The Isle of Man received all its news of the outside world from the mail, gazettes or random passengers arriving by the regular Liverpool packet, which was itself entirely at the whim of prevailing weather. As events unfolded across the Irish Sea, the Heywoods, frantic for information, knew themselves to be oppressively, maddeningly isolated. Mrs. Heywood, overwhelmed by all that had overtaken the family and with the responsibility of her many children (the youngest, Edwin, was nine), increasingly followed events at second hand, relying on Nessy’s reports from her widening circle of correspondents.
Chief of these was Nessy’s uncle by marriage, Captain Thomas Pasley, now in command of the 74-gun Vengeance. Pasley knew Bligh personally, and had in fact sent a favorite midshipman, Matthew Flinders, to join Bligh’s second breadfruit expedition. Nearly sixty years old, this bluff, straight-talking Scotsman was respectfully regarded as “old school,” a characterization born out by his inimitable personal diary: “A very dull stupid Cruize this, not one Yankie on the Seas I believe—already out 17 Days and have not seen one—hard, very hard. . . .”
“ . . . At ½ past 4 our Stupid Rascal of a Pilot run the Ship’s stern upon the Crow Rock. . . . The Shock was so great that it broke several Bottles in one of my Cases of Rum. . . . I hope we shall be able without further disaster to bundle the Old Bitch into one King’s Port or other.”
Pasley had gone to sea at sixteen and seen much action against the French and in the West Indies. While stationed off the Isle of Man, he met Maria Heywood, sister of Peter John Heywood (and Nessy’s aunt), and the two married in 1774. Pasley had helped discreetly in other Heywood family troubles, as his diary makes clear. In 1778, while on patrol at the Leeward Islands, he met a new sister-in-law, a fourteen-year-old “Child,” now pregnant by one of the Heywood men, a “D——d Rascal,” who had absconded. Although finding the girl a “large, course [sic], clumsy piece, with a flat broad face and small peeping Eyes,” Captain Pasley was moved by her plight and did what he could to aid her.
Corpulent and with a stern-featured face, Captain Pasley was an imposing figure, but the kind of rough man who melted before a woman in distress. He was also the commander in chief in the Medway, based at Sheerness, a fact not lost on Nessy Heywood. And if this gallant officer had been moved by his pudding of a sister-in-law, how much more was he affected by the grief and anxiety of his charming niece! Pasley was genuinely fond of Nessy, who had on occasion stayed with him and his wife at their Bedfordshire estate. He had even been induced to enter into one of Nessy’s interminable poetic exchanges:
Lines by Capt. Pasley to his niece, Miss Hester Heywood, with a present to her of some pairs of gloves, on her having stolen a kiss from him when he was asleep in his chair:
Accept, my dear Nessy, the tribute that’s due
Poor the kiss that so sweetly was given by you.
But be cautious, my fair one; for had I been single
One kiss such as that would have made my heart jingle . . .
At the beginning of June, Nessy sat down to write a letter to Peter. It was not yet known when he and the Gorgon would arrive, and Pasley had forewarned her that in any case she would have “no chance of seeing him, for no bail can be offered.” A letter, then, would be her only means of communication. Sitting in the windswept house in Douglas, Nessy had written as if speaking to the young, well-educated man of budding honor who had left the family nest five years before. Peter’s adventures on the far side of the globe would have been beyond the boundaries of her maiden imagination, experiences she would not have known to guess at—the adventures in love and lust, mutiny and power, the wars and bloodletting on Tubuai, the tattoos and settled domestic life on Tahiti, the wreck of the Pandora in the night sea and the long journey home in chains.
“I will not ask you my beloved Brother whether you are innocent of the dreadful crime of Mutiny,” Nessy began. Curiously, she addressed the letter to the care of Francis Hayward, the father of Thomas Hayward, who had accompanied the Pandora; Hayward Sr. at least appears to have remained kindly disposed toward the Heywood family.
“[I]f the Transactions of that Day were as Mr. Bligh represented them, such is my Conviction of your worth & Honor, that I will without hesitation stake my Life on your Innocence,” Nessy had continued loyally, but illogically. “—If on the Contrary you were concerned in such a Conspiracy against your commander I shall be as firmly persuaded his Conduct was the Occasion of it—But,” she hastily added, “alas Could any Occasion justify so atrocious an Attempt to destroy a Number of our fellow Creatures?”
When the Gorgon was still at least a week away, more news was brought by a batch of the Pandora’s crew just arrived from Holland and, as luck would have it, delivered specifically to Pasley’s care at Sheerness. This was the advance party that had sailed from Batavia on the Dutch East Indiaman, Zwan, under the charge of the despised Lieutenant Larkan. On arrival, the men had been whisked to Pasley’s ship, the Vengeance, for a thorough debriefing. From these men, who had lived on top of Peter and the other prisoners for a full nine months, eavesdropping on their every word and—if one is to believe Captain Edwards—inclined to regard their captives with a troubling sympathy, Pasley learned disheartening news.
“I cannot conceal it from you my dearest Nessy, neither is it proper I should,” Pasley reported in his blunt way, “—your Brother appears by all Account to be the greatest Culprit of all, Christian alone excepted. Every Exertion you may rest assured I shall use to save his Life—but on Trial I have no hope of his not being condemned.” Pasley was compelled to disclose one more piece of bad news to Nessy: the report that Peter had been the first to swim to the Pandora—a circumstance very much in his favor—was, he had learned, untrue. There was little to do now except await the arrival of the prisoners themselves and hope subsequent accounts would offer more encouragement.
The summer of 1792 promised to be one of the worst and wettest in memory. Toward the middle of June, the weather turned blustery with lightning storms seen to the south, before settling back to a calmer pattern of dull skies and showers of rain. Two days after the Gorgon dropped anchor, a longboat was sent out from the 74-gun guardship Hector to collect the prisoners. As the boat made its way across the broad, busy anchorage to Portsmouth Harbour, the weather broke and it was under the light, fair skies of an English summer day that the prisoners beheld their native land. Once on the Hector, the prisoners were taken down to the gun room for confinement.
A week later, Captain Montagu warped the Hector farther down harbor to moorings off Gosport, where she would lie until the court-martial was assembled. Several conditions had to be met, which might take many months. All of the men from the Pandora had to have returned, especially Lieutenant Hayward, who would certainly be called on as an “evidence,” or witness, and twelve captains of sufficiently senior rank had to be assembled in port. Finally, much depended upon the movements of Vice Admiral Lord Hood, commander in chief at Portsmouth and a First Lord of the Admiralty, who would preside over the proceedings.
With the Gorgon’s safe arrival, relatives and well-wishers felt it their duty to prepare Nessy and her family for the heartbreak that inevitably lay ahead. James Modyford Heywood, the helpful relation who lived close to Plymouth and had previously offered only words of consolation and support, now felt it proper to disabuse Nessy of any illusions: Peter’s character “will I fear avail him little when he is convicted of a Crime, which, viewed in a political Light, is of the blackest Dye,” he wrote darkly, in language that ominously echoed Bligh’s.
Similarly, from his private island in Lake Windermere, Cumberland, John Curwen (Fletcher Christian’s well-connected first cousin) wrote to Nessy that “however painful, I think it just to say that unless some favourable Circumstance should appear any Interest which can be made will have little Weight.” Only Peter’s “extreme youth” was in his favor. However, as Curwen undoubtedly knew, Peter’s youth was neither extreme nor, in a profession in which young boys were sent to
sea as children, even remarkable. Peter was now twenty; on the day of the mutiny, he had been five weeks shy of his seventeenth birthday. In a postscript to his letter, Curwen added that it was “not unlikely” that he might be on the Isle of Man for a few days on unspecified business with his friend and relation Captain Hugh Cloberry Christian, “who has more the Power of serving you than any Person I know.”
This seems to have been a broad hint of support, for it was not long afterward that Captain Christian took the liberty of approaching the lost Pandora’s captain, Edward Edwards, with queries on Peter’s behalf. Regarding “the unfortunate Young Man Peter Heywood,” Edwards duly responded that he well understood the young man had not taken an active part against his commander; the question, however, was “how far he may be reprehensible for not taking an active & decided part in his favour in the early part of the business.” As for possible allowance being made for Peter’s youth, “I have only to observe,” wrote the unaccommodating Edwards, “that he appeared to me to be much older and I understand that he passed for and was considered to be so on board the Bounty.” Edwards had also witnessed, all those months ago on Tahiti, the evidence of Peter’s manhood—the little houses where he and Stewart had lived with their Tahitian wives, for example. Despite a certain guardedness that suggested that Edwards might not be the ideal witness in Peter’s favor when he took the stand, Edwards offered a glimmer of good news. Peter “certainly came on board the Pandora of his own accord almost immediately after she came to an Anchor.” Also, Peter was a young man of abilities; for instance, “he made himself Master of the Otaheitian Language.” This last point, however, like the incriminating tattoos, was not the kind of information the family felt needed to be bandied about.
At last, toward the end of June, Peter’s own long-awaited voice reached his family. The letter that arrived from him to the frantic Douglas household had not been written on arrival at Spithead, but was addressed and dated “Batavia, November 20th 1791,” written while he and the other captured men had been confined off Java’s pestilential shore. Now came the flood of words, the description of the fateful and confused day, the capture by Edwards, the loss of the Pandora, the brutal captivity. But above all else the letter carried the voice of Peter’s misunderstood innocence, and the first declaration of his version of that day’s events.
“[W]hat has since happen’d to me,” Peter wrote, had “been grossly misrepresented to you by Lieut. Bligh, who by not knowing the real Cause of my remaining on board, naturally suspected me, unhappily for me, to be a Coadjutor in the Mutiny.” On that dreadful morning, Peter said, he had awoken at daylight and, leaning out of his hammock, seen a shipmate sitting with drawn cutlass on the arms chest. He was told that Christian had taken the ship and was going to take Bligh home as prisoner, “to have him tried by a Court Martial for his long tyrannical & oppressive Behaviour to his People!—I was quite thunderstruck. . . .”
Once on deck, Peter discovered a different story. Bligh was being threatened with cutlass and pistol by Christian, and the launch was being lowered. All who did not wish to remain with Christian were given a choice: they could get into the launch “or be taken in Irons as Prisoners to ’Taheite & be left there.” The launch meant certain death, whereas at Tahiti he could wait for the arrival of another ship. As he assisted in clearing the launch of the yams stored in her, Thomas Hayward had asked him what he intended to do, and Peter had replied that he would remain in the ship.
“[N]ow this Answer I imagine he has told Mr. Bligh I made to him, from which together with my not speaking to him that Morning his Suspicions of me have arose, construing my Conduct into what is foreign to my Nature—Thus my dearest Mother ’twas all owing to my Youth & unadvised Inexperience.”
Peter urged his mother to convey his innocence to Richard Betham, Bligh’s father-in-law, who had been responsible for getting him on the Bounty; “perhaps his Assistance in interceding with his son in Law Mr. Bligh in my Behalf might undeceive him in his groundless ill Opinion of me, & prevent his proceeding to great Lengths against me at my approaching Trial.” Although he could not know it, Betham had died in 1789. Peter, his mind already racing ahead, had other practical requests: “If you should likewise apply to my Uncle Pasley & Mr. Heywood of Plymouth, their timely Aid & friendly Advice might be the Means of rescuing me from an ignominious Lot!”
The effect of this letter on the Heywood household was electrifying. Two other letters were next received in rapid succession, along with, in the best family tradition, a poem from Peter, which sent Nessy into raptures:
Oh! Hope—thou firm Support against Despair,
Assist me now stern adverse Fate to bear . . .
On June 29, Nessy and her mother replied warmly to Peter in separate letters. Nessy, predictably, was effusive: “My dearest & most beloved Brother . . . Your fond, anxious, & till now, miserable Nessy is at last permitted to address the Object of her tenderest Affection in England!—Oh! my admirable, my heroic Boy—what have we felt on your Account. . . . Surely my beloved Boy, you could not for a Moment imagine we ever supposed you guilty of the Crime of Mutiny. . . .”
Nessy was by now intent on going to the mainland, as she told Peter, “to fly into your Arms”; Uncle Pasley’s solemn reckoning that “you have no chance of seeing him” had already been forgotten.
Peter, as he had told his mother, had been forced to write his long Batavian letter “by stealth,” but on the Hector he suffered no such restriction. By a happy quirk of fate, as Pasley reassured his niece, “Captain Montague of the Hector is my particular Friend.”
George Montagu was from a distinguished naval family. He had entered the Royal Naval Academy, gone to sea at thirteen and as a young lieutenant accompanied his father to the North American station in the early 1770s. During the American Revolutionary War, he had been active in the reduction of New York. Now forty-two years old, Montagu had been in command of the Hector since 1790, following an eight-year stretch of unemployment—the usual naval casualty of peace.
Under Montagu’s care, the Bounty prisoners were being kept in the gun room at the stern of the lower deck. Lit only by its gun ports, it was a dark and airless cavern, although in a rated ship of the line this traditionally served as living quarters and schoolroom for the captain’s servants and midshipmen, or junior young gentlemen in training. Canvas-walled cubicles along each side provided sleeping berths, while small arms, such as cutlasses and pistols, were stored aft.
Although kept shackled in leg irons, the prisoners were otherwise treated well and made no complaints about the conditions on board the Hector. As Pasley told Nessy, “every attention & Indulgence possible is granted to him.” Friendly interest from another quarter made Peter’s circumstances yet more comfortable. As luck would have it, Captain Albemarle Bertie of the Edgar, already at moorings when the Gorgon arrived, was also a relative, his wife, Emma, being the daughter of the helpful James Modyford Heywood. In fact, after moving down the harbor, the Hector was now moored beside the Edgar, making it extremely convenient for the Berties to keep an eye on young Peter. Soon Mrs. Bertie was writing to Mrs. Heywood the kind of letters calculated to calm a mother’s fears: “I think it will be a great satisfaction to you to know, that he has a Friend and Relation on the spot,” Mrs. Bertie reassured her. Many emissaries were soon crowding the Hector’s deck on Peter’s behalf; officers from the Edgar (Lieutenant Bayne was a friend of Uncle Holwell), messengers from Mrs. Bertie daily delivering baskets of fresh vegetables and other tokens of kindness, other friends of her father’s. Days after arrival, Peter wrote to his mother for money so “that I may be enabled to cloath myself with that decency which is a requisite,” and shortly afterward a package of new linen was duly delivered. Less tactfully, Peter also wrote to Mrs. Bligh asking for the return of certain attire he had left to be laundered before departing with her husband on the Bounty.
Peter was keenly aware that as the only officer among the prisoners he was sure to draw the most interest and
also might be held to a higher standard of behavior. How his shipmates regarded the shower of special attention the young midshipman received is not known. Most probably they were encouraged and gratified, as it could only be useful to their common cause to have one of their number viewed with such evident favoritism.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 23
