As for Fletcher Christian.
How different a man he is, as he appears in the Appendix, to the one portrayed by Bligh!
For, in direct contrast to the careful listing of Bligh’s blemishes and blunders, his many instances of callous cruelty and incandescent rages over trivialities, Christian receives a paean of praise from shipmates outdoing each other in their eagerness to set the record straight about this very fine man indeed. Their admiring anonymous quotes glow with warmth:
His Majesty might have his equal, but he had not a superior officer in his service.
He was a gentleman; and a brave man and every officer and seaman on board the ship would have gone through fire and water to have served him …
He was adorned with every virtue and beloved by all …
He was a gentleman, every inch of him, and I would still wade up to the arm pits in blood to serve him …
As much as I have lost and suffered by him, if he could be restored to his country I should be the first to go without wages in search of him.
He was as good and generous a man as ever lived.39
Oh, and lest there be any remaining doubt about Christian’s manners, as compared to the low-brow Bligh?
Mr Christian was always good natured, I never heard him say ‘Damn you’ to any man aboard ship …40
Christian, the public is now told, is first and foremost an officer and a gentleman, a man of honour tormented by a tyrant who is, let’s face it, his social inferior. And what true gentleman could be so abused, so humiliated, by such a cruel despot and not rise against it?
Edward Christian is so determined to defend his brother’s reputation that he does not so much gild the lily, as plant an entirely new one, in Fletcher’s case a lily-white one, even maintaining that he had – no, really – no female favourite to return to in Tahiti. For you see, yes, some men (sniff) might engage in such un-Christian behaviour, but not Bligh’s second-in-command.
And while Bligh had recounted that the Mutineers had shouted ‘Huzzah for Tahiti!’,41 not one of the men interviewed for this account can recall it. For you see, the point that must be made is that what caused the Mutiny had nothing to do with the lure of lusty Tahiti, and everything to do with Bligh’s barbed tongue and lusty lash.
Ah yes, Captain Bligh. Not a single man in the Appendix can think of a single good thing to say about him, and can’t even commend him for his seamanship. But bad memories, and damaging quotes? They abound.
And, of course, Bligh is not alone in having his reputation damaged by the contents.
The Appendix is likely to be so ruinous to Bligh’s reputation that none other than Sir Joseph Banks – who has mentored and championed Bligh from the start, and whose own judgement is now under severe question – insists to Bligh that he must lower himself to the fray and write a public reply.
12 March 1794, Pitcairn, of skulls and cross-bones
On this day, Young is off to visit Smith to borrow a rake when he comes across a group of the women walking together – as they seem to be doing ever more often these days, and in ever more intense conversations – and there, right in the middle of them, is Jenny, carrying in her hands a human skull.
‘Whose skull is that, Jenny?’ asks Young.
‘Jack Williams’,’ she replies.
‘I desire that be buried,’ commands Young.
‘It should not!’ answers another of the women, and although her English is imperfect, her meaning is crystal clear: NO.
‘It should and I demand it accordingly!’42 Young insists, going on to explain that to keep such a skull is ‘not decent’, and ‘not Christian’.
(True, it had not been particularly ‘Christian’ of Young to have ordered the slaughter of Williams in the first place, together with the other Mutineers, but for the moment, at least, this point passes him.)
Well, they will consider it. But the problem soon emerges that, even if the women do agree to bury the skull, they have retained the heads of the other dead Mutineers as well. And they don’t quite understand why they should bury them.
This strange Tahitian practice has already been chronicled by James Morrison who recorded that, ‘Some, who have a great veneration for the deceased, wrap up the skull and hang it up in their house, in token of their love.’43
So yes, of course they resist the idea of burying Williams.
‘Why should you, in particular,’ they ask Young, ‘insist on such a thing, when the rest of the white men do not?’
‘If they give you leave to keep the skulls above ground,’ Young replies haughtily, ‘I do not!’44
Meeting with McCoy, Smith and Quintal shortly afterwards, he tells them what he has seen.
‘I think if the girls do not agree to give up the heads of the five white men in a peaceable manner, they ought to be taken by force and buried.’45
Very well then. But, take by force? Against 11 women? Two of whom are blooded axe-murderers?
When it comes to dealing with ‘the girls’,46 things are no longer straightforward.
And, as it turns out, the girls – including Isabella, with a six-month-old baby at her breast, the daughter born on the day of Fletcher’s death – have been having meetings of their own, and soon afterwards make their own demand. They wish to leave Pitcairn, to return to Tahiti, and so, they wish the men to build a boat, starting … now.
The men look at each other.
While it is all very well for the women to return to their island, they are in a much different position from the men. They are not Mutineers. They are not going to swing from the nearest yardarm if caught. True, they still do not know if Bligh has survived long enough to tell of the Mutiny, but they really do not want to take that risk. The men are now well settled into Pitcairn, and reasonably happy, beyond the damned restlessness of the women. There is nothing that Tahiti can offer the men, bar danger. They do not want to go.
But dare they say that to the women?
All things considered, they dare not.
Let us instead, find reasons why we can’t do it.
Most importantly, there is only one boat still left to us, the Jolly Boat of the Bounty – a very small affair, of dubious seaworthiness for a long haul. Though we could build a bigger and more solid one, in theory, it will take time, and it requires wood and nails that we simply don’t have. Where on earth could we get the English wood, nails, pitch and tar that we need?
A cry from Jenny is their reward, as she immediately starts tearing her hut apart, and ‘in her zeal’47 encourages the other women to do the same.
In short order, though the village is reeling somewhat, a pile of wooden boards and a collection of nails have materialised, and, with the women hovering – almost menacingly, you know? – the sound of hammering and sawing breaks out once more over Pitcairn.
•
Bligh is in his natural state: pure fury, and for very good reason. The one-time Lion of London is being savagely attacked by Christians. That tuppenny Professor of Law, Edward Christian, and his cursed ‘Appendix’, that compendium of slurs, lies, insinuations, exaggerations, and, yes, perhaps one or two tragic truths, is devoured each and every day by ever eager eyes as the word spreads of the contents of the explosive document. And of course everyone who reads it repeats it to others. Suddenly people are crossing the street to avoid him, eyes are being averted and he has the growing sense that he is nothing less than an embarrassment to the Royal Navy. Though the world was once his oyster, he is now in danger of becoming the Bligh barnacle.
All because of a damned booklet!
Well, Bligh is now convinced that Sir Joseph is right. He really must stoop to conquer, lower himself to answer these cads. And so, with the same dogged determination that marked his long voyage on the Launch to Timor, against similar overwhelming odds, he sets out to restore his tattered and battered reputation.
Taking up his quill, he sits at his desk, day after day, and writes long and hard to restore his good name. Betsy, ever faithful Bets
y, is sure to administer plentiful tea and sympathy.
It will be all right, dear William.
•
One afternoon in mid-1794, the feeble London sun is shining its last rays for the day when Bligh signs the title page of his reply to Professor Christian’s Appendix. His stiff, ink-stained hand replaces the mighty quill in its stand. He reads the title page one last time with pride:
An Answer to Certain Assertions contained in the Appendix to a Pamphlet
Before long, his latest treatise hits the streets, and people are buying it with delight, eager to take in this newest instalment of drama on the High Seas.
It starts quite directly:
It is with no small degree of regret, that I find myself under the necessity of obtruding my private concerns on the Public … the respect I owe to that Public in whose service I have spent my life; as well as regard to my character, compel me to reply to such parts of Mr Christian’s Appendix, as might, if unnoticed, obtain credit to my prejudice.48
Bligh does not stoop to making his case in his own prose. Why would he when the testimony of others in his support is so much more powerful? So, he is supposed to be a cruel tyrant?
Well, how does this fit with this posted list of instructions forbidding cruelty to any Tahitian?
And let the reader digest the contents of a letter from one of the Mutineers, Mr Charles Churchill, acknowledging that he had done the wrong thing in deserting, but thanking Captain Bligh for his kindness in response!
Oh, so you want the specifics of what occurred in the Mutiny? Look no further than this transcript of the Court of Inquiry in Batavia. You cannot do better, surely, than an account that every sober man swore to and signed. Yes, signed. Of course it is different from what they told Mr Edward Christian when he plies them with drink in inns. Who could be surprised? And here, too, is an extract from Mr Peter Heywood’s sworn testimony in England, the very testimony your penny Professor Edward Christian chose to omit, where Peter tells of Bligh’s ‘very kind treatment of me, personally, I should have been a monster of depravity to have betrayed him’.49 Indeed. A letter is also reprinted, from a Mr Edward Lamb, an old shipmate of Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, who writes of his amusement at one claim: ‘In the Appendix it is said, that Mr. Fletcher Christian had no attachment amongst the women at Tahiti; if that was the case, he must have been much altered since he was with you in the Britannia; he was then one of the most foolish young men I ever knew in regard to the sex.’50
And now, for his final trick. With a quasi-judicial zeal, Bligh uses his accusers’ own words to dent their credibility.
For Bligh has conducted his own little chats. Mr Coleman, Mr Smith and Mr Lebogue; all Loyalists previously ‘interviewed’ by Professor Edward Christian were recently interviewed in turn by Captain Bligh. And wouldn’t you know it? For it now turns out that they insist – (admittedly prodded by legal threats, career threats, and even actual threats, mixed with reminders that he saved their miserable lives) – they had been misquoted! To re-set the record straight, an exhaustive list of things they deny is now printed:
I never saw Captain Bligh shake his hand in Christian’s face, or hear him damn him for not firing at the Indians.
I never said Christian or Stewart was equal to Captain Bligh in abilities, I never thought any such thing.
I never heard the Captain damn the officers and call them names.51
Page after page of it!
True, there remain other men of the Bounty whose previous accusations are not countered, but at least Bligh can now demonstrate that their experience was not universal, and there really are loyal sailors who will speak for him.
Most helpful to Captain Bligh is Lawrence Lebogue, who says that all the good things he told Edward Christian had been left out of the Appendix! Whereas Professor Christian had portrayed Captain Bligh as a sadist with the lash, nothing could be further from the truth:
I said Captain Bligh was not a person fond of flogging his men; and some of them deserved hanging, who had only a dozen …52
And as for the noble celibacy of Fletcher Christian at Tahiti?
I remember Christian had a girl, who was always with him …53
(Reading it, Professor Edward Christian is truly shocked by the turnaround of Lebogue, the sheer depth of his calumny of lies, calling it ‘the most wicked and perjured affidavit that was ever sworn before a magistrate, or published to the world’.54)
Nevertheless Bligh’s effort to right the record, by releasing his own document, containing the testimony of others, along with a slew of private letters to men of influence, achieves precisely what he intends.
The press react positively, as does the public. Bligh is declared to have fully vindicated his character. The influential British Critic now insists that the whole affair is over and adds by way of advice, ‘We cannot help thinking that the friends of Christian will act the wisest part, in throwing as much as possible into oblivion, the transaction in which that young man played so conspicuous and so criminal a part …’55
No, the amazing tale of the Bounty will never die, but much of the extraordinary heat of attention and anger that had come with it, that had even threatened to burn Bligh’s career to the ground, begins to pass.
13 August 1794, Pitcairn, time to launch
It has taken five months, but at last, the boat requested by the women is finished – at least after a fashion. For although the men have been careful to make it look like a fine boat, they have also been keen to ensure that it is not too fine – and in fact have deliberately left many cracks and holes to let the water in.
Sure enough, down at Bounty Bay, when they all heave together to push the boat into the water – the excited women, led by Isabella, Tevarua, Jenny and all of their excited children – they achieve the desired outcome.
For as Young notes in his journal, ‘according to expectation, she upset’,56 which is to say that, just as the Mutineers had planned, the boat immediately takes on water, and sinks.
That’s that, then.
But not as far as the women are concerned. For ‘she’, the boat, is far from the only one upset. The Tahitian women, no fools, are soon seen to be in deep consultation once more. They never stop.
On 16 August 1794, three days after the boat had been finished, and the day after they have failed to leave Pitcairn, the Mutineers achieve at least one thing – the women, accepting that they will never leave this place, agree to bury the bones of all the people murdered on Pitcairn.
3 October 1794, Pitcairn, joy in the old town tonight!
It is the party to beat them all, and Matt Quintal throws it. For today, don’t you know, is the first anniversary of the day they had killed the last of the Tahitian men. And yet while Quintal is happy, believing that with the death of the Natives, he had eliminated the two most likely sources of his own demise, both Smith and Young are not so sure, and, in fact, are particularly uneasy on this night. For they have come to realise that both Quintal and McCoy have continued to beat their wives – something that endangers all of the remaining Mutineers.
‘McCoy and Quintal,’ Smith will record, ‘[were] of very quarrelsome dispositions.’57 It is Quintal, in particular, who is the most fierce, proposing ‘not to laugh, joke, or give any thing to any of the girls’.58
For the women, all the women, are angry, and there is no telling what they might do. So yes, Quintal can laugh and joke and carry on, but the knot of Native women on the side, in deep discussion, tells Young that something bad is brewing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PITCAIRN – A RECKONING OF ACCOUNTS
Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.1
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.2
&n
bsp; William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.3
John Donne
11 November 1794, Pitcairn, the plot thickens
A stirring in the village. Averted looks. Mutterings in the dark. Bit by bit, Ned Young discovers there is a plot to kill all the Englishmen in their sleep.
Kill all four of them at once?
Why, it is monstrous!
After everything the men have done for the women, this, this is their reward?
Well, the men must strike first.
On this morning, after all the women are gathered in the village, the four Mutineers train their muskets on them.
Confess!
You planned to kill us all, didn’t you?
Yes.
Bit by bit, talking to them separately, the plan comes out. All four men were to be killed with an axe as they lay in their beds. Young winces – it had been exactly the plan he’d used to kill Nehow and Tetaheite. The women know it works.
Mutiny on the Bounty Page 59