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 three hundred pounds. 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 November 2, 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. “[A]nd 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 experience as a trading officer under Cook, and his knowledge of Tahitian language and customs picked up in the course of several voyages to the island. 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 diarrhea. 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.
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 turniplike root. One day, Bligh engaged in long theological inquiry, 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 inquired in turn how this was done in Tahiti. Queen Iddeeah replied by mimicking a woman in labor, 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.
“[L]et 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, loath 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, favors 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 toward 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.”
Toward 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 December 6, 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 roiled 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 Poin
t 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 harbor 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.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 14
