by Max Howell
They seemed to hold on to their youth better, he thought. The Schmeisers were interested in sport and knew a great deal about the Olympic Games. Their son, Al Jr., was also at Berkeley and was an outstanding rugby player. Mark learned much from talking to this bright and alert couple.
One couple, the Bennetts, were from Ohio. Both were retired teachers and this was part of their world tour. They were quiet and kept pretty much to themselves, but were interested in Mark and spoke to him long and hard about teaching as a career, its advantages and disadvantages. There were also the Kenyons from Penticton, Canada. The husband, in particular, was a forthright man of strong Labour tendencies, and a self-made man in every respect. Although he had little education in the formal sense, he had read widely, and Mark enjoyed listening to his wide-ranging and highly individualistic views.
The last couple were from New York, the Browns. The husband had made millions working in insurance, and told Mark how many athletes had used their names to climb to the pinnacles of that business in the United States. Although Mark enjoyed the discussions, deep in his heart he could not see himself in a career dependent on selling a product, or himself, to others.
There was one other person, who occupied the other private cabin. He was 83 years of age, and was a rancher from Idaho, Hank Albright, who regaled Mark with tales of cowboys and Indians and early ranching. He told Mark how he could still ride out from his ranch, which he still did despite his age, and find Indian arrow heads and camping grounds. To keep their tents stabilized the Indians used to use rocks, and these sites could still be seen from his ranch.
The average age difference between Mark and the others on the boat was close to 50 years, but Mark enjoyed the experience. He benefitted greatly from their accumulated knowledge. He could not remember having conversations with older people in his past which were interesting, and he increasingly gained respect for North American attitudes and for that matter conservatism. The image he had formed in his own mind from general opinions in the press and from other Australians he knew was that North Americans were loud-mouthed and had little class. The manners, general demeanour and overall knowledge of his fellow travellers did much to increase Mark’s respect for Americans. The older ones seemed more alert, knowledgeable and youthful than their Australian counterparts. He realised that those on the boat were obviously not a cross-section of America’s population, but he was impressed with them as a group, and they were very kind to him during the trip, endeavouring to include him in everything.
Their first port of call, announced by the captain a few days after they left Sydney, was Fiji, and Mark was entranced by the prospect of seeing a Pacific Island. When the ship arrived at Suva a tour was arranged by the passengers to the city, and they also visited a nearby Fijian Village.
Mark was not disappointed, but he somehow had envisioned rolling surfs, and was surprised that there were mainly tidal flats on the island. What he had no idea of was the extent of Indian immigration. They seemed to outnumber the Fijians in the capital, and they had seemingly taken over all of the businesses. The situation did not augur well for the Fijians’ future, as an alien, hard-working group of people were obviously changing the way of life in that country. The Fijians were used to living off the land and the sea, and were a kindly, happy group of people who previously enjoyed an idyllic, communal existence. Their land was diminishing in front of their eyes, and they appeared powerless to do anything about it, victims of their own life-style and heritage.
Mark was impressed with the physique of the Fijian men, their heavily muscled bodies and enormous feet, and he felt that the skirt worn by many of them actually suited their body-builds. The police uniform was particularly attractive, with the black top and white skirt fringed at the bottom. The women appeared to be very pretty when they were young, but because of their diet tended towards obesity as they aged. The children were delightful, their time spent throughout the day engaging in simple games, many of which had disappeared in Australia: cat’s cradle, buzz, guessing games, hand games, hunting games and so on. It was heart-warming for Mark to see these youngsters. It was as if time had passed them by in their innocence. In a moment of reflection he realised they reminded him of Faith, their eyes open and pure, their smiles of pure beauty and unmolested love. They made him ponder on the meaning of life. Maybe these children, these lovely Fijians, were the last representatives on earth of purity, of innocence, of unrequited love. Faith represented, to him, the same qualities as these children. It was why he worshipped her. She had that same smile, those haunting eyes. She left him always with the feeling that he must never wrong her.
Mark left Fiji strangely disturbed. He saw perfection being intruded upon, another dominant culture beginning to exert its values on one which had been protected from competition and commercialisation. Innocence would always lose in such circumstances, he conjectured. Any intrusion on perfection meant ultimate defeat. He felt very strongly for the Fijians, and saw the inevitability of the demise of their traditional values. Just as the aboriginal culture had been squashed in Australia, and the Indians in North America, and perhaps in other lands, so there was little possibility of ultimate survival for those indigenous values in Fiji.
Mark sent two letters to Faith, the one he had written soon after leaving Australia and the other as he left Fiji. He wanted to educate her, as he was being educated, to provide her with the benefit of his travels, and he described the port, the plants, the people, their lives and their habits in as much detail as he could. He enjoyed writing her about his experiences. In this way he felt they were still together.
The Lakemba was initiating trade, and they picked up a load of copra and tea that had come from Ceylon. The captain, a Swede by the name of Johannsen, said nothing about any other ports of call. In one sense it was frustrating, in another it gave an element of uncertainty and excitement to the voyage.
When they were back at sea again, wondering where they might go next, the captain announced one day that they were altering course for Tahiti. As soon as the captain uttered his words, all the passengers were animated. Tahiti! The Fijians were mainly Melanesian, the Tahitians, Polynesian. They were actually a different racial grouping. The Tahitians evoked memories of romance, of early exploration, of tranquility. Mark wondered whether his impressions of Tahiti would reveal the same flaws as he saw in Fiji.
There was a copy of Nordhoff and Hall’s Bounty Trilogy that, of all people, Taffy Evans loaned him to read. “Tahiti,” Taffy said, “is the goal of all sailors. When the scum of England, who were the sailors of the eighteenth century, loaded with syphilis and tuberculosis and God knows how many other diseases, came across Tahiti, they envisioned they were in heaven. These pock-faced, unintelligent, low-class scum were invited to bed with women more beautiful than they had ever seen in their lives. Tahiti was paradise, the land of their dreams. Those who made it there spoke of it with bated breath until the day they died. I have never been there meself, Mark, but I have heard stories of the place since I was a kid. Read Nordoff and Hall. I don’t do much reading meself, but it somehow captures a picture of the times. I can hardly wait to see the place. I pray it hasn’t changed.”
Mark immersed himself in the Bounty Trilogy, and he could scarcely remember being so entranced with a literary work. As he sat in a deck chair and read the engrossing novel, he dreamed he was being transported back almost two hundred years, and that he was presently under sail and not steam. As he stood in the front of the ship and watched the waves, as he saw the dolphins and flying fish and the crew hauled in fish from the lines they left overboard, he found himself more and more romantically involved in the past. The ship seemed to him to be life on an island, or drifting off into space, with no visible end-point in sight. He would watch the sun rise and set, observe the stars at night. There was a beauty at sea he had never before imagined, one that time could not do harm to. The vagaries of the sea he soon became familiar with, the waves lulling all with their serenity and then arousi
ng themselves to bludgeon everyone with a murderous ferocity. The sea was like life, he thought, the moments of peace followed by the periods of anger, then calm again. Mark felt himself beguiled by its moods and the awesomeness of nature, ready to both give and take away in the twinkling of an eye. He found himself falling in love with the Pacific, though when storms lashed the ship he wondered how it ever got its name.
The first part of the Bounty Trilogy dealt with the preparation of the expedition under Captain Bligh, with Fletcher Christian as next in command. Though Mark knew a little about the voyage, he had no idea that the real purpose of the expedition was to bring the breadfruit, a plentiful Tahitian fruit, back to England. When baked, it had the same properties food-wise as the potato, and the overall plan was to change English eating habits away from its dependency on the potato to a product that could be grown in any English garden. Such a development would deprive the Irish, a continual irritant to English colonialism, of their sole economic export, and in the process make them completely subservient to England.
In his own mind Mark thought that Bligh, like other Englishmen in a top position, would have come from the upper class, but in actual fact he came from a family of very modest means and had to sacrifice and work harder than most to prove himself and gain promotion. A workaholic and a perfectionist, he was determined to make a success of the mission so that he could demonstrate his talents to the Admiralty.
Fletcher Christian, on the other hand, was of the aristocracy, and was related to the King. Educated at the best schools, with money, power and prestige behind him, Christian, with no visible resentment on his part, but perhaps on Bligh’s, found himself serving under a captain socially markedly inferior, and obsessed solely with making his mission a success. Christian could easily fall back into other pursuits if his naval career floundered, whereas Bligh could not.
The personality and social differences of the two main characters of the novel were not apparent at first, though Christian appeared to possess characteristics that Bligh lacked. Bligh had the respect of the crew only because of the tyrannical nature of the role of a captain in the British navy at this time, whereas Fletcher Christian, because of his position, upbringing and lack of obsessiveness with fame, gained the universal love of the crew. All saw Bligh as cold and rigid, and Christian as human and understanding.
These personality differences might never have become apparent if the original plan had been adhered to. The Bounty was delayed in England for various reasons, though the primary one was alterations in the ship to accommodate and nurture thousands of breadfruit seedlings. The plants were the reason for the voyage, and were considered to be more important than the crew, or even the captain.
The delay in England meant that the ship had to attempt to round Cape Horn at its most treacherous period, and despite a valiant attempt by Bligh and his crew, the Bounty was beaten back and had to delay in port for many months before another attempt could be made. It was a disgruntled crew, their voyage now seemingly interminably longer, who agonizingly made their way into the Pacific eventually via the Cape of Good Hope.
When the ship finally arrived at Tahiti, the crew, mostly from the slums of London and many pressed into service, found themselves in a land beyond their wildest expectations. Scantily clad, beautiful women invaded the ship, and offered their sexual favours freely to the men. Sexuality in Tahiti did not have the same taboos as in England, and the crew revelled in the licentiousness. Bligh reacted quickly to restore order, but a series of incidents brought out the petty side of his nature as he severely limited the shore recreation of his crew. With an earthly paradise in their grasp, the crew saw the aloof Bligh as denying them their just pleasures, and bitterness festered. Fletcher Christian, too, was smitten by a native beauty of the Tahitian royal family, and he indulged himself as well, until also being limited in his freedom by Bligh. The crew saw Christian as an ally, and Bligh as the enemy.
When the ship left Tahiti on its way to England, Bligh exerted punishment on some of his crew for seemingly minor misdemeanours, and showed pettiness and hostility towards Christian. This ultimately led to the mutiny. Instead of killing Bligh and the members of the crew who still supported him, it was decided to put Bligh and the others in a long-boat, with provisions. Bligh, in a final act of defiance, vowed that he would live to see all of the conspirators hanged.
Book two of the Trilogy dealt with one of the most remarkable ocean voyages in the world, the 3618 mile struggle to Timor in 41 days that the iron-minded Bligh forced on his compatriots to get them back to civilisation from whence, after a trial, the Admiralty sent a ship out to bring the mutineers to justice.
Book three dealt with Pitcairn Island. Christian and most of the other mutineers increasingly felt that Bligh, and if not Bligh himself, the British navy, would return to search for the Bounty, and the majority decided to leave Tahiti. The departure was done in some haste, and one fundamental error was made. There was not an equal number of men and women in the party, and this ultimately led to jealousy, rape and murder. The lonely island of Pitcairn was selected as the mutineers’ final destination, and the Bounty was scuttled there so that there could be no second thoughts such as a return to England on anyone’s part. Virtually all the mutineers perished on Pitcairn Island through the struggle for possession of the women, and when a boat landed there many years later to search for water, they were astonished to find children speaking English, and only one of the white mutineers still alive.
These remarkable accounts of the Bounty, the mutiny, Bligh’s journey and Pitcairn Island completely captivated Mark, and when the Lakemba docked at Papeete he could scarcely contain his excitement. Some outrigger canoes came out to the ship, but it was not like in Bligh’s day, when hundreds swarmed around the arrivals. As for the topless beauties, these were no longer apparent, though the paddlers were fine looking men and some women with warm and friendly smiles. As he looked from the ship, he was beguiled, as all travellers have been before and since, by the swaying coconut trees, and the brilliant splash of colour of the bougainvillea, named after the explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who landed in Tahiti on April 6, 1768 on La Boudese, frangipani and various other tropical flowers.
As he stepped ashore at Tahiti Mark felt in perfect peace. After the long period at sea, the feel of the ground and the smell of the flowers was glorious, and as he walked along the waterfront, Pomare Boulevard, it was not difficult imagining what it must have been like when the Bounty landed. Now, however, Papeete was a busy and untidy little seaport, with all the signs written in French. Mark thought how ignorant he was of the world, not realising up to this point in his life that it was a French protectorate. And it had been since June 29, 1880, when King Pomare V signed the deed granting it to France. Mark somehow thought Tahiti was independent or maybe a British mandate.
The beaches were a disappointment, the reefs surrounding the island reducing the impact of the waves. The broad, sandy beaches he had envisioned were scarcely anywhere to be seen, volcanic rock and coral black sand being the main constituents of the seashore. Despite all this, Tahiti had a certain magic quality, an air, a grace, and as he dived into the clear and placid water, cavorting with youngsters, he felt completely refreshed.
As he walked along the waterfront, he surveyed the various yachts that were berthed there, many of them sailed by nomads in a search for never-ending beauty and an insatiable desire to test their powers against the sea. He was intrigued by the number of boats, and the flags that were flying from various countries and yacht clubs. There was one from Canada, another from Belgium, and France, New Zealand, San Francisco, San Diego, Hawaii and so on. Many of the owners would be sitting on the stern, enjoying the sun and taking in the local pedestrian traffic, which mainly consisted of rickety bicycles. Many waved as he went by.
One was cleaning his boat as Mark walked along, a squat, bearded sailor wearing nothing but a lei, the colour of the flowers emphasising his hairy legs and chest. “Where are you
from, mate?” the sailor enquired cheerily.
“From Australia,” replied Mark.
“Me too,” said the yachtsman, pausing in his work, “and where do you hail from there?”
“Sydney,” said Mark. “Actually Randwick.”
“Randwick? Come from there me bloody self, I do. Used to live in Avoca Street. My name is Bill Howell.”
“Mark Jamieson.” They shook hands.
“Mark Jamieson? There’s a bloody good swimmer by that name. Do not tell me that it is you!”
“I guess I have to plead guilty.”
“Well, what do you know? I have been sailing single-handed round the world and sports news is pretty hard to come by. Did you make the Olympic Games?”
“Guilty again.”
“How did you do?”
“Well,” Mark said quietly, “I did all right.”
“How all right is all right?”
“Well, I won the 100 metres and was on the winning 4 x 100 metres relay team.”
Bill laughed uproariously. “Yes, I would say you did all right. Come aboard, that deserves a beer!”
“I do not drink alcohol, Bill, but if you have a soft drink I will have one.”
“Do not drink? What is wrong with you, mate? You are denying yourself one of life’s greatest pleasures. Do not take all that sport stuff too seriously, it only leads you up the creek. Well, I will have one if you do not mind, and I actually do have a few ginger beers stashed away for wowsers like yourself.”
