Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  And of course his fellow Mutineers are doing the same, while still reserving for him the many sideways glances which pose the unspoken question: Does Captain Christian know what he is doing?

  But there is no way around it. After checking and checking again, and two more times for good measure, it is clear that, though they are on the exact co-ordinates, there is nothing here. There should be … but there just isn’t … and no amount of gazing will change it, just as no amount of sideways glancing, or even hard staring – or even, yes, maybe mutinous muttering – will make Christian believe that he has made a mistake. His palms begin to sweat.

  No, clearly, the original mistake belongs to Carteret, and there is only one solution. As Christian explains to the ever more restless crew, an error of longitude is most likely. They must, therefore, stay on this latitude, and simply explore along it to the east and west, until they find their target.

  And, in the end, it is the way of such things.

  Just as it is an enormous thing for a man to become a murderer for the first time, but a much smaller step to do it for the second, so too are some of the Mutineers now contemplating the same heinous act with a lot less troubled emotion than they had the first time.

  Does Christian actually know what he is doing?

  It has been just over seven days now, exploring along the latitude of 25 degrees south, and still there is no sign of any land. The crew are now so restless that, for the second time in nine months, there is the whisper on the waves at midnight and into the day: should they take the ship from the Captain?

  Most active in the field are McCoy, Williams and Quintal. Both they and their women, not to mention many others on board, think it is time to return to Tahiti. After all, what likelihood Bligh and the others even survived long enough to sound the alarm? They are likely drowned long ago, or mere bleached bones of starvation on some atoll, all while here the Bounty men are, scrambling across the Pacific, trying to get away from a British Naval expedition to punish them that is simply not coming. Christian’s hand must be forced, they must go about, and …

  And what is that?

  What?

  That! There!

  It is a small smudge, on the horizon, over the bow. Possibly a low-lying cloud, it is impossible to say. But no, once they get closer, it is clear: it is a beautiful green island – with the clear dome of a volcanic peak, thrusting over a thousand feet from the sea – on exactly the latitude Captain Carteret had recorded, but with three and one quarter degrees further east in longitude, which is to say about 210 miles! In any case, it is perfect for the Mutineers – an obscure, tiny dot on the map, barely known by anyone, and even that dot has been put in the wrong place on the Royal Navy charts.

  It is the 15th day of January 1790.

  Christian’s relief is palpable, and even the perpetually hard-faced McCoy and Quintal soften their countenances and cease their muttering. On this blustery day of howling winds and high seas, it is soon obvious to the men of the Bounty that there is no safe harbour at Pitcairn, no sheltered inlets, and no sandy beaches, just towering cliffs and smashing surf staunchly defending the land. It is going to be singularly difficult to land themselves and their supplies, which is something of a problem now – as they are all anxious to get on the island to have a look – but it will be a real advantage for them once they live on shore, should there ever come a time that the Royal Navy arrives. They shall hold the higher ground, and defend it easily.

  For now, they are just glad to be here, to see land again, and for this windy, wavy night, Christian is content to drop anchor just off shore, in the hope they can find a way to land on the morrow.

  In fact, it is not until the morning of 18 January that they happily wake to calm conditions. Christian orders the Jolly Boat to be lowered, and climbs in, together with Brown, Williams, McCoy and three of the Tahitians. (Among them is the youngest, strongest, and most aggressive of the Tahitians, Nehow. Against the possibility of trouble, he will be a good man to have on their side.)

  After grounding the boat in a crunching stop on a thin, rocky, and wonderfully unwelcoming beach, the men gaze up at the steep hills and cliffs that face them. Perfect. With Christian in the lead, they are soon climbing, as stealthy as cats, up and over impossibly narrow passes.

  Though they are fairly sure the island is uninhabited, still they are careful, ready as best as they can be for the sudden appearance of hostile Natives. In the first minutes they hold their muskets and cutlasses firmly, ready to leap into action, but …

  There is nothing. The place really is uninhabited, and instead of the high-pitched battle cries they had feared, there is just the wind whipping their beards, the endless cry of the petrel birds, the rustling of the banyan trees, and the eternal, timeless sound of the waves crashing on the craggy cliffs of this, their timeless hideaway.

  With the fact that the island is uninhabited confirmed, Christian and the others look out for the other key features they will need to make this work.

  Fresh water is no problem, as the island abounds in springs, creeks, ponds and small waterfalls. In terms of wildlife, there prove to be so many seabirds – gull, tern, frigate-bird, albatross, booby, heron and egret, among others – that as the men approach and the birds take off, they blacken the sky.

  There are also plenty of coconuts and even, yes … some bread-fruit trees!

  When it comes to arable land, they are also blessed, for the soil looks so fertile you could plant a toothpick and grow a pine tree. The island is covered in lush growth, suggesting abundant rainfall, and is dotted with sparkling turquoise lagoons, and though, in terms of establishing fields for corn or the like, a fair amount of clearing will have to be done, it is obvious from the first that they could hardly have hoped for better.

  Even the Tahitians are impressed. No, Pitcairn is not exactly like Tahiti. But it is a Pacific island such as they recognise, with steep hills, thick forest, ample tropical fruits and birds, and, as people with millennia of experience in prospering in precisely such an environment, they have no doubt that they can prosper here too.

  The men left behind on the Bounty, thus, are delighted to note as the Jolly Boat surges back towards them that everyone in it is smiling. Clearly, the exploratory expedition has gone well, and so it proves after all scramble aboard, and burst out with their news.

  On the morning of 19 January 1790, Christian directs the ship to ‘anchor in a small bay on the northern side of the island’31 and all is in readiness to begin the arduous process of unloading onto a hazardous, rocky sliver of beach.

  Carefully, the Bounty is brought as close into the rocky shore as they dare, as they all gaze to the steep and thickly forested hills that come right down to the shore.

  And so the most important task of all begins – emptying the Bounty of everything that will be of use on Pitcairn, which is pretty much all that is not bolted down, and half of that which is bolted down, including the bolts themselves. Far and away the most difficult cargo to get from ship to shore are the hogs and other animals, as the terrified brutes squeal, reel, and have to be held tight to prevent them jumping over the sides.

  Though the Jolly Boat is the main work-horse for the task, ferrying back and forth, it is quickly decided that another, bigger, and more stable craft – a raft – is needed.

  If only they had someone on board experienced at making rafts from pieces of wood on the Bounty …?

  Wait!

  For it is, of course, Christian who supervises the construction of a sturdy raft, made out of the hatches of the ship, as, once unbolted and strapped together on long beams, they provide exactly the large flat surface needed. Once a rope is tied around a rock on shore, with the other end attached to the ship, all those on the raft have to do is pull over-hand back and forth and the raft moves easily back and forth, as the pile of supplies and the muster of hogs and fowl on the shore grows ever larger.

  That evening, around the campfire by the shores of ‘Bounty Bay’, as it will be
come known, the Mutineers and their troupe are able to dine well on freshly killed seabirds, washed down by a little wine, and a lot of fresh water, before retiring to shelters provided by the Bounty’s sails, strung up on ropes in newly configured ways.

  And, of course, the next day, and days thereafter, the process of gutting the Bounty continues, with everything from the ship’s guns to the Bounty’s Bible, an old version first brought on by Bligh, brought ashore.

  It takes three days, but finally it is done. Everything bar the Bounty itself is on the shores of Pitcairn, which begs the next obvious question.

  What should they do with the ship?

  Within the camp, there proves to be two camps of thought.

  The first one is to destroy it. Burn it. Sink it. It matters not. For it will only take one passing ship to see it, and their hiding place will inevitably be discovered.

  Most vociferous in voicing this view, and the debate goes for three intense days, is the ever glowering Quintal, who insists – with an intensity worthy of a roaring fire that simply does not wane, despite no logs being added – that the whole thing must be burnt. For what do they have to gain by keeping it? Nothing. This is their home now, and everyone must understand it. Others, led by Christian, and with most of the Tahitians, particularly – as they, after all, have nothing to fear from a British Naval expedition – stand aghast at the whole idea of destroying the only means they have of getting back to Tahiti. And Christian’s proposal makes a lot of sense. Instead of destroying it, they could run the Bounty aground, allowing them to strip every plank from it and use it for building their huts. They could even preserve the hull, perhaps even drag it out of the water and secrete it. That way, should they ever need to get away from Pitcairn, they could rebuild it from the ground up!

  The debate goes for days, getting ever more intense, until it is interrupted by the smell of smoke, and then the vision of flickering flames.

  …

  …

  Jesus Christ!

  The Bounty is on fire!

  To win the argument beyond all possible doubt, Quintal has slipped onto the fore section of the Bounty and set it on fire. He has been joined by two other Mutineers, who have done the same on two other sections of the Bounty, and soon the whole ship is ablaze.

  As the sun goes down and the night comes falling from the sky, the Mutineers and the Tahitians stand on the shore, their faces lit by the roaring flames – and many of those faces have tears running down their cheeks. For they know they are watching their last link to the world heading to the heavens as smoke.

  Some of the men mutter that they should have ‘Confined Capt. Bligh and returned to their native country’,32 but hindsight is useless now.

  For what will it change?

  The whites will never see England again.

  The Natives will never see Tahiti or Tubuai again.

  They are living on Pitcairn Island and the only thing that will change that fact is their own deaths.

  Yes, Christian could try to mete out a terrible punishment upon Quintal, but by what authority?

  As Captain of the Bounty?

  The Bounty no longer exists, can’t you see?

  With the Bounty’s destruction, the last vestiges of his authority have gone too. One thing is for certain, they won’t be needing his navigational skills anymore. No, all that is necessary, now, is to work out how to get themselves, with their supplies, from this barren shore further inland, where the arable land lies.

  ‘The mountains were so difficult of access,’ Alec Smith will record, ‘and the passes so narrow, that they might be maintained by a few persons against an army.’33

  Even better, there are caves, which will make excellent retreat positions should the need arise.

  They push on.

  2 February 1790, Tahiti, trouble in paradise

  First there are squeals, and then come the screams.

  Exactly what has happened will be a matter of some dispute. But it will be the fervent claim of John Brown – the caustic cast-off from Captain Cox’s Mercury – that a Tahitian man has stolen his hog. Which man?

  That one, over there, with his hands over the bloody spots where his ears had been, just minutes before.

  Yes, in punishment for having stolen his hog, Brown, in high dudgeon, higher temper and low regard for the people who are his hosts on this island, has knocked the man down, fallen upon him, put him in a headlock, and then taken his knife to lop off the man’s ears.

  What proof does Brown have that this is the man in question?

  None.

  He just feels that this was the man most likely to have done it, and it was important that he be made an example of.

  And this is not the only trouble in paradise at the time.

  Elsewhere on the island, Matt Thompson – who is bad to the bone – has ‘ill used’,34 a phrase meaning ‘raped’, a Native girl, which has seen the girl’s brother knock Thompson down before fleeing from his raging gun.

  In return, Thompson has vowed revenge.

  The situation is tense, just made for an explosion.

  Only four days later, when some Natives from a remote part of the island come visiting, some of them, curious to see a white man in the flesh, gather in front of Thompson’s hut, which sees him yell at them: ‘Away!’35

  Ignorant both of his previous threat, and the fact that he fears them to be relatives of the raped girl, they make no move, not even when he raises his musket and points it at them.

  What do they know of the Brown Bess musket, or any musket for that matter?

  Well, given that he has been limping around with a loaded musket for days now, they are about to find out.

  Perhaps drunk, perhaps paranoid, very likely both – and certainly uncaring of human life – Thompson pulls the trigger.

  There is a flash, an explosion, a puff of acrid smoke. Thompson’s ammunition sprays out of the muzzle in several directions. One Native man, holding his young child, hits the ground with a thud. Both father and infant are covered in blood. Both are dead. To their side a gurgling half-scream comes from a woman who falls to her knees, clutching at her shattered jaw. Another man falls to his stomach, writhing, a piece of musket-ball lodged in his back. The rest of the Natives look to the ground, uncomprehending. They see the blood, the pain, the death. Without a pause, they scatter, running to get away from this devil.

  The island seethes.

  No, there is no outright explosion now, but it is coming, and they all know it. (Heywood is one who does his best to prevent it, giving a shirt to the widow of the slain man, which is, at least, well received.)

  It seems clear to some of the white men that they need to have a recognised leader – to get themselves organised for the attack to come – and it is with that in mind that Charley Churchill offers his services, making a forceful speech to the gathered throng. He is, after all, a Chief in the district of Tyarrabboo.

  But, as Morrison will recount, ‘as we all looked upon the affair as murder, we declined either making him our chief or taking part in any of the business’.36

  Very well then. Deciding discretion to be the better part of valour, and absence the better part still, Churchill, Thompson and Brown take their canoes and decamp to Tyarrabboo, where they will be hard to challenge thanks to Churchill’s status as a Chief …

  And yet, that status is not long in being challenged by … none other than Thompson himself who refuses – refuses, do you hear? – to bow to Churchill the Chief, and is so angry that Churchill should ask it of him, he decamps and moves to a different part of Tyarrabboo.

  ‘I’ll shoot him if any difference or distinction is made between us!’37 he declares to all who care to listen.

  •

  It happens in an instant, right by a Tahiti lagoon.

  On this morning, Heywood is out walking and sketching when, seemingly from out of nowhere, an enormous Tahitian man – as strong as a bull, and twice as angry – grabs him by the hair and throws him t
o the ground. By the time young Heywood can look up, his assailant – who he recognises as the brother of the man recently murdered by Thompson – is holding a huge rock above his head and is clearly about to bring it down on the Englishman’s skull, when …

  When another Native shouts out: ‘Fa auera’a! Stop it!’ This is the man who presented the widow with a shirt, this is not the white man who did the killing.

  The rock is held … at least momentarily … as … the avenger … considers this new information.

  Oh. Well, instead of me killing you, perhaps you’d like to come to my place for dinner tonight? The shaken Heywood declines the polite invitation, carefully, oh so carefully, and returns to his own hut knock-kneed and trembling. No sooner has he walked through the door than he is engulfed by his friends, including Morrison, who embrace him tightly. They had been told with some satisfaction by other Natives that he was already dead.

  13 March 1790, off the south coast of England, home is the sailor …

  Four bells, and all’s well. Mostly.

  From the previous dusk, and on through the night, they have been sailing blind through the shroud of fog, nudging east by north along the southern coast of England, sounding as they go, to be sure they do not run aground.

  42 vademen! 42 fathoms!

  35 vademen! 35 fathoms!

  38 vademen! 38 fathoms!

  And there! For just a minute or so, the rising sun holds hands with the breeze of dawn and rushes the night’s mist away for just long enough to give Bligh the briefest glimpse of the land of his dreams, his homeland, some eight leagues distant to their north. It is England. His country. After two years and three months away, Betsy, I am home.

  And now it is gone again, as the mist regroups to take back its aquatic empire so briefly lost.

  For many hours more, the Vlydt keeps sailing through the white haze, hugging the coast, until the Dutch Captain decides it is too dangerous to bring the ship close into land, and so anchors just off the Isle of Wight. Bligh takes destiny in his own hands. After a quick couple of words to the Captain – good riddance – he barks orders to Samuel and Smith to pack his things. Just after noon, with no ceremony and barely a backward glance, Captain Bligh, with his two ever faithful Loyalists by his side, steps on to an English vessel which has come out looking for custom, and orders that he be taken directly to Portsmouth.