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

Bligh met almost every day with Tynah and his family and retinue, and each day he logged some new discovery about his hosts’ culture. Along with the ship’s officers, he was entertained by lascivious heivas, in which the women, ‘according to the horrid custom,’ distorted their faces into obscene expressions. He discussed the tradition of infanticide among the flamboyant arioi, and he recorded the recipe for a delicious pudding made from a turnip-like root. One day, Bligh engaged in long theological enquiry, in which he was questioned closely about his own beliefs: who was the son and who was the wife of his God? Who was his father and mother? Who was before your God and where is he? Is he in the winds or in the sun?

When asked about childbirth in his country, Bligh answered as well as he was able, and enquired in turn how this was done in Tahiti. Queen Iddeeah replied by mimicking a woman in labour, squatting comfortably on her heels between the protective arms of a male attendant who stroked her belly. Iddeeah was vastly amused on learning of the difficulties of Pretanee’s women.

‘Let them do this & not fear,’ she told Bligh, who appears to have been persuaded by this tender pantomime.

In the evenings, Bligh entertained his hosts on board the Bounty, which none seemed to tire of visiting. As Tynah’s royal status forbade him to put food or drink into his own mouth, Bligh himself sometimes served as cupbearer if attendants were unavailable; Iddeeah, according to custom, ate apart from the men. After the meals, the company lounged lazily around the small deck area, enjoying the offshore breezes, and the muffled pounding of the surf on shore and reef, and the lap of the waves below. Not infrequently, Bligh’s guests stayed the night on board the Bounty, loth to depart.

How Bligh passed his time at Tahiti can be followed, day by day, event by event, as recorded in his fulsome log. What is not known with any clarity is how time was passed onshore. All midshipmen were required to keep up their own logs, to be produced at such time as they applied to pass for lieutenant, and one would give much to have Fletcher Christian’s. As it is, life at Point Venus can be sketched only in broad outline. Every evening, when the work of the shore party was winding down, the Tahitians gathered at ‘the Post’ before sunset. Almost all of the Bounty men had found taios, or protective friends, who took them into their homes and families. At least two of the men, George Stewart from the Orkneys and, perhaps less predictably, the critical James Morrison, had women friends to whom they were particularly attached, while all the men seemed to have enjoyed regular sexual partners; whether or not Fletcher Christian had formed an attachment to any one woman was to become a hotly contested question – at the very least, he, like young Peter Heywood, had to be treated for ‘venereals’. The women of Tahiti, as Bligh would later famously write, were ‘handsome, mild and cheerful in their manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved.’ They were also by European standards not only very beautiful, but sexually uninhibited and experienced in ways that amazed and delighted their English visitors.

‘Even the mouths of Women are not exempt from the polution, and many other as uncommon ways have they of gratifying their beastly inclinations,’ as Bligh had observed, aghast. Famously, favours of the Tahitian women could be purchased for mere nails. Both on ship and at the camp, Bligh allowed female guests to stay the night, at the same time trying, through Ledward, his assistant surgeon, to keep track of the venereal diseases. When dusk came, the shore party were left more or less to their own devices. The sundown gatherings brought entertainments – wrestling matches, dances and games, feasts, martial competitions – but also a sexual privacy, even a domesticity, not allowed to the men still on board ship. From the curving arm of Point Venus, Christian and his companions could look back towards Matavai Bay, past the Bounty riding gently at anchor, to the darkening abundance of trees that seemed to cascade from the grave, unassailable heights of the island.

As the weeks passed, the potted plants began to fill the nursery tent, and by the end of November, some six hundred were ‘in a very fine way’. Meanwhile, other ship duties were intermittently carried out. Bligh ordered the sails brought onshore, where they were aired and dried under Christian’s supervision. The large cutter was found to have a wormy bottom and had to be cleaned and repainted, under the shade of a large awning that Bligh had made to protect the workmen from the sun.

These duties were accompanied by the usual problems. Mathew Thompson was flogged with a dozen lashes ‘for insolence and disobedience of Orders’. Also, Bligh logged, ‘by the remissness of my Officers & People at the Tent,’ a rudder was stolen, the only theft, as Bligh observed, so far, of any consequence; the officer in charge of the tent was of course Fletcher Christian. There is no record of punishment.

Most seriously, Purcell once again had begun to balk at his orders. When asked to make a whetstone for one of the Tahitian men, he refused point-blank, claiming that to do so would spoil his tools. On this occasion, at last, Bligh punished the carpenter with confinement to his cabin – although, as he recorded, he did ‘not intend to lose the use of him but to remitt him to his duty to Morrow.’

Towards the end of November, strong winds began to accompany what had become daily showers of rain, and by early December the dark weather brought an unfamiliar, heavy swell. The Bounty rolled uncomfortably at her anchorage, while the surf breaking on Dolphin Bank, the outlying reef, had become violent. On 6 December, Bligh described a scene ‘of Wind and Weather which I never supposed could have been met with in this place.’ From midnight until well into the morning, amid torrents of rain, a foaming sea agitated the ship ‘in a most tremendous manner’. Onshore, Christian’s party was cut off by the swelling of the nearby river and an alarming influx of the sea. In the morning, Tynah and Iddeeah fought their way to the Bounty in canoes through a sea so high that, as Bligh wrote, ‘I could not have supposed any Boat could have existed a moment.’ On board, the couple offered their tearful greetings, saying they had believed the ship lost in the night. The rainy season, which Europeans had never experienced before, had commenced, and it was at once clear that Matavai Bay was no longer a feasible anchorage. The plants had been threatened by salt spray as the winds and high sea raged, and Bligh was determined to move them to safer ground as soon as he was able. On Nelson’s advice, he delayed an immediate departure until plants in an apparently dormant state showed signs of being alive and healthy.

Some days after the storm, Huggan, the quondam surgeon, at last succumbed to his ‘drunkenness and indolence’.

‘Exercise was a thing he could not bear an Idea of,’ Bligh wrote by way of an epitaph. Since his death had been projected even before the Bounty departed Deptford Dockyard, Huggan had a good run for his money. He was buried the following day to the east of Point Venus, across the river that cut the point and not far from the sea.

‘There the Sun rises,’ Tynah said as the grave was being dug, ‘and there it sets, and here you may bury Terronnoo, for so he was called.’ Joining Huggan’s shipmates for the funeral were all the chiefs of the region and a great many other people, respectful and solemn for the surgeon’s perhaps undeservedly dignified rites. Huggan was only the second European to be buried on the island.

It was Christmas by the time the dormant plants had put forth the desired shoots, and the men began the cumbersome task of moving camp. A reef harbour at Oparre, to the west of Matavai, had been chosen as the Bounty’s new anchorage. With a watchful eye on the weather, which had continued to be troubled, Bligh ordered the Bounty readied for her short journey, and had his 774 potted breadfruit plants carefully carried on board. At half past ten in the morning, the ship weighed anchor and cautiously set out to follow the launch, which was carrying the tents and which Bligh had sent ahead as a pilot.

The second camp, according to Bligh, was ‘a delightful situation in every respect.’ The ship lay in sheltered, smooth water, where the tide lapped at the beach and no surf broke. Dense stands of trees shaded the new nursery, which was established along the same lines as the Matavai camp with the addition of a hut supplied by Tynah. Tynah, who had lobbied hard not to lose the Bounty and all the amusements and lucrative trade she brought, was delighted with the relocation, as he also had jurisdiction of Oparre. Taios left behind were still close enough to visit, and the easy social routine that had been enjoyed at Matavai was soon resumed, with people promenading along the beach opposite the ship ‘every fair Evening’. Bligh directed the ship ‘to be laid up and everything put below’ in part so as to avoid more thefts, but this was also a sign that the men on board could look forward to only perfunctory duties.

Nonetheless, the very day the plants and ship were safely reestablished, Bligh had William Muspratt, the cook’s assistant, flogged with a dozen lashes for ‘neglect of duty’. Two days later Robert Lamb, the butcher, was also flogged with a dozen ‘for suffering his Cleaver to be Stolen’. This now brought the total number of men punished up to six.

Although the temperature remained warm, this new season brought torrential rain and squalls, and skies so dense with sodden clouds that for an entire month Bligh was unable to take a single celestial observation. It was on one of these dark, impenetrable nights that three of the Bounty’s men deserted. When the watch was relieved at four in the morning of 5 January 1789, Charles Churchill, the master-at-arms, John Millward, able seaman, and William Muspratt, who had only recently been flogged, were found missing. Gone with them were the small cutter along with eight stands of arms and cartouches of ammunition.

Bligh responded to the news with an icy resolve that he had hitherto not displayed. To his Tahitian friends, he stated in very clear, straightforward and polite language that he expected the men returned. Laughing nervously, they asked Bligh if he would hold them hostage on board his ship, as Cook had done. This was an unexpected and revealing question. In 1769, during his first visit to Tahiti, Cook had lost two marines to desertion and had retaliated by holding the chiefs hostage, his rationale being that his men could not survive on the island without the complicity of the islanders. That Bligh’s friends raised this concern twenty years after the event suggests that Cook’s actions had left a deep impression.

Bligh reassured his friends that he would not resort to such a stratagem, adding, in his log, that he had ‘never shown any Violence or Anger’ at any of the petty thefts that had occurred and had enjoyed such mutual goodwill that he knew his friends had confidence in him, and that he had ‘therefore no doubt but they will bring the Deserters back’ – but, if they should not, he would ‘make the whole Country Suffer for it.’ Having issued his warnings, there was little Bligh could do but wait, relying on local intelligence to flush out the fugitives.

That some of his men would try to desert probably did not take Bligh completely by surprise; again, he had his experience with Cook to draw upon. Cook had suffered desertions on Tahiti during all three of his expeditions. Recognizing that the inducements to leave ship were many, Cook had summoned his crew and lectured them at length on the ‘spirit of Desertion’, informing them that ‘they Might run off if they pleased,’ as one of the company later recorded, ‘but they might Depend upon it he would Recover them again.’ Stern as it was, the speech did not deter other, also futile attempts. Some years later, on learning of the Bounty’s fate, James Matra, a midshipman on Cook’s first journey, would report to Banks the astonishing news that a mass desertion had been planned by ‘most of the People’ and some of the gentlemen of the Endeavour. Mr Midshipman Matra had been instrumental in dissuading them, so he would claim, his principal line of argument being that the men could be certain of ‘dying rotten’ of the pox if they were to live out their lives on the island.

Within his own company, Bligh must have seen evidence that his officers and people were settling down into Tahitian life and adopting local customs, most visibly in their passion for being tattooed. The first tattoos had arrived in England with sailors returning from the Americas or the Pacific, and especially from the Endeavour (with Joseph Banks) at the end of Cook’s first voyage, when they had become tokens of great prestige. The Bounty’s company’s tastes were varied, some sticking conservatively to English iconography. James Morrison, of all people, for reasons only to be guessed at, had had himself tattooed with the Order of the Garter around his leg and the Knights of the Garter’s motto: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ – ‘Shame on him who evil thinks.’ Thomas Ellison wore simply his name and ‘October 25th 1788’ on his right arm – the date he had first sighted Otaheite.

But several of the men had undergone traditional Tahitian tattooing over large parts of their body, particularly on their buttocks. In Tahitian tradition, a man was not eligible to marry unless he had undergone the lengthy and painful operation of having his entire backside blacked over. Bligh left descriptions only of the mutineers, and with one exception (John Mills, the Scottish gunner’s mate) every one of them was tattooed, and usually ‘very much tatowed’ or ‘tatowed in several places’. Peter Heywood was in this company, being ‘very much tattowed’, among other things with the three-legged emblem of the Isle of Man. Those who had received the elaborate tattoos of Tahitian manhood included George Stewart, Matthew Quintal and Fletcher Christian.

Still, Bligh himself had encouraged friendly relations with the Tahitians, and his men’s enthusiasm for the more eye-catching aspects of their culture was not something to be readily, or fruitfully, legislated. But now, as he conducted his own grim investigation of the events, he made other discoveries. On examination of the men’s personal effects for clues, a piece of paper was found inside Charles Churchill’s chest on which he had written his own name and the names of three of the shore party. The deserters would later say darkly that ‘many others intended to remain among the islands,’ and making a list of men committed to an illegal act such as desertion – or mutiny – was an old trick. When Captain Edward Edwards, back in his happier days before he captained the Pandora, had thwarted the mutinous plot on board his ship Narcissus, a list of names of the men involved in the plot had been discovered on one of the would-be mutineers; perhaps the rash act of committing a name to paper was perceived as a kind of security that bound the man in question to one’s cause.

Some years later, in personal correspondence, Bligh reported that ‘this List had Christian, Heywood and several other Names in it,’ and that he had approached his protégé ‘not conceiving Christian could be guilty of such a thing, and who, when I showed it to him, laughed as well as myself.’ To a man, the shore party professed their innocence to Bligh, and ‘denyd it so firmly, that He was inclined from Circumstances to believe them and said no more to them about it,’ according to Morrison. In the official log no mention is made of this mysterious list; Bligh’s personal log, in which he would have been most expected to have made some remarks about the event, ends on 23 October, and does not resume until 5 April 1789; a comprehensive index, in Bligh’s own handwriting, is all that can be found of the missing portion. The official log, submitted to the Admiralty, makes no mention of his suspicions whatsoever and shows Bligh’s professionalism at its best. If the men had convinced him of their innocence, then he was bound to ‘say no more about it.’ Or was the incident omitted for more self-serving reasons – because later events proved he had been duped? At least ‘three of the Party on shore’ would remain among the mutineers: Peter Heywood, William Brown and Fletcher Christian.

One curious and generally unremarked incident occurred four days after Churchill and his companions deserted. As Bligh reported, ‘one of my officers on shore’ cut a branch of an oil-nut tree growing at a marae, or sacred site, and, ‘accidently bringing it into the dwelling where my people are at, all the Natives both Men and Women suddenly left.’ The branch had tabooed the shore hut; no Tahitian would set foot here until the appropriate ceremony lifted the taboo. Curiously, however, as Bligh noted, ‘when I came on shore I found a branch of this Tree tyed to one of the Posts, altho they saw the effect it had of keeping the Natives from the House.’ Is it significant that in the immediate aftermath of the desertion one of the officers – Christian or Heywood – tabooed the house in which three men implicated on Churchill’s list happened to live? Was this a sign to Tahitian taios and allies to stay away, perhaps in the wake of an aborted plot? A whimsical amulet to ward off further trouble? Or, as Bligh clearly believed, mere happenstance?

Bligh seems to have accepted that the outcome to this adventure did not lie in his hands, and he returned his company to their former routine while awaiting whatever news his Tahitian friends brought him of the deserters. His own time was once again divided between the nursery and enquiry into local customs, and he observed with delight ‘the swarms of little Children which are in every part of the Country,’ flying kites, playing cat’s cradle, and skipping rope, the latter game, as he noted being ‘common with the Boys in England.’ While onshore on 16 January, he received a message from Fryer that a man known to have given conveyance to the deserters was on board the Bounty: did Bligh want Fryer to detain him? Incredulous, Bligh returned to the ship to find the informant had escaped by diving overboard and that no attempt had been made to follow him.

‘As he knew perfectly my determination in punishing this Man if ever he could be caught, it was an unnecessary delay in confining him,’ Bligh wrote of Fryer. The following day, he had even greater cause for anger. Spare sails that Bligh had ordered to be taken out of storage and aired were found to be mildewed and rotting.

‘If I had any Officers to supercede the Master and Boatswain, or was capable of doing without them, considering them as common Seamen, they should no longer occupy their respective Stations,’ Bligh fumed. ‘Scarce any neglect of duty can equal the criminality of this, for it appears that altho the Sails have been taken out twice since I have been in the Island, which I thought fully sufficient and I had trusted to their reports, Yet these New Sails never were brought out.’ Bligh had the sails washed in the sea, then hung to dry ‘to be ready for repairing’, a laborious task. The Bounty’s voyage was only half over; an estimated ten months of sailing lay ahead.

Almost three weeks passed before word was brought that the deserters had been located in Tettahah, some five miles distant. Bligh at once set out to apprehend them, although darkness was coming and it was a rainy, windy night. Surprised by Bligh where they had taken shelter, the three men resignedly surrendered without resistance. Once back at the ship, Bligh read the Articles of War and administered punishment: twelve lashes for Charles Churchill, two dozen each for William Muspratt and John Millward – to be repeated at a later date. In between the floggings, the men were confined in irons and found time to write Bligh an extraordinary letter:

Sir,

We should think ourselves wholly inexcusable if we omitted taking this earliest opportunity of returning our thanks for your goodness in delivering us from a trial by Court-Martial, the fatal consequences of which are obvious; and although we cannot possibly lay any claim to so great a favour, yet we humbly beg you will be pleased to remit any farther punishment; and we trust our future conduct will fully demonstrate our deep sense of your clemency, and our stedfast resolution to behave better hereafter.

We are,

Sir,

Your most obedient, most humble servants, C. Churchill, Wm. Muspratt, John Millward.

If the men believed that a submissive, honey-toned letter would charm their captain into dropping the second part of the punishment, they were proved mistaken when, eleven days later, the second round was indeed administered. Why Charles Churchill should have received a lesser punishment than his fellows is unclear. The punishment as a whole was, in any case, lenient; convicted deserters – with good service and character taken into consideration – could expect to receive 100 to 150 lashes. Bligh’s leniency had been carefully considered. As he wrote in his log, ‘this affair was solely caused by the neglect of the Officers who had the Watch.’ The officer in question, identified by Morrison as Midshipman Thomas Hayward, had been asleep at his station, a crime under the Articles of War no less serious than desertion. (‘No Person in or belonging to the Fleet shall sleep upon his Watch, or negligently perform the Duty imposed on him, or forsake his Station, upon Pain of Death…’) Bligh disrated the officer, turning him before the mast. According to an approving Morrison, he had also been clapped in irons until the runaways were returned.

‘I was induced to give them all a lecture on this occasion,’ Bligh continued, referring to his other officers, ‘and endeavored to show them that however exempt they were at present from the like punishment, yet they were equally subject by the Articles of War to a condign one.’ In other words, although his officers were exempt ‘at present’ from being flogged, they were liable to ‘a severe and well-deserved’ punishment. It is within this remarkable lecture that the tensions so fatal to the voyage can be discerned most transparently.

‘An Officer with Men under his care is at all times in some degree responsible for their conduct,’ Bligh wrote in his log, paraphrasing his lecture, ‘but when from his neglect Men are brought to punishment while he only meets with a reprimand, because a publick conviction by Tryal will bring both into a more severe and dangerous situation, an alternative often laid aside through lenity, and sometimes necessity, as it now is in both cases; it is an unpleasant thing to remark that no feelings of honor, or sense of shame is to be Observed in such an Offender.’

The list of his officers’ transgressions while in Tahiti, quite apart from incidents in the earlier part of the voyage, is impressive: when moving from Matavai to Oparre, Fryer had allowed the ship to run aground; a midshipman had slept on his watch and allowed three men to desert; the sails had been allowed to rot; on returning from capturing the deserters, Bligh had discovered that the ship’s timekeeper, critical to accurate navigation, had been allowed to run down; the ship’s rudder had been stolen from the camp; and in early March, an azimuth compass had been taken from under the noses of the men onshore, for which, according to Morrison, ‘Mr. Bligh…went on shore and rebuked the Officers at the tent for neglecting their duty.’ In addition, there are two enigmatic entries in the index Bligh composed to his missing personal log that refer to ‘Mr. Hallet’s contumacy’ and ‘Mr. Hallet’s behaviour.’

No wonder, then, that Bligh had raged after learning of the desertion that ‘such neglectfull and worthless petty Officers I believe never was in a Ship as are in this. No Orders for a few hours together are Obeyed by them, and their conduct in general is so bad, that no confidence or trust can be reposed in them, in short,’ he concluded ominously, ‘they have drove me to every thing but Corporal punishment and that must follow if they do not improve.’ The tenor of these occasional outbursts suggests that many more aggravations had passed unrecorded. It is a striking fact that, with one exception, Fryer and Purcell are the only officers named by Bligh in his official log. The names of Hallett, Hayward, Christian – other known offenders – have all been edited out, perhaps along with others of his young gentlemen. Bligh was later, privately, to refer to Edward Young, for example, as ‘a worthless wretch’, which at the very least suggests dereliction of some duties; and yet Young’s name is never mentioned in the Admiralty’s log. All of these young gentlemen were friends of the friends and patrons Bligh would have to rub shoulders with once back in England.