Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  So it is that at midnight on 13 March 1790 – nearly 12 months since losing his ship the Bounty to the mutinous rabble – Captain William Bligh sets foot on English soil once more, a feat he had always felt he would be able to accomplish without quite realising that he would feel the kind of vindictive joy he does now. Against all odds, he has done it! Though a victim of mutiny most foul, he has overcome each adversity and has been able to return to England once more, with the most amazing story that any sailor has ever had to tell – and a story that, hopefully, will soon see the hounds of the Royal Navy let loose in pursuit of Christian and his Mutineers, wherever they are.

  Of course in this, the dead of night, there is not a soul around to utter a single word of welcome, pump his hand in congratulation, bow to his skill and sagacity … just a handful of sober sailors going about their duties, mixed with packs of drunken sailors stumbling from the ale houses and whorehouses back to their ships.

  Taking the first secure lodgings he can find, Bligh passes an impatient night before, at 10 am on the morrow, as the bells of the Portsmouth churches ring out on this Sabbath to summon the faithful, Bligh – the real miracle of the day, for he is risen from the nearly dead to become an angel of vengeance – is on his way once more. Seated at the back of a post-chaise headed for London at a pace that even our lady of the riding habit could never have approached, he watches this once familiar but now strange world slip by him, inevitably comparing it to the extraordinary world he has come from. Here now are so many things he once took for granted, this very post-chaise for example, which he now sees as the very height of sophistication, of modernity.

  It is no small thing for a Captain of the Royal Navy to return to England without his ship, and his first step when he arrives in London is to present himself to the Admiralty, and formally hand over every document he possesses concerning the journey.

  March 1790, Pitcairn, still they sleep ’neath the Bounty’s sails …

  Some 300 feet above their landing place, Christian and his most loyal Mutineers select a spot for a village entirely invisible from any ships that might happen to pass. From there, each Mutineer marks out for himself and his wife a flat patch of ground to call his own and then erects the tents made from the salvaged sails of the Bounty. Laboriously now, and with much squealing, bleating and angry clucking, all of the Bounty’s hogs, goats and chickens brought ashore are herded up the precipitous pass to be corralled into makeshift yards. So too are the cats. But no dogs. As Christian explains to the shocked Mutineers, their barking might endanger them all, as it risks forewarning whatever intruders might come to the island just where the Mutineers can be found – so they must be slaughtered.

  No!

  (They’ll put 19 men in a tiny vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but this, this seems really cruel.)

  But Fletcher Christian insists.

  Gravely, the Mutineers ordered to carry out the brutal task take up knives and walk towards the dogs, ashen-faced, shoulders slumped. The rest of the crew turn away, but can’t help but hear as the dog’s playful barks suddenly become alarmed whimpers, harried and harassed yelps, and finally a quick haunted howl before falling silent.

  Christ.

  Next, they set about clearing land and building themselves farms with the thousand or so acres of cultivable land on higher ground divided nine ways, allocated, and soon planted with the sweet potato and seed yams they had brought with them. While the initial place where they had settled with their tents remains something of a village, where they all may gather, each Mutineer now takes to working his own plot on the farming land, each of the previously unattached men taking a Tahitian woman as his wife. This leaves three Tahitian women for the six Polynesian men to share, with Talaloo taking Toofaiti for his own, the Tubuains, Ohoo and Tetaheite, sharing Prudence (Tinafornia), and Mareva shared between Timoa, Menalee and Nehow. Nehow, the young aggressive warrior, is none too happy about it, and glowers, but is ignored by the white men. The Native men have no option but to share, just as they also must share the rudimentary tenements on the lower slopes, as all the best building materials are reserved for the white men. Under the circumstances, there is soon some tension afoot – disputes over women, and the white men taking the best of everything – but, for the moment at least, it is manageable.

  Christian, for one, is far more focused on his own plot and family; Isabella is now pregnant with their first child, yet she works on, tilling the soil, preparing the meals, thatching the roof of their new family hut.

  Mid-March 1790, Tyarrabboo, Tahiti, sitting ducks

  At Tyarrabboo, Chief Churchill is just taking aim, about to shoot at some ducks sitting on a pond, when they are disturbed by a group of Natives, and fly skyward. And so …

  So Chief Churchill, in a fit of pique, trains his gun on the Natives instead. Boom! A musket-ball hits one man in the back, and a lad in the heel. Alas, the lad bleeds to death, whereupon, alarmed by the extraordinary power of the man with the stick that shoots fire and kills, together with the fact that Churchill is a Chief, the local Natives make it clear that they are … on his side.

  Good. Churchill has a clear first instruction to his new subjects: Steal Mr Thompson’s gun as he sleeps. (Aware of Thompson’s threats, Chief Charley knows he must take action. Thompson is a thief, a murderer, the roughest of rogues, and the natural enemy of authority. Charley himself had been nearly all of those things, but now that he is himself the authority, Thompson must be disarmed and dealt with.)

  Yes, Arii, Chief.

  His men slip off in a canoe under cover of night, bound for the village where Thompson is staying.

  •

  How very strange.

  Thompson awakes the next morning to find his gun is missing!

  Thompson is uneasy – this whole thing must be part of a revenge plot for the father and son he had killed less than a month ago. His life is under threat and he has no gun! With that in mind, Thompson quickly, quietly, sets off in a canoe, paddling along the shores of Tahiti – this once oh so hospitable island, now suddenly turned so dangerous – to where the other Mutineers are living, in the hope of borrowing a musket. On the way, he decides to stop at Chief Churchill’s village, to catch up and patch up with Charley, and the two are indeed able to come to an accord of sorts. The real problem, they decide, is that cur John Brown fomenting trouble between them, and now that they have worked that out, maybe they can even resume living together on Thompson’s return. Oh and the missing gun, Mr Churchill, do you know anything of it?

  Nothing at all, Churchill tells him, it must have been one of the mischievous Natives.

  Churchill farewells Thompson cheerily, promising to search high and low for his missing musket.

  Early April 1790, Tahiti, eyes right, and all hail the new King!

  A few weeks after Thompson’s return to Tyarrabboo his gun is restored to him, apparently thanks to Chief Churchill’s intervention with the thieving Natives. But what Thomas Burkett would like to know is, if that is really what happened, why is Thompson not more grateful?

  When Burkett, who happens to be passing, dines with Chief Churchill and Thompson that evening, he is aware that something is amiss.

  Over crispy-skinned roast pig, Thompson mentions, ominously, ‘I have found out the thief’,38 without going on to say anything more.

  Burkett senses a growing tension between the two men before him, which is uncomfortable, though seemingly not dangerous, until …

  Until the next morning, Chief Churchill commands – yes, commands – Thompson to fetch him some water.

  What?

  ‘Do you know who you are speaking to?’39 Thompson demands angrily.

  ‘To a seaman,’ Churchill replies with a glare, ‘but perhaps you forget that I am Master at Arms.’

  ‘I remember,’ Thompson answers, with equal menace. ‘I remember what you were when Bligh was our commander; but as to what you are, I think you are now no better than myself, although the people here have
dubbed you a chief. To be a servant to a villain is intolerable, for we are all villains alike; perhaps, if the truth were known, you are a greater villain than some among us …’40

  Now Churchill tries to interrupt Thompson with a sneer, but the latter will not be so interrupted, and continues, finishing with his own sneer, a veneer of thin insult, covering what is clearly violent intent.

  ‘Damn you,’ Thompson roars, ‘though you are a Chief you shall be your own servant for me!’41

  So noisy is the dispute that some of Chief Churchill’s Natives are drawn to it, fearful that their Chief might be in danger. Moving quickly, they encircle the two quarrelling white men, and make very clear to Thompson that they will do what it takes to defend Chief Churchill, and he must leave. Swearing, making threats, Thompson limps off – humiliated and infuriated, but also impatient. Impatient for ‘Chief’ Churchill’s protectors to leave. And as soon as they have, Thompson races back to his own hut, eyes blazing, heart raging, planning his revenge when his eyes fall on the very thing that he needs, and he has just as quickly departed once more.

  Moments later, Thompson’s loping footsteps come back into earshot – a sound of ill portent in these troubled times. He limps straight up to Churchill, scorning him as ‘one of the greatest villains’,42 he has ever had the misfortune to meet. A fraud to boot, what, with all his carry-on with his ‘tribe’.

  ‘Oh, what a great chief!’ Thompson mocks.

  ‘Hold your tongue, scoundrel, or, by God, I’ll kick you.’

  ‘Scoundrel!’43 echoes Thompson, mockingly, looking Churchill in the eye with a cold-blooded smirk, as he lifts his musket, aims it at Churchill’s tattooed breast, and pulls the trigger.

  There is a flash, a puff, and a musket-ball bursts forth, hitting Churchill in the chest, and blowing out a part of his back on the other side.

  Just a hundred yards away on the beach, Burkett is about to get back into his canoe to head back to Matavai Bay when he hears the shot.

  Running back to Churchill’s hut, fearing the worst, he finds, sure enough, Thompson standing in the doorway calmly loading his musket, the bloodied body of Churchill lying behind him.

  For Thompson has not only found the thief, but the thief has found a musket-ball in his chest.

  ‘Are you angry, Burkett?’ Thompson asks, his voice cold.

  The unarmed Burkett is very careful in giving the correct answer: ‘No.’44

  There is a pause.

  ‘I hope you don’t mean to take advantage of me?’45 Burkett follows up.

  ‘No, since you are not angry,’ replies Thompson. Besides, he adds, with a nod to the bloodied corpse before him, ‘I have done him.’46

  Indeed he has.

  Approaching closer, Burkett sees that Churchill is dead, shot through the heart. ‘I now thought,’ Burkett tells Morrison a short time later, ‘it high time to be off.’47

  Indeed. Can it really be this late, with me still having so much to do before dark?

  I must be away.

  Still, before leaving, Thompson prevails upon Burkett to help bury Churchill, at which point the murderer is so grateful he raises no objection to Burkett watching him as he goes through Churchill’s possessions. They include books, most particularly … the ones that contain the maps.

  Burkett cannot resist.

  Carefully, he asks Thompson if he may have those books.

  No.

  Thompson knows exactly what they contain, and won’t hear of it.

  Burkett takes leave in his canoe, every stroke that takes him further away singularly powerful, and only when he is out of musket range does he slow at all.

  Back in his hut, Thompson looks up to see six of the former loyal royal subjects of Chief Churchill approaching, with a fellow by the name of Patirre.

  Trouble?

  No.

  For no sooner have they approached within easy earshot – Thompson’s musket trained upon them the whole while – than the smiling Patirre offers a salute and addresses Thompson as ‘Vay-heeadooa’,48 once the name of the old Chief.

  And sure enough …

  ‘You are the new chief,’49 they tell him.

  Now that is a little more like it.

  Gratified, Vay-heeadooa Thompson lowers his musket, at which point, Patirre offers his first tribute – a mighty blow to the head that would fell an ox, let alone a seaman, and Thompson has no sooner fallen to the ground than two of the other Natives grab a nearby plank and fall upon him, pinning him, helpless on the ground.

  He looks up to see Patirre above him, holding a large stone.

  Surely, he’s not going to …?

  He’s not …

  He is.

  The stone comes down like a sledgehammer and splits Thompson’s skull with a sickening crunch and a spurt of blood …

  The old Chief, Churchill, is dead, long live Vay-heeadooa, the new Chief, Thompson, for about three minutes.

  Still, wanting to be sure of these things, Patirre and his men cut off Thompson’s head, before burying the body alongside Churchill.

  Only a short time later, James Morrison listens, stunned, as Patirre tells him every grisly detail. As to why Patirre and his men had not brought the murderer back to the other white men at Matavai so he could be punished in their English manner, the Native is clear: ‘Te atea I te fare, the distance was too great,’ Patirre explains, ‘and our anger would be gone before we could get there; and we should have let him escape when we were cooled and our anger gone, so that he would not have been punished at all, and the blood of the chief would have been on our heads.’50

  Morrison understands, and agrees with the action.

  ‘You will not be hurt by me for what you have done,’51 he assures him.

  For, truly?

  ‘I looked on him,’ he will recount, ‘as an instrument in the Hand of Providence to punish such crimes.’52

  And that same Hand of Providence, which has seen them rid of the problematic Thompson, also now delivers to them the precious charts they had wanted, found secure in his hut.

  April 1790, London, taking the town by storm

  That figure strutting proudly along the streets of London, creating a stir when, time and again, he is recognised by acquaintances who now hail him as a dear friend, pumping his hand and patting him vigorously on the back, is none other than – unaccustomed as he is – William Bligh!

  Every newspaper in the land, of course, has delighted in the story of courageous Captain Bligh, commander of the Bounty taking on the evil Mutineers, and triumphing against all odds! He is the hero of the hour. ‘The distress [Bligh] has undergone entitle him to every reward,’ announces The Scots Magazine. ‘In navigating his little skiff through so dangerous a sea, his seamanship appears as matchless, as the undertaking seems beyond the verge of probability.’53

  Fletcher Christian, on the other hand, is universally reviled despite being, ‘a man of respectable family and connections, and considered a good seaman’.54

  And there is widespread agreement with Captain Bligh’s assessment of the Mutineers’ motives: women. ‘With regard to the conduct of the conspirators,’ goes the story, ‘the most probable conjecture is, that, being principally young men, they were so greatly fascinated by the Circean blandishments of the [Tahitian] women, they took this desperate method of returning to scenes of voluptuousness unknown, perhaps, in any other country’.55

  Nowhere does Bligh create such a stir as in the mahogany hallways of the Admiralty, where the said acquaintances are thick on the ground and all want to congratulate him and hear his story personally. William Bligh is now nothing less than the lion of London, the toast of the Tories and Whigs alike, the hero of the Bounty, haven’t you heard? He is the courageous, brilliant man who, against all odds, made good his journey in a 23-foot open boat from the middle of the South Seas all the way back to the capital of the British Empire. When Sir Joseph Banks squires him and – heavens to Betsy – his wife to Buckingham Palace, it is King George III who
hangs on his every word, as this hero of the Royal Navy describes the terrible travails he has been through on His Majesty’s Service, only to triumph in the end. Bligh even gives His Majesty a copy of his Log.

  Yes, William is the talk of the town, in circles high and low. Novelist Fanny Burney happens to be walking on the streets of London with her beloved brother Lieutenant James Burney, who had sailed on Cook’s final voyage, and is stunned to see just how high her brother’s reputation has soared, just for the fact that he had sailed with Bligh, known Bligh, talked to Bligh. Coming across a Member of Parliament, William Windham, the parliamentarian suddenly pours praise on the startled James, for this fact alone. Yes, James says uncertainly, he does know Bligh, but …

  ‘But what officers you are!’ beams Windham effusively. ‘You men of Captain Cook; you rise upon us in every trial! This Captain Bligh – what feats, what wonders he has performed! What difficulties got through! What dangers defied! And with such cool, manly skill!’56

  For you see, so high is Bligh, even those who know him are heroes! Just to have sailed with the great man is an enormous commendation of your character! In the eyes of the masses, Lieutenant Bligh far outranks in public esteem any Admiral, and every Member of Parliament. Those to the manor born, those to the rough-house raised, alike, are united in their acclamation of his heroic feats.

  In May, two months after Bligh’s return to England, the Royal Theatre in London begins a new play, The Calamities of Captain Bligh. Ralph Wewitzer, a veteran of the London stage, plays Bligh and Mrs Alicia Daniel sings ‘Loose ev’ry sail’, with the whole production including, ‘an exact Representation of Bligh’s capture’ having been ‘rehearsed under the immediate instruction of a Person who was on board the Bounty’.57 (Presumably, John Samuel or John Smith are cashing in.)