The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Crowded in their own quarters, the Bounty’s men stoked the galley stove that both dried their wet clothing and filled the air with choking smoke. The entire company was again on two-thirds rations of bread, or unpalatable hardtack, sensibly so, as the remainder of the voyage was unpredictable. In accordance with naval regulations, the men would receive monetary compensation for such reductions on return to England.

Now nine months out, friendships and factions had been formed. Among the young gentlemen, Peter Heywood and George Stewart had become firm friends. Fletcher Christian and young Heywood also had so much in common it was natural they too sought each other out, and Christian appears to have taken Heywood under his wing, helping him, Heywood claimed, with his mathematical and classical studies. Heywood was greatly admiring of his older friend, who had impressed the entire company with his athletic feats: Christian could balance a musket on the palm of his outstretched arm and could make a standing jump from inside one barrel to another. Of the first ship on which he had served, the Eurydice, it had been reported to Christian’s family that the young man had ruled over his inferiors ‘in a superior pleasant Manner’, that he had made ‘Toil a pleasure’; Christian’s stint before the mast under Bligh in the West Indies may have enhanced his instinctive, easy dealings with the lower deck, and all evidence suggests he was well liked on the Bounty.

In accordance with naval custom, and as Cook had done in turn for him, Bligh had his young gentlemen and other officers join him in rotation at his table. The habit was to be somewhat revised on this last leg.

‘During this passage Mr. Bligh and His Mess mates the Master & Surgeon fell out, and seperated,’ wrote Morrison, with his infallible eye for trouble, ‘each taking his part of the stock, & retiring to live in their own Cabbins, after which they had several disputes & seldom spoke but on duty; and even then with much apperant reserve.’ When Bligh invited his young gentlemen to dine, they joined his solitude.

The causes of the disputes with Fryer and the disagreeable Huggan are described at length by Bligh in his private and official logs. On the morning of 9 October, as the Bounty cut through a rare smooth sea, Bligh sent the ship’s several expense books to Fryer for the master’s usual bimonthly inspection and signature. The books were shortly returned to Bligh accompanied by a certificate drafted by Fryer, ‘the Purport of which,’ Bligh recorded, ‘was that he had done nothing amiss during his time on board.’ Unless Bligh signed the certificate, Fryer would not sign the books.

Summoning the master, Bligh informed him that he ‘did not approve of his doing his duty conditionally,’ at which Fryer abruptly left. This time, Bligh’s instincts were sure and his reaction swift. Ordering all hands on deck, he read the Articles of War, ‘with particular parts of the Instructions relative to the Matter.’ Fryer was instructed to sign the books or ‘express his reasons [for not complying] at full length at the bottom of the Page.’

‘I sign in obedience to your Orders, but this may be Cancelled hereafter,’ Morrison reported that Fryer intoned as he signed. Morrison’s sly suggestion was that Bligh had been caught fiddling the books, which if true would have cost him his career. But his very public actions defy this interpretation: Bligh was not about to countenance a furtive quid pro quo with his Master. ‘This troublesome Man saw his error & before the whole Ships Company signed the Books’ was Bligh’s report.

There are indications that Fryer might have had reason for concern about his performance as master – Bligh’s glancing reference to his need to repeat orders about Purcell at Adventure Bay being one. More immediately, Fryer may have had in mind the events of just three days earlier – events Bligh described with shock and anger in his private log but omitted in the official log he presented to the Admiralty.

On this day, William Elphinstone, one of the master’s mates, came to Bligh with wholly unexpected news: James Valentine, a twenty-eight-year-old able seaman, had incurred a bad infection after being bled by surgeon Huggan for an ailment contracted at Adventure Bay. Bligh was informed that Valentine was delirious ‘and had every appearance of being in a dying state.’

‘This shock was scarce equal to my astonishment,’ Bligh almost gasped, ‘as the Surgeon had told me he was getting better, and had never expressed the least uneasyness about him.’ When summoned, Huggan explained that, oh yes – he had meant to tell Bligh the night before at dinner, only Bligh had a guest (the officer of the watch) and he had not thought it proper to say anything at the time, but, yes, it was true: James Valentine had only hours to live.

Where was the ship’s master? Where was the acting lieutenant? Above all, where was the assistant surgeon? How had it transpired that Bligh had only learned, belatedly and almost by happenstance, of so serious a development? Bligh immediately visited the stricken man, who was ‘seized with a violent hollow Cough and spit much.’ He had been treated by Huggan with blisters, applied to his breast, for what the surgeon had diagnosed as an asthmatic complaint.

On 10 October, the day after the altercation with Master Fryer, Bligh recorded the death of Seaman Valentine in his official log.

‘This poor man was one of the most robust People on board,’ he reflected, ‘and therefore the Surprize and shock was the greater to me.’ Forgoing the customary auction of the deceased man’s effects, Bligh directed that his meagre possessions be given to the two men who had cared for him on his deathbed ‘with great care and Affection.’ On the following day, as the ship progressed under light breezes and fine rain, Valentine’s remains were committed to the deep.

Bligh’s perfect record of health was now irrevocably spoiled, and it had been spoiled by his beastly sot of a surgeon, aided by the apparent indifference of his officers. Four days after Valentine’s death, three of the older seamen who had formerly complained of ‘the Rheumatism’ were diagnosed with symptoms of scurvy. Bligh was beside himself with frustration and disbelief; had he himself not written in his dissertation on the healthful ‘Mode of Management’ that ‘the Scurvy is realy a disgrace to a ship’?

Bligh embarked upon a frantic application of his most trusted defences – portable soup and essence of malt, the latter served at a ratio of three tablespoons to a quart of water, ‘this being the Surgeons opinion was sufficient’; despite his misgivings and distaste for Huggan, Bligh was still dependent on his professional opinion, such as it was.

Was it scurvy, or was it something else? Throughout the rest of the voyage, all the way to Tahiti, the question hounded Bligh, who returned to it again and again in his log. On 17 October, he dosed up the three men who had complained of rheumatism with malt, sauerkraut, and less usefully, vinegar and mustard – everything, it would seem, that he could think of. The next day he examined other men ‘who the Doctor supposed had a taint of the Scurvy’ but found only the symptoms of prickly heat. The Bounty was now back up to the twenty-fifth parallel, after all, and temperatures had risen well into the seventies.

On the afternoon of the nineteenth, as the ship ambled along in fair but windless weather, John Mills, the forty-year-old gunner’s mate from Aberdeen, and William Brown, the assistant gardener, refused to participate in the mandatory evening dancing. Perhaps the higher temperature was taking a toll, or perhaps the men were just fed up with what they regarded as tedious nonsense. On being informed, Bligh’s response was to stop the offenders’ grog, ‘with a promise of further punishment on a Second Refusal’; the stopping of grog had been one of Cook’s stratagems.

‘I have always directed the Evenings from 5 to 8’ O’Clock to be spent in dancing,’ Bligh registered with a tone of aggrieved self-righteousness in his log, ‘& that every Man should be Obliged to dance as I considered it conducive to their Health.’

Only hours later, Bligh had to log a second entry about the incident: ‘Wm Brown complaining of some Rheumatic Complaints which he has had these three Weeks past, the Doctor insists upon it that it is Scurvey.’ So Brown, it seems, had turned to the doctor for moral support. Bligh himself, however, could discover no such symptoms. Determinedly, he pushed forward with his ‘decoctions’ of essence of malt, noting, ‘I have Ordered the Doctor to issue it himself.’

‘If able,’ he had added in the original entry of his private log, which also noted that Huggan had been ‘constantly drunk these last four days.’ Towards the end of this frustrating Sunday, all hands were mustered for the usual inspection.

‘I think I never saw a more healthy set of Men and so decent looking in my life,’ Bligh exclaimed in exasperation to his log. Bligh knew what scurvy looked like and could find no symptoms – no ‘eruptions or swellings’, no bleeding gums or loose teeth. Yet the real interest in this protracted incident, of course, has less to do with whether or not there was scurvy on the Bounty than whether or not Bligh was being toyed with. Was Huggan getting back at Bligh for his anger over Valentine’s death with a vindictive but unassailable diagnosis of the disease Bligh most feared – a gambit instantly appreciated and exploited by the appreciative and all-knowing seamen?

On 23 October, Huggan sent Bligh an updated sick list, with his own name on it under the complaint ‘Rheumatism’. Twenty-four hours later, he issued a revised list that gave his complaint as ‘Paralytic Affection’. Later in the same day, however, as Bligh noted, Huggan was ‘discovered to be able to get out of bed and look for liquor,’ his paralysis notwithstanding. With this, Bligh’s patience snapped and he gave orders for the surgeon’s filthy cabin to be searched and all liquor removed, an ‘operation that was not only troublesome but offensive in the highest degree.’ Successfully deprived of alcohol, Huggan made a shaky appearance on deck the next day, tenuously sober. The timing of his recovery was excellent, as the Bounty was less than a day away from Matavai Bay and only hours away from sighting land. Bligh urgently wished his surgeon to perform one important medical office before landfall. Ever since the first European ship had arrived at Tahiti, sailors had infected the islanders with ‘the venereals’; the French claimed the English were responsible for the devastation the disease had wrought, while the English pointed out that the Tahitians themselves had implicated the French. Bligh wanted Huggan ‘to examine very particularly every Man and Officer’ for any sign of the disease before arriving at the island. Huggan did so and, to the universal joy of the company, declared ‘every person totally free from the Venereal complaint.’

The next day brought the Bounty to Tahiti.

TAHITI

Beneath the island’s volcanic pinnacles, the Bounty passed around the surf-pounded reef beyond Point Venus. Already she was hailed by throngs of canoes; and when Bligh called out that he had come from Britain, or ‘Pretanee’, the delighted islanders swarmed onto the ship, ‘and in ten Minutes,’ wrote Bligh, ‘I could scarce find my own people.’ The old-timers – Nelson, the gardener, William Peckover, the gunner, armourer Joseph Coleman and Bligh himself – greeted and were greeted with warm recognition. The remainder of the crew now learned that the stories that had filled their ears throughout the long, hard outward voyage – about the island’s beauty, its sexually uninhibited women, its welcoming people – were not tall tales, or sailors’ fantasy. Beyond the ship, its undulating slopes and valleys, gullies and dramatic peaks casting shifting green-blue shadows in the morning sun, rose the vision of Tahiti. Below, the blue sea around them was clogged with cheerful canoes that had come laden with gifts of plantains, coconuts and hogs. And filling the deck, milling and laughing around them, were the tall, clean-limbed, smooth-skinned Tahitians. The Bounty men – bowlegged, pockmarked, scarred and misshapen, toothless and, despite Bligh’s best efforts, very dirty – regarded the improbably handsome, dark-haired. islanders with both appetite and awe. Their brown skin gleaming with perfumed oil, garlanded with flowers, and flashing smiles with strong white teeth such as few Englishmen had ever seen, these superior men and women were also friendly and accessible. Significantly, all cases of scurvy were quickly cured; even Morrison allowed ‘that in a few days of arrival there was no appearance of sickness or disorder in the ship.’

The following day, 27 October, manoeuvring around canoes and people, Bligh successfully worked the Bounty into Matavai Bay, and dropped anchor. Under the escort of a chief named Poeno, Bligh was taken to Point Venus, the peninsula that formed the northeast point of Matavai Bay, from where in 1769 Cook had observed the transit of Venus. Standing under the graceful and now familiar coconut palms, the surf breaking against the lava-black beach, Bligh seems to have drawn a deep breath of happiness.

It had been Bligh’s original plan to conceal Captain Cook’s death from the Tahitians; Cook was held in such high esteem that a portrait of him, left as a gift eleven years earlier, was still in good repair. But some three months before the Bounty’s arrival, another foreign ship – apparently the first since Cook’s departure – had brought news of his terrible death at the hands of the Sandwich Islanders. Nonetheless, David Nelson – with or without Bligh’s prompting is unclear – introduced Bligh as ‘Cook’s son’ to the local dignitaries; they are reported to have received this news with much satisfaction, although subsequent interactions suggest this was not perhaps taken by them as a literal truth.

On 1 November, Bligh set out on a scouting trip to Oparre, a district to the west of Matavai. In order to uproot and carry off the large number of breadfruit he sought, he needed the permission of all the various chiefs with jurisdiction over the areas in which he would be working. A visit to pay his respects to the Ari’i Rahi, the six-year-old king of Oparre, took him inland towards the hills, ‘through the delightful breadfruit flats of Oparre,’ which were cut by a serpentine river. In the course of the day, the two parties entertained each other, the Tahitians offering an impromptu heiva, or dancing festival, Bligh a demonstration of his pocket pistol.

Before returning to his ship, Bligh contemplated the scenes of the day – the sparkling streams and green glades of the interior, and the dramatic sweep of the palm-rimmed lava beach of Matavai Bay. ‘These two places,’ he reflected, ‘are 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,’ he continued in this remarkably personal entry, ‘but Otaheite is capable of being preferable to them all.’

Tynah, the paramount chief of Matavai and the adjoining region, soon became the local dignitary with whom Bligh and his men had the most communion. He and his outgoing wife, Iddeeah, were both large, impressive persons, Tynah standing over six foot three and weighing some twenty-one stones. Now around thirty-seven years old, Tynah had been known to Cook and Bligh previously as ‘Otoo’. Adroitly, Bligh conveyed to Tynah and the other lesser chiefs that the gift his sovereign, King George of Pretanee, would most welcome in exchange for the gifts his ship carried was the breadfruit tree. Delighted that King George could be so easily satisfied, the chiefs readily gave their assent, and Bligh, much relieved, began to organize his land base.

The Admiralty’s delay in getting Bligh his orders had ensured that the Bounty arrived in Tahiti near the outset of the western monsoon season, which ran from November to April, a period of rain and gales avoided by sailors. Additionally, as he had been directed to return by the Endeavour Straits, Bligh knew he had to await the eastern monsoon, which would begin at the end of April or early May; in short, the Bounty would not be departing Tahiti until April, five months away, and several months longer than had originally been planned.

On 2 November, Bligh sent a party to Point Venus that included William Peckover, Peter Heywood, four of the able seamen, as well as Nelson the gardener and his assistant William Brown, all under the command of Fletcher Christian. It was their job to establish and maintain the camp for the gardeners’ work. Eventually, two tents and a shed, built of bamboo poles and thatched with palm branches, were erected on Cook’s old site and a boundary line drawn, ‘within which none of the Natives were to enter without permission and all were cautioned against it.’ The compound was to serve as a nursery where the transplanted breadfruit could be closely supervised before being transported to the Bounty. Here, in the shade of the coconuts and breadfruit that rolled down to the dark shore, as palm fronds clattered and rustled in the sea breezes far above their heads, Christian and the rest of his small land party were to live and work for the next few months. Their less fortunate companions were expected to spend the night on board their ship.

Bligh himself divided his time between an anxious monitoring of his plants, and careful, if enjoyable, diplomacy. The success of his breadfruit operation depended upon the continued goodwill of such powerful friends as Poeno and Tynah (the father of the boy king), both of whom he knew from his former visit. Based upon his earlier experience, there was little reason to imagine this goodwill would in fact waver, but there was reason to fear the curiosity and acquisitiveness of the common man. So far, as Bligh had noted, the thefts the Bounty had suffered had been insignificant, but he was keenly aware that this situation could quickly change. He had already had to administer the third flogging of the voyage, in this case twelve lashes to Alexander Smith, able seaman, ‘for suffering the Gudgeon of the large Cutter to be drawn out without knowing it.’ The flogging had horrified the watching Tahitians – especially the women, who, according to Bligh, ‘showed every degree of Sympathy which marked them to be the most humane and affectionate creatures in the World.’

The temptation for Bligh to take personal advantage of his circumstances, to strike out on short expeditions, making discoveries and taking the surveys in which he was so expert, all to his own greater glory, must have been very great. But Bligh had virtually promised Banks a successful outcome to the voyage, and Banks had made it patently clear that he cared about nothing but breadfruit. The nursery, therefore, and everything that concerned the nursery, were to be the sole objects of his attention. Bligh could not risk some fatal lapse of discipline; nor, as it appears, could he trust his officers or men.

This was most apparent in Bligh’s attempt to regulate the ongoing torrent of trade between his ship and his island hosts. The establishment of a fixed market, as opposed to a free-for-all run by the sailors’ whim, was of immediate advantage to his own ship, as well as to future British vessels. As Cook had done – and based closely on Cook’s own rules – Bligh drafted a set of injunctions intended to govern his men’s conduct among the Tahitians:

1st. At the Society or Friendly Islands, no person whatever is to intimate that Captain Cook was killed by Indians or that he is dead.

2nd. No person is ever to speak, or give the least hint, that we have come on purpose to get the breadfruit plant, until I have made my plan known to the chiefs.

3rd. Every person is to study to gain the good will and esteem of the natives; to treat them with all kindness; and not to take from them, by violent means, any thing that they may have stolen; and no one is ever to fire, but in defence of his life.

4th. Every person employed on service, is to take care that no arms or implements of any kind under their charge, are stolen; the value of such thing, being lost, shall be charged against their wages.

5th. No man is to embezzle, or offer to sale, directly, or indirectly, any part of the King’s stores, of what nature soever.

6th. A proper person or persons will be appointed to regulate trade, and barter with the natives; and no officer or seaman, or other person belonging to the ship, is to trade for any kind of provisions, or curiosities; but if such officer or seaman wishes to purchase any particular thing, he is to apply to the provider to do it for him. By this means a regular market will be carried on, and all disputes, which otherwise may happen with the natives will be avoided. All boats are to have every thing handed out of them at sun-set.

These orders were nailed to the mizzenmast immediately upon anchoring – so Morrison reports, citing a garbled version of only item number six on Bligh’s list. Bligh’s orders, Morrison recalled, prohibited ‘the Purchase of Curiosities or any thing except Provisions,’ adding that ‘there were few or no instances of the order being disobeyd, as no curiosity struck the seamen so forcibly as a roasted pig…’

Nonetheless, it was this last order that appears to have been responsible for the only complaints worth recording during the twenty-three weeks spent on Tahiti. Bligh’s directive aimed to avoid the disputes that would inevitably arise if trade were conducted by forty-five individuals following no particular rules, and to ensure that, as commanding officer and purser, he could reliably provision his ship.

Captain Cook himself, who in the course of his long career had seen many a promising market ruined, had been very clear on this point: ‘Thus, was the fine prospect we had of geting a plentifull supply of refreshments of these people frustrated,’ Cook had lamented, after one of his men had volunteered a quantity of rare red feathers for a pig, inadvertently establishing red feathers as the currency for all future pigs. ‘And which will ever be the case so long as every one is allowed to make exchanges for what he pleaseth and in what manner he please’s.’

Morrison undoubtedly understood Bligh’s motivation for the directive, and John Fryer, as master, most certainly did. Yet Morrison complained that when the trade in hogs began to slacken, ‘Mr. Bligh seized on all that came to the ship big & small Dead or alive, taking them as his property, and serving them as the ship’s allowance at one pound per Man per Day.’ According to Morrison, Fryer also complained to Bligh, apparently publicly, that his property was being taken. The site designated for trade was one of the tents at the nursery compound, where the boundary marker kept crowds at bay. William Peckover had been placed in charge, a sensible choice given his knowledge of Tahitian language and customs picked up in the course of several visits he had made to the island with Cook. Nonetheless, the sailors continued to encourage their Tahitian friends to come to the ship surreptitiously.

‘The Natives observing that the Hogs were seized as soon as they Came on board…became very shy of bringing a hog in sight of Lieut. Bligh,’ Morrison reported, and he went on to describe with relish the ways in which the sailors and islanders conspired to trick their commanding officer. The Tahitians ‘watched all opportunity when he was on shore to bring provisions to their friends.’ Not for the first time – and certainly not for the last – Bligh must have wished for the support of even a small party of marines, armed sentinels who would have stood apart from the fraternity of seamen, and whose loyalty to his commands he could have counted on when his back was turned.

Despite Morrison’s lengthy complaint, time passed pleasantly enough for the seamen who were entrusted with minimal duties and allowed onshore regularly ‘for refreshment’. Joseph Coleman set up a forge to make and repair goods for the ship and islanders alike. The usual wooding parties were sent off to cut timber, while others prepared puncheons of salted pork for the return journey. The great cabin was refitted for the pots waiting in the land nursery, only, as Bligh logged, ‘the Carpenter running a Nail through his Knee very little was done.’ Charles Norman, a carpenter’s mate, had been ill for several days with a complaint diagnosed by Huggan variously as rheumatism and ‘Peripneumonianotha’, and the quartermaster’s mate, George Simpson, also according to Huggan, had ‘Cholera Morbus’. Bligh bought a milch goat for Norman, believing its milk would help the patient’s chronic diarrhoea. The men recovered and Bligh was able to report a clean sick list, save that the ‘Venereal list is increased to four’; sadly, the European disease was now endemic.