbones, Bligh leaves him to sober up.

  The next morning, Saturday 25 October 1788, at half past seven, the Bounty passes just to the east and then north of the Island of Maitea, which, Bligh knows, means the island of Tahiti is only one day away with fair winds, two if contrary ones. On Maitea, which Captain Cook had visited on his first voyage nearly 20 years earlier, Bligh can see three dwellings from the deck and a group of 20 Natives waving at them from the shore, but the surf is too high for a landing and so he sails on.

  After all, Tahiti is so close now, Bligh can practically smell it, and he cannot wait to get there and get started on the mission proper, and …

  And now here is another rare sight – Dr Huggan.

  The Surgeon also came upon Deck and was sober, but very weak from the extraordinary manner he has kept himself this week past.

  Such an extraordinary recovery, in such a short time!

  His paralytic disorder has been perfectly cured in 48 hours by giving him no Spirits to make use of, and only a little Wine and water.91

  Yes, among the most famous of the miracles of Jesus Christ was turning water into wine. Well, Bligh has performed a miracle of his own, healing a cripple simply by turning most of his wine into water!

  And seeing you are on deck, Dr Huggan, it is time for you to perform an important medical task, with Tahiti now just 24 hours away – inspect the men for venereal disease.

  Bligh’s aim is commendable.

  As I have some reason to suppose the Tahitians have not been visited by any ships since Captain Cook, I hope they may have found means together with their natural way of living, to have eradicated the Venereal disease. To prove this and free us from any ill founded suppositions, that we might renew the Complaint, I have directed the Surgeon to examine very particularly every man …92

  All sailors, and officers, on deck. Now, undo your flies, and let the doctor see your penises. Let him inspect each one very closely, and press his thumb and forefinger along the shaft to see if there is any emission.

  As the whole process would be described by one of Bligh’s officers, ‘In the afternoon, with but little distinction, the whole body corporate, passed through the hands of our worthy associate … and never did the Doctor take a pinch – of snuff, with more solemnity or handle – a subject, with less risible countenance. It was ever his nature to be gentle …’93

  Finally it is done.

  ‘He reported every person totally free from the Venereal complaint.’94

  Not for long though, Bligh suspects.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LAND HO!

  All the sailors swore that they never saw handsomer made women in their lives, and declared they would all to a man live on two thirds allowance rather than lose so fine an opportunity of getting a girl apiece.1

  George Robertson, Master of the Dolphin,

  on Captain Wallis’ expedition to Tahiti, 1767

  Born under the most beautiful of skies, fed on the fruits of a land that is fertile and requires no cultivation … [the Tahitians] know no other Gods but love. Every day is dedicated to it. The entire island is its temple, every woman its altar, every man its priest. And what sort of women? you will ask. The rivals of Georgians in beauty, and the sisters of the utterly naked Graces. There, neither shame nor modesty exercise their tyranny …2

  Philibert Commerson, Botanist on French ship Etoile,

  under command of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1768

  [Tahiti is] certainly the paradise of the world and if happiness could result from situation and convenience, here it is to be found in the highest perfection. I have seen many parts of the world, but Tahiti is capable of being preferable to them all, and certainly is so considering it in its natural state.3

  Captain William Bligh, 1788

  26 October 1788, Matavai Bay, some sunny isle

  Cometh the dawn, cometh the vision. For there it is, dead ahead over the translucent blue of the Pacific Ocean. There, do you see? That green smudge, four leagues off and closing …

  Tahiti! A timeless island in a timeless ocean. Beyond the sparkling translucence, the white waves lap onto the black sands of the beach, ev
en as the palm trees lining the beach wave a green welcome and, beyond them again, the even darker green volcanic peaks soar.

  As their worthy ship glides ever closer, skidding down one impossibly blue wave and swiftly climbing the next, the bulbous bow tucking the water ’neath it like the breast of a swan, Bligh gives the orders for Fryer to guide the ship into the gloriously familiar, sparkling, calm waters of Matavai Bay, and to anchor just off Point Venus – the northern tip of Tahiti, where Cook’s party had observed the Transit of Venus two decades earlier.

  For four men on the Bounty – Bligh, his Armourer Joseph Coleman, William Peckover and the botanist David Nelson – it is like a warm and wonderful homecoming. As they make their way through the break in the reef into the bay proper, all four gaze eagerly to see what they know is coming next.

  And … sure enough!

  ‘I had no sooner got round … Point Venus,’ Bligh will note in his log, ‘than I was visited by a great number of canoes.’4

  ~~Va’a tele~~! ~~Huge canoes~~! Beautifully constructed ones, carved from Tahitian chestnut, with high ornamental prows moving so fast through the waters that the feathers of red – the colour of the Gods – hanging from those prows are nigh horizontal in the wind as the 20 Natives in each canoe thrust their craft forward, in perfectly synchronised paddling.

  And there are swarms of these flying vessels! Like an armada of eager seagulls coming at them across the water, the paddles flash high and brightly in the rising sun, before hurtling down and splashing water along the side of their flying canoes.

  ‘Tyos?’5 those in the first canoes shout up at the incredulous sailors.

  Friends?

  Yes! (After all, look at their bare breasts! Who would not want to be friends with them? By now the entire bow of the ship is lined with sailors staring down at these semi-naked men and women, but mostly the women, who are brown, lithe, gorgeous, voluptuous and smiling.)