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

by Caroline Alexander

  The launch met with the Fiji Islands as supposed, an event Bligh logged with a careful description of the high and low land, the isles and reefs and rocky places for future navigators. This passage in the Bounty launch, in fact, represented the first European navigation through this important group.

  The long days and nights of rain at least enabled the parched men to gather water and slake their thirst, although as Bligh noted, “being extremely wet, and no dry things to shift or cover us, we experienced cold and shiverings scarce to be conceived.”

  By May 17, some of the men had begun to implore Bligh to increase their rations, “but,” Bligh recorded, “I positively refused it.” The night had been wracking, “truly horrible,” dark, thick, and starless, but rent by great outbursts of lightning and thunder. When the long run of rain at last abated, “[e]very person now complained of violent pain in their Bones.”

  After a fleeting day of respite, the rain began again, a deluge in a night “so dark we could scarce see each other.” At daybreak, Bligh began to fear for his men; “some of my People half dead,” he logged. “Our appearances were horrible, and I could look no way but I caught the Eye of some one in distress. Extreme hunger is now evident.” As an almost sublime record of extreme suffering and undaunted resolution, few documents can compare with the log William Bligh kept in the Bounty’s launch. In its stark phrases, dutifully penned at each day’s end, are conjured both the horror of the men’s ordeal and Bligh’s own firm and unwavering attention to all the responsibilities of his command: “Our situation to day highly perilous. . . . I however got propped up and made an Observation. . . . Not a Star to be seen to Steer by and the Sea breaking constantly over us . . . We are covered with Rain and Sea that we can scarce see or make use of our Eyes . . . every person complaining, and some of them solliciting extra allowance, but I positively refused it. . . . At Noon after writing up my Account I divided the two Birds. . . . For my own part a great share of spirits and no doubt of being able to accomplish the Voyage seems to be my principal Support. . . .”

  In the following days, new, strong gales brought not just more days and nights of heavy, unassailable rain, but very high seas.

  “Our situation to day was highly perilous,” Bligh wrote, “the least Error in the Helm would in a Moment be our destruction.” The people bailed “with horror and anxiety”; the bone-deep cold, the dreadful constriction of every muscle in their bodies and the frightening numbness had debilitated many. But at noon on May 23, the weather broke, somewhat, the gales and high seas continuing but now under fair, clear skies. The capture of several boobies on the twenty-sixth had an immediate effect on morale. The birds were divided according to sailors’ tradition, with one man turning his back on his fellows, and answering the question “Who shall have this?” as each unseen portion was prepared. The blood was given to “three of the most distressed.”

  By now, Bligh knew that he was off the coast of New Holland, and began to strategize his approach to the Great Barrier Reef. “From my recollection of Captn. Cooks Survey of this Coast I considered the situation of it to be N.W. . . . the Wind mostly to the Southward of East, I could range such a barrier of Reefs until I found a passage,” he logged, demonstrating how keenly he had retained his wits and navigational acumen, when others were already sunk by hunger and exposure into deadening lethargy.

  On the morning of May 28, the men caught sight of the reef, over which the sea broke in warning foam. Beyond lay quiet water and beyond this, land. With the wind rising, Bligh did not dare more than range along the reef, with all eyes straining for sight of a safe passage to the peaceful water beyond. Eventually, such a break was spotted a mile distant, and the exhausted men sailed and rowed through.

  “Soon after I had got within the Reefs the Coast began to show itself very distinctly,” Bligh wrote. Toward dark, a small, sandy-beached island loomed up, and when closer inspection proved it to be deserted, Bligh gave the order for the launch to land. In his Narrative Bligh described this event characteristically, with little fanfare, but Fryer’s recollection was vivid.

  “[W]e were like so many drunken men,” he wrote, “in setting so long in the Boat and being so weak that when I first landed my head was so light that I fell down.” Half the company sprawled out in the boat, half stumbled out to sleep on land. They remained for two full days, sleeping, eating oysters and, despite Bligh’s warning, gorging on berries, which so disastrously shocked their attenuated systems that the men feared they had been poisoned. Bligh busied himself with his journal, entering long descriptions of the types of berries, birds, insects and flora, as well as taking observations. A full month had passed since he had been roughly awoken in his snug cabin; the Bounty, Tahiti, breadfruit, even Fletcher Christian, must have all seemed very far away.

  Over the next four days, the men island-hopped along the coastline of New Holland, which Bligh roughly charted as he passed along, steadily working northwest toward Endeavour Strait, that passage whose navigation the Admiralty had so ardently desired. Methodically, Bligh conned the launch around and through the false islands, shoals and reefs that made a treacherous maze of these waters. On the afternoon of June 4, the launch rounded at the northernmost tip of New Holland. The Barrier Reef and the strait were now safely behind and all that remained was the 1,100-mile stretch of open water to Timor.

  “At eight o’clock in the evening, we once more launched into the open ocean,” Bligh wrote. He was surprised to see his men looking almost cheerfully restored; they fancied they could see the end of their ordeal.

  “So much confidence gave me great pleasure,” Bligh continued, and added a flash of insight that suggests he may have been more psychologically attuned to his men than he was accustomed to let on: “[A]nd I may assert that to this cause their preservation is chiefly to be attributed; for if any one of them had despaired, he would most probably have died before we reached New Holland.”

  On June 14, the launch approached the outer waters of Coupang’s harbor and was greeted by the sound of two cannons firing. The preceding ten days had tested the men’s strength perhaps more than any other part of their long voyage. Once again, they had been awash in the incoming sea, once again forced to bail, without rest and with ever failing strength, for their very lives. The resumption of this relentless regime had been especially brutal following the brief taste of near ease and security offered by their island landfall; the men were also now approaching the bitter end of their physical abilities to endure. Most had wanted only to sleep, which as Bligh recognized, “seemed to indicate that nature was almost exhausted.” Lassitude, swollen legs and, most ominously of all, “an apparent debility of Understanding” characterized the mortally exhausted crew. Still, Bligh took his observations, made soundings, kept his expansive log, drew sketches, measured out the rations and, as Timor hove in view, kept a lookout for any sign of a European settlement.

  The report of the cannon firings “gave new life to every One.” Now Bligh unfurled the ultimate banner of his naval professionalism. From a bundle of signal flags that had been in the launch, he had had made, in the course of the long passage, the British Jack; this he now raised, for, wrote Bligh, “I did not choose to land without leave.” Eventually, the eighteen men walked shakily ashore, “their limbs full of Sores and their Bodies nothing but Skin and Bones habitated in rags,” as Bligh described. Due to his management, eleven days of rations remained.

  Forty-eight days had passed since the launch left the Bounty, and more than 3,600 miles at sea. With the exception of poor John Norton, none of the men Christian had sent to their deaths had been lost. Sadly, the greatest toll was taken of the crew after they were safe on land. David Nelson, Banks’s loyal and resourceful gardener; Thomas Hall, cook; Peter Linkletter, quartermaster; William Elphinstone, who at thirty-eight had served as a somewhat aged master’s mate with Fletcher Christian; Robert Lamb, the butcher who had been flogged in Tahiti for allowing his cleaver to be stolen—all would die in the Dutch East I
ndies or on the homeward voyage.

  Bligh and his men remained in Coupang for nearly two months, recuperating and, in Bligh’s case, searching for a means to make the next stage of the journey back to England. It was in Coupang that David Nelson died and was buried, and although he was given a fitting funeral, Bligh mourned his inability to provide the loyal gardener with a proper tombstone. A week after the burial, while in the midst of preparations to find passage to Batavia, Bligh had observed the mango and jambula trees in blossom, all signs of “the advance of Spring.”

  He reflected, “All these circumstances recalls to me the loss of Mr. Nelson and the object of my Voyage, which at times almost bear me down, but for the impropriety to let so much Weakness get the better of me.”

  It was also in Coupang that Bligh had written a long and loving letter to his wife, Betsy, his children and the new child—the “little stranger”—he knew would have been born in his absence. Apart from his rough notebook and log, this was the earliest report made of the mutiny—written when his greatest concern was only the accounting he would have to give to the Admiralty for the loss of his ship:

  My Dear Dear Betsy

  I am now in a part of the world that I never expected, it is however a place that has afforded me relief and saved my life, and I have the happyness to assure you I am now in perfect health. . . . What an emotion does my heart & soul feel that I have once more an opportunity of writing to you and my little Angels, and particularly as you have all been so near losing the best of Friends—when you would have had no person to have regarded you as I do, and must have spent the remainder of your days without knowing what was become of me, or what would have been still worse, to have known I had been starved to Death at Sea or destroyed by Indians. All these dreadful circumstances I have combated with success and in the most extraordinary manner that ever happened, never dispairing from the first moment of my disaster but that I should overcome all my difficulties.

  Know then my own Dear Betsy, I have lost the Bounty. . . . On the 28th. April at day light in the morning Christian having the morning watch, He with several others came into my Cabbin while I was a Sleep, and seizing me, holding naked Bayonets at my Breast, tied my Hands behind my back, and threatned instant distruction if I uttered a word. I however call’d loudly for assistance, but the conspiracy was so well laid that the Officers Cabbin Doors were guarded by Centinels, so that Nelson, Peckover, Samuels or the Master could not come to me. I was now dragged on Deck in my Shirt & closely guarded—I demanded of Christian the cause of such a violent act, & severely degraded him for his Villainy but he could only answer—“not a word Sir or you are Dead.” I dared him to the act & endeavored to rally some one to a sense of their duty but to no effect. Besides this Villain see young Heywood one of the ringleaders, & besides him see Stewart joined with him. Christian I had assured of promotion when he came home, & with the other two I was every day rendering them some service—It is incredible! these very young Men I placed every confidence in, yet these great Villains joined with the most able Men in the Ship got possession of the Arms and took the Bounty from me, with huzza’s for Otaheite. I have now reason to curse the day I ever knew a Christian or a Heywood or indeed a Manks man. . . .

  The Secrisy of this Mutiny is beyond all conception so that I cannot discover that any who are with me had the least knowledge of it. Even Mr. Tom Ellison took such a liking to Otaheite that he also turned Pirate, so that I have been run down by my own Dogs. . . .

  My misfortune I trust will be properly considered by all the World—It was a circumstance I could not foresee—I had not sufficient Officers & had they granted me Marines most likely the affair would never have happened—I had not a Spirited & brave fellow about me & the Mutineers treated them as such. My conduct has been free of blame, & I showed every one, that tied as I was, I defied every Villain to hurt me. Hayward & Hallet were Mate & Midshipman of Christian’s Watch, but they alarmed no one, & I found them on Deck seemingly [unconcerned] untill they were ordered into the Boat—The latter has turned out a worthless impudent scoundrel, but I beg of you to relate nothing of them untill I come home.

  I know how shocked you will be at this affair but I request of you My Dear Betsy to think nothing of it all is now past & we will again looked forward to future happyness. Nothing but true consciousness as an Officer that I have done well could support me. I cannot write to Your Uncle or any one, but my publick letters, therefore tell them all that they will find my character respectable & honor untarnished. I have saved my pursing Books so that all my profits hitherto will take place and all will be well. Give my blessing to my Dear Harriet, my Dear Mary, my Dear Betsy & to my Dear little stranger & tell them I shall soon be home. . . . To You my Love I give all that an affectionate Husband can give—

  Love, Respect & all that is or ever will be in the power of your ever affectionate Friend and Husband Wm Bligh.

  Once Bligh’s party were sufficiently recovered, Bligh’s next object was to get them from Coupang to Batavia, in Java, by October, when the ships of trade departed for Europe. With no means of ready passage at hand, he was eventually forced to purchase and provision a small schooner that he himself would command for the voyage. This in turn meant having to draw upon credit with His Majesty’s government, a common enough transaction in the international seafaring world; and for this reason, Bligh was greatly taken aback on being informed that the governor desired him to “suffer the Names of my Officers to be joined with my own as an additional security.” This Bligh refused to do, replying that he “could give him no other or could he have any better security than my bills of Exchange on the Government of Great Britain.” This was a potentially serious development. If Bligh was not advanced the cost of the hired schooner, he and his men would lose valuable time and risk losing a passage with the fleet when it sailed from Batavia; this in turn would mean waiting additional months until the monsoon passed and sailing resumed. Most disconcerting, however, was the governor’s slighting implication that Bligh’s security was insufficient.

  A week after this awkward impasse, Bligh had learned more from the sympathetic Mr. Wanjon, the governor’s son-in-law and the settlement’s second-in-command.

  “My Master who I am under the necessity to keep strictly to his Duty, and is a vicious person, it is hinted to me has been the cause of the Governor’s demur,” Bligh wrote in his private log. It transpired that Mr. Fryer had struck up a friendship with a Captain Spikerman, whose wife was the governor’s sister. Fryer had made dark suggestions that all would not go well with Bligh on his return to England, thus destabilizing the Dutch authorities’ confidence that Bligh’s notes of credit would be honored. That Fryer’s activities had hurt Fryer himself, who was as anxious to return to England as was Bligh, is not the kind of realization that came easily to the master. The tensions between Bligh and his disaffected officers were to leave a lasting and unpleasant impression upon the Dutch authorities. Bligh’s contempt for Fryer, Purcell and, to a lesser extent, Hallett and William Cole (the boatswain responsible for the mildewed sails) appears by this stage to have been undisguised. Barely recovered from his extraordinary sufferings, Bligh had now to shoulder the burdensome responsibility of overseeing all the logistical and bureaucratic difficulties of burying the men who had died, and leading the survivors on yet another vessel and yet another voyage.

  The journey from Coupang to Batavia in the newly purchased Dutch schooner, renamed by Bligh the Resource, took exactly six weeks, from August 20 until October 1. With the launch in tow, the Resource hopped along the Java coast, landing at Surabaya and Semarang, replacing rotten parts and begging for basic supplies and water. Throughout this tedious voyage, Fryer, with relentless tenacity, continued to dog and counter Bligh’s every word and deed. To Bligh’s command that Fryer keep an eye on Purcell while the carpenter worked on the new schooner, Fryer had responded that “he was no Carpenter.” When Hallett and Elphinstone were found “beastly drunk,” Bligh reacted with the partly rhe
torical question “Are they drunk or Ill?,” to which Fryer replied, “Am I a Doctor?”

  This last altercation took place at Surabaya, on the coast of Java, and was the cause of a near mutinous showdown.

  “What do you mean by this insolence?” Bligh had asked the master, referring to his coy response.

  “It is no insolence,” Fryer replied, buoyed for this confrontation by his drunken and disgruntled audience, of whom the most significant member was William Purcell. “You not only use me Ill but every Man in the Vessel and every Man will say the same.”

  “Yes by God we are used damned Ill,” began the muttering chorus. This entire episode is logged by Bligh himself, along with all the complaints the disgruntled party chose to lodge against him—that he would be hanged or shot from the mouth of a cannon on his return to England; that he had overbilled His Majesty’s government for stores purchased in Coupang (this from Fryer); that “the cause of the Ship being taken was owing to my stoping provisions” (this from Purcell). Bligh’s unsqueamish report of the range of complaints against him would tend to indicate that these were not issues in which he feared public scrutiny. The one heartening development was a sudden, emotional outburst from Thomas Hayward in support of his captain. Hayward, Bligh now learned, had earlier been taunted by his fellow officers for being Bligh’s “lackey.” Now, throwing himself into Bligh’s arms, amid a torrent of tears he begged Bligh to believe that he had never been guilty of disloyalty.