Just not right now. Bligh will use the law to break them all. The shore reached, the mercurial Captain calms himself just enough to personally escort the five insolent crew-members to Sourabaya’s barracks, where these ingrates can be held in a dusty room overnight.
And in the morning, Bligh is soon telling the Governor, he wishes all five to face a quickly convened court martial.
•
As they lie uncomfortably in their sweltering, dark cells, the effects of the alcohol wear off, their tempers cool, and each man, each prisoner, is left alone with his thoughts.
What have they done? What will Bligh do to them?
After coming all this way, as Loyalists, damn it, are they really about to face the noose? What should they say in the hearing that waits for them on the morrow?
The truth? That Bligh is an unconscionable monster, and it is no coincidence that he has now faced three Mutinies in just the last six months? Or, tell a lie, and say there is no problem with him, it is all just a terrible misunderstanding – effectively throw themselves on the mercy of the court?
•
The morning brings at least one surprise. As Hallett, Ledward and Cole are marched to their court-martial hearing, Fryer and Purcell are told they will face no such thing. Instead, Bligh has decided to keep them in chains all the way back to England so they can face a court martial there.
Of the others, it is Hallett who is the first to be led into the makeshift military courtroom. In the sweltering closeness of it all, mosquitoes hum as the flies buzz around. And now the sound of shuffling footsteps approaching. It is young John Hallett, who now sits on a rickety wooden chair before the three stern judges: the Commandant des Troupes, a Captain and the Master Attendant.
‘Have you anything to say against your Captain?’ the Commandant begins in a thick Dutch accent that lends an air of propriety to every word.
‘He beat me once at Tahiti,’ Hallett replies, decidedly English, still nasal from the previous afternoon’s liquor.
‘For what reason?’
‘Because I was not got into the Boat.’
‘Why did not you go into the Boat?’
‘The Water was too deep.’
‘Have you no other complaint against your Captain?’
‘None.’33
Somehow, all the charges of yesterday have disappeared, with the only thing remaining being one long ago trivial complaint. Hallett, clearly, has seen his fate in the cracks in the ceiling the previous night.
The Commandant goes on: ‘Why did you then say to an English Sailor now in the service of Holland at this place, that it would not go well with your Captain when he returned to England, he having ill treated every person under his Command for which reason he would be tied to the mouth of a Cannon & fired into the Air?’
‘I do not know that I said any such thing and if I did utter such an expression, I was drunk when I did it.’34
Hallett now turns to Bligh directly, and pleads openly.
‘And I most humbly ask your forgiveness for it, and beg that I may have leave to return to England with you.’
The Dutch Commandant goes on.
‘Do you not think the Captain has done his duty in every respect to your knowledge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he brutal or severe so as to give you cause of Complaints?’
‘No.’
Hallett steps down, relieved to be freed from this inquisition, and, in the sober light of day, sure that he has done the right thing.
Next is 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 asked leave to go with him and was refused until he came on board again.’
It is a commendably trivial complaint, from another sage soul who, for the life of him, cannot remember any fault.
Captain Bligh now rises to ask questions himself.
‘Have I behaved brutal or severe so as to give cause of complaint?’
‘No.’
‘Have not I taken every pain to preserve my Ship’s Company?’
‘Yes, in a very great degree.’
‘Was it possible for me to have retaken the Ship or could I have done more than I did?’
‘No, certainly not.’35
That will be all, Mr Ledward.
Mr Cole now shuffles into the stifling room, his face grim, glistening with sweat, flushed from the heat and the hangover.
‘Have you anything to say against your Captain?’ Captain Bligh asks him menacingly, barely able to wait for him to take his seat.
‘I allege no particular complaint against you, God forbid.’
‘Have I behaved brutal or severe so as to give cause of complaint?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think I have done my duty as an able Officer in every respect?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Was it possible for me to have retaken the Ship or could I have done more than I did?’
‘No.’
It is done.
All three accusers have caved in, providing evidence that entirely exonerates Bligh. Their testimony is transcribed and signed by the three judges and they are allowed back on board the Resource.
And yet, to Bligh’s stupefaction, it is not quite over. For the next afternoon, the Commandant takes Bligh aside to tell him that … well … how do I put this? … well, it seems, the Bounty’s Master, Mr Fryer, is of the view that you, Captain Bligh, have been cheating the Royal Navy. Yes, Mr Fryer is alleging that you have been fraudulent, that you have in effect been keeping two sets of books, so that you may make private profits at the expense of His Majesty’s public purse. More troubling still, Mr Fryer actually has proof of this, as back in Coupang, he got a copy of the true prices demanded for many provisions, signed by the Governor, Opperhooft Willem Adriaan Van Este. And when those prices are compared to Bligh’s official documents, well, as the furious Bligh himself notes, it seems to show, ‘things I bought there for His Majesty’s Service for which I had made extravagant charges to Government’.
‘This paper will prove it!’ an excited Mr Fryer had told the Commandant. ‘Bligh will be roughly handled for it on his return to England.’36
Oh, and one other thing, Captain Bligh.
You should know that Mr Fryer is also insisting you personally are responsible for the Mutiny on the Bounty, because, as Bligh chronicles incredulously, ‘I had given my Ship’s Company short allowance of Yams and therefore [they] had taken away the Ship.’37
So angry he can barely speak, Bligh is, nevertheless, quick to flat-out deny all charges of financial malfeasance. In fact, he is quick to bark orders to the hovering Mr Samuel, who makes off like a scalded cat, doing the Captain’s bidding: gathering all of Bligh’s financial papers from the ship, including all the receipts and vouchers for all transactions in Coupang.
Do you see, there, Commandant?
They are all signed by the villainous Master himself! And also signed by Mr Cole and two respectable residents of that port.
Finally, the Commandant tells Bligh, you should know that Mr Purcell is in full agreement with every particular of Mr Fryer’s account, as to the cause of the Mutiny.
In the face of such villainy, and he says so to the Commandant, Bligh is more than ever glad that Purcell and Fryer are both prisoners, and that Bligh will not have to share a vessel with them again. They will be travelling on one of the vessels that the Governor has arranged to accompany Bligh on the next leg to Batavia. Or, maybe he should let them rot in Sourabaya, he has not yet decided.
But, Commandant, I will deal with them. Oh yes, I will definitely do that.
Observing just how incandescent with rage Bligh is, the Commandant, a reasonable man, of light temperament, visits Fryer in his confinement shortly afterwards to have a quiet word.
‘It would be much better for you, and Lieutenant Bligh,’ the high Dutch official posits, ‘to make it up and be
friends.’38
…
Well, Mr Fryer?
Well, Commandant, you might have a point.
The materials provided, Mr Fryer dips the pen in ink and begins a carefully ambiguous letter, meant to be read between the lines:
Sir
I understand by what the Commandant says that Matters can be settled. I wish to make everything agreeable as far as lay in my power, that nothing might happen when we came home.
As I have done everything in my power as far I know to do my duty & would still wish to do it …
Sir
I am Your most
Obedient Humble Servant
Jno. Fryer.39
Really, Mr Fryer?
Obedient and humble?
Captain Bligh does not think so.
This is little more than a veiled threat, a villain’s bargain, not the grovelling apology he seeks. Bligh throws it down and tells the Commandant that, as Fryer is his prisoner, he desires him to be taken from his cell and put in one of the accompanying vessels, completely on his own. He is not to be placed with Purcell, or any other Englishmen.
Yes, Captain Bligh.
And yet, when the Commandant rather sadly tells Fryer of this decision, the Master is frantic.
‘I beg you, Commandant,’ he says. ‘Tell Lieutenant Bligh that I wish to speak to him before he leaves this place.’40
Bligh is delighted to hear of Fryer’s panic.
But he is far too busy to talk to common criminals. Instead he will send you a note:
‘If you have anything to communicate you must write to me.’41
In short, grovel, Mr Fryer, grovel, and in writing, so I have legal proof I am right, and then we might have another look at this situation.
Fryer dips his pen in ink once more.
Sir
I have received yours saying that you cannot possibly find time to speak to me. I most humbly beg of you to grant me that favour if possible it can be done. I likewise beg of you to take me with you if you confine me in Irons. I will make every concession that you think proper 17th. Sept’r. 1789
Sir I am Your Humble Servant
Jno. Fryer 42
Now Captain Bligh agrees to see Mr Fryer, and with witnesses present so they may take full account, and confirm the confessions of this scoundrel. When Mr Fryer is brought before them, Bligh is pleased to see that he is pale and trembling ‘like a Villain who had done every mischief he could’43 on the eve of his punishment.
‘I humbly ask to be forgiven!’ begins Fryer. ‘I declare I will make every concession and disavow the infamous report I spread … I will give every reparation you please to ask, Captain!’44
‘I order you away on board the Prow,’45 replies Bligh.
What!
Oh yes, despite this apology, and your grovelling letter, your original punishment must stand – you shall be taken to England in chains on another vessel. And one more thing, Mr Fryer.
‘You are to converse no other way with me but by writing. All your concessions and disavowals of what you have already asserted must be by letter.’46
21 September 1789, return to Aphrodite’s Isle … again
The Tahitians look up to see grand white canvas sails. The Bounty has returned!
Their excitement and joy is more than matched by those on the Bounty who have chosen to stay in Tahiti. The beautiful people paddling up to them with shouts and laughter are their people, and the idea of living here once more is delightful.
For those who have committed to moving on quickly with Christian, however, the scene is upsetting. Even this bare glimpse of paradise is a reminder that they are turning their backs on it. It is the finest place on this earth they have ever seen. What chance there could be another like it, where they could settle just as happily?
What is more, the fact that they are dropping some of their number back in Tahiti indubitably means that – whatever the success or otherwise of Bligh and his own Loyalists in surviving long enough to tell the tale of what happened – their tale will be out regardless, as it can only be a matter of time before another ship arrives, and the likes of Charles Norman, Thomas McIntosh and Michael Byrn tell all. But there is no way around that.
The only exception on the ship is the Armourer, Joseph Coleman, who will not be free to go. Over his howled protests, Christian has decided that his skills as a maker of tools and weapons are too important in the new colony, and he will have to remain on board.
In short order, after dropping anchor, and unloading, Christian addresses them all for the last time.
After advising them that he will not be staying long, he asks for the assistance of all of them the following day to replenish their water supplies, as ‘I intended to cruise for some uninhabited island where we can land the stock and set fire to the ship, and where I hope to live the remainder of my days without seeing the face of a European bar those who are already with me.’47
Agreed.
The 15 who have chosen to stay in Tahiti are on their way, hauling hard on the oars of the Cutter heading to the shore – the Tahitian men who are returning home to an island they feared they’d never see again, and the likes of Peter Heywood and James Morrison who, for the first time in five months, are away from the custody of Mutineers, and entirely their own men once more.
At last, at long last!
As for Fletcher Christian, he stays resolutely on the Bounty and refuses to set foot on Tahiti again – even declining to accompany Isabella as she goes to visit her family.
For yes, it had been one thing to lie to King Tinah last time about Bry having met up with Toote. But to go and face him now, and be exposed as a liar – for he will surely know all before long – Christian cannot do it.
No matter how much Heywood and Stewart press him to go to see Tinah, to tell him the whole thing, to seek his forgiveness and understanding, Christian will not be moved.
‘How can I look him in the face,’ he asks plaintively, ‘after the lie I told him when I was here last?’48
From this position, he will not move and his general mood, his sheer depression, is of great concern to both Heywood and Stewart.
Every time they go out to the Bounty to visit him, it is the same thing.
‘He was generally below,’ Heywood will recount, ‘leaning his head upon his hand, and when they came down for orders, he seldom raised his head to answer more than “Yes”, or “No”.’49
It is staggering – and depressing in itself.
The Fletcher Christian they’d known on the island the first time they had been here – the strong, confident, tanned and joyous leader of men, who delighted in every moment of his existence in this paradise – is simply no more.
‘[Now,]’ Heywood will report, ‘he had become such an altered man in his looks and appearance, as to render it probable that he would not long survive.’50
Christian appreciates the concern of his friends a great deal, and knows that of the Bounty crew, even though they are electing to stay at Tahiti, Heywood and Stewart are, indeed, the only two he can entirely trust.
Which is why on the night of 22 September 1789, just the day after they have returned, he confides in the two a great secret, that he has not even told the Mutineers who will remain with him. He tells them the time of the Bounty’s departure.
It means, he tells them, this will be the last time we ever see each other.
‘If ever you get to England,’ he says with no little emotion, ‘inform my friends and country what was the cause of my committing so desperate an act.’51
That cause, of course, can be summed up in a single word: Bligh!
And you must tell them everything. The tempers, the injustices visited upon them all, the insults, the accusations, the hideous charge that, he, Fletcher Christian, the gentleman officer from the Isle of Man, would ever have lowered himself to steal coconuts from the perfidious Bligh. How could he not, as a matter of honour, rise up high and proud, against such a low tyrant?
&nbs
p; All both men can do is to faithfully promise that, in the unlikely event they do get back to England, and are allowed to speak, they will indeed speak up for the integrity of Fletcher Christian.
And now, Mr Stewart, if you would, Fletcher would like a quiet word with young Peter alone. For there is one other matter which Fletcher would like to entrust to his fellow Manxman.
The pair huddle together, like brothers one last time … 52
•
In the hours after midnight, all falls quiet. Natives of both sexes and crew-members lie, strewn about the quarter-deck. In the wee hours, the rustle of the breeze, the creaking of the masts, and the gentle slapping of the waves against the Bounty, receives just a little competition from two things.
The first are the light footsteps of the loyal Armourer, Joseph Coleman, padding to the side of the ship, followed by a small gurgle as he first slides into the water and then starts dog-paddling to the shore, making good his escape.
The second thing, only a short time later, is Fletcher Christian – oblivious to the fact that Coleman has jumped ship – moving among the men on the deck to find the ones he needs, waking them, and telling them very quietly that they must get the ship underway, even before the dawn. He has decided that – given the uncertain reaction of Tinah when he finds out he has been lied to – it is too dangerous to remain here for even another day.
For, what happens when Tinah finds out the truth? And what if the group of Loyalists and Mutineers now on Tahiti – all of them with arms – decide to combine to rise against the Bounty men, perhaps indeed with the help of the Natives, led by Tinah, who would be eager to avenge his dear friend, Bry?
No, he must leave now, and take with him all those Tahitian men and women who happen to be sleeping on board, even if it is against their wishes. The men they will need for labour and possibly as warriors. The women are needed for love, sex, breeding and labour as the Europeans build their new society on an island unknown.
Taking his cutlass, thus, Christian slashes the rope that binds them to the anchor – he had never been so enamoured of anchors as Bligh, in any case.
Propelled by a favourable current, the Bounty begins to drift away from Tahiti, even as the first of his fellow Mutineers start clambering up the rigging, edging out along the spars to unfurl the topsails.
Mutiny on the Bounty Page 41