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

by Caroline Alexander

  Befitting his undisputed innocence, Coleman’s defense was a perfunctory business, the whole proceeding lasting well under an hour. Only one witness, William Cole the boatswain, was called, and he testified that he had heard Christian give the order for Coleman to be detained. On being asked by the court if Coleman had “expostulated” with Christian, the witness demurred; Coleman, he said, “was then surrounded by Armed Men and I saw him crying afterwards.”

  Apart from this brief transaction, the weekend progressed like any other. On board the Hector, John Carter, a seaman, was punished with a dozen lashes “for mutinous expressions,” the second punishment administered by Captain Montagu this September. Otherwise, the day’s chief activity was taking on fresh beef. Across the harbor, on the Duke, casks of water were being stowed. The weather moderated on Sunday while remaining hazy, and divine service was, as usual, performed. As these two days had been expressly allowed for the prisoners’ preparation, presumably Stephen Barney and Aaron Graham had been allowed on board to meet their clients for the defense. Since the trial began, Peter had had no further correspondence with his family. But one of Nessy’s poems of this time, addressed simply to “Anxiety,” could be said to speak for the worried, suspenseful relatives of all the defendants:

  Doubting, dreading, fretful guest,

  Quit, oh! quit this mortal Breast . . .

  Monday, September 17, broke with fair, mild weather. In the Duke’s great cabin the much anticipated defense of Peter Heywood began with his statement to the court that “owing to the long and severe Confinement he had suffered,” he feared he would not be able to deliver his defense “with that force of Expression which it required, and therefore desired one of his Friends” to be permitted to read it in his stead. The request was granted, and the chosen friend as it turned out was Mr. Const, Peter’s second lawyer.

  Prepared evidences in general tended to be favorably regarded by courts-martial. As one legal authority had stated, evidences committed in writing were “the most sedate and deliberate acts of the mind” and less corruptible than if “retained in memory only.” The prepared statements of all of the other defendants, as it would turn out, were to be read aloud by the Judge Advocate.

  “Your attention has already been sufficiently exercised in the painful Narrative of this Trial,” Const began, speaking in Peter’s voice; “it is therefore my Duty to trespass on it as little as possible,” saying which, he launched into a lofty preamble: “The Crime of Mutiny for which I am now arraigned is so seriously pregnant with every danger and Mischief that it makes the Person so accused in the Eyes not only of military Men but Men of every description and of every Nation, appear at once the object of unpardonable guilt and exemplary vengeance.

  “In such a Character it is my misfortune to appear before this Tribunal. . . .” The rounded phrases swelled and rolled off Const’s tongue; such rhetoric could never have been trusted to a mere Judge Advocate. As it was, one must wonder how this oratorical exercise was squared with the slight, thin-faced young man who stood before the worldly captains, resolute, perhaps, but surely too with signs of nervousness.

  Peter addressed at the outset one possible source of embarrassment. Sometime before he had gained the services of Aaron Graham, he had rashly sent to the Earl of Chatham a narrative “containing an account of all that passed on the Fatal morning.” The Earl of Chatham was John Pitt, brother of the prime minister, who in 1788 had replaced the illustrious Lord Howe as First Lord of the Admiralty. It is not clear whether this document had circulated among the court. In any event, Peter and his lawyers now took pains to distance him from “a few particulars” of this earlier narrative, which, arising from “the Confusion the ship was in during the Mutiny” and “the errors of an imperfect recollection” might, he now conceded, have been mistaken.

  Peter’s defense followed three unevenly weighted lines of argument, pursued with varying degrees of conviction and vehemence. First and foremost was his lamentable “extreme youth and inexperience” at the time of the mutiny, which had been the cause of his failing to join his captain in the overloaded boat. On that “Fatal morning,” Peter had been awoken from sleep with the news of the mutiny and followed Cole and Purcell up on deck where he had seen Bligh bound, with Christian beside him.

  “My faculties were benumbed,” Peter said. He did not come to his senses until called upon to help get out the launch by assisting at the tackle fall. In this state of stupor, he took many things as they were handed to him and put them into the launch; it was, he said, at this time that his “hand touched the Cutlass,” as Purcell had stated—this last point was in fact contradicted by all other testimony, which made clear that no weapons of any kind were allowed into the boat up until the moment she left the Bounty.

  Too inexperienced to understand that his own behavior at this time of crisis could be subject to judgment, Peter stood by as a stunned and passive observer. As he candidly stated, the “Boat and Ship . . . presented themselves to me without its once occurring that I was at liberty to choose, much less that the choice I should make would be afterwards deemed Criminal; and I bitterly deplore that my extreme youth and inexperience concurred in torturing me with Apprehensions and prevented me from preferring the former; for, as things have turned out, it would have saved me from the disgrace of appearing before you, as I do this day.”

  For guidance, Peter looked to the example of his messmates, the more experienced Hallett and Hayward, who appeared “very much agitated” by Christian’s order that they join Bligh in the boat, even to the point of shedding tears. This vivid recollection ostensibly served to demonstrate how the terror of Peter’s messmates influenced his own decision to remain with the Bounty—but it also slyly disparaged the two men who had handed him such damaging testimony. Not mentioned were the actions of the numerous other loyalists that could have guided his inexperience: Purcell facing down Christian; Ledward, the acting surgeon, who had immediately declared he would join his captain; Peckover and Cole; Linkletter, Norton and the others who had given their lives; the fourteen-year-old boy Tinkler. Peter had watched all of these men doggedly gather their gear and make for the launch.

  Peter’s representation of his dilemma passed into his second, more pragmatic line of argument—that the boat had been so overladen that it appeared, as he had written, “a kind of an act of suicide” to join her.

  “I need only refer to the Captain’s own narrative,” Peter stated, going on to evoke Bligh’s claim that the boat had been kept afloat only by his order to fling spare clothing and equipment overboard; apparently, Bligh’s narrative had been among those books brought to pass the time by his friends and relatives. Had he, Peter, been in the boat, “she must either have gone down with us or to prevent it we must have light’ned her of the Provisions and other necessary articles and thereby have perished for Want—dreadful alternative!” By staying with the Bounty, therefore, Peter had helped save the men in the boat.

  This was risky logic to have declaimed by a civilian lawyer before twelve professional sea officers. Between them they had weathered almost every casualty—excepting outright mutiny—that could befall a man at sea. The plea that it was reasonable to avoid an act of duty when dangerous was not one normally honored within the naval code. As for Peter’s plea of “extreme youth and inexperience,” Peter had been five weeks shy of seventeen on the day of the mutiny. The average age at which the captains sitting in judgment themselves had first gone to sea was twelve; Captain Knight, in company with his father, had seen action off France at the age of ten.

  Finally, tangled amid these other arguments was Peter’s most sensible—if contradictory—claim; namely, that he had been held below against his will and thus prevented from joining the boat when he had wished to. In his testimony Thomas Hayward had stated that he had advised Peter not to remain with the ship. Of this exchange, Peter now professed a “feint recollection of a Conversation with somebody”; he had thought, however, this had taken place with George S
tewart, not with Thomas Hayward, “but be that as it may,” Peter was certain that the exchange had taken place “on Deck and not below, for on hearing it suggested that I should be deem’d Guilty if I staid in the Ship, I went down directly.” His intent on going down, he now told the court, had been specifically to gather his possessions in order to join the boat. Passing William Cole on his way down, Peter told him his plans “in a low tone of voice.” Once below, however, he was prevented from returning on deck by the order of Charles Churchill, one of the armed mutineers.

  Significantly, this single claim, which should have rendered all the other excuses beside the point, was not one Peter chose to press with a great deal of energy. More vehement were the personal attacks he directed at Hayward and Hallett: Hallett had been only a callow youth (youthful if not inexperienced!) whose perceptions were not sound; the events he had described were nearly four years past; people’s memories could not be trusted. With regard to the midshipman’s highly damaging contention that Peter had “laughed turned round, and walked away” when addressed by Bligh—this was unthinkable; Peter’s state of mind “rendered such a want of decency impossible.” And how had Hallett been able “to particularize the Muscles of a mans Countenance” at any distance?

  Having touched glancingly at the claim that he had been detained by force, Peter moved on to the events of the Pandora, recalling how on Edwards’s orders he had been “chained and punished with incredible severity.” The word “punished” was pointed—having already suffered much, he was intimating, he had in effect paid his debt for errors committed.

  “My Character and my Life are at your disposal,” Peter now told the court, wrapping up his defense. “[A]s the former is as sacred to me as the latter is precious, the consolation or settled misery of a dear Mother and two sisters who mingle their tears together and are all but frantic for my situation—pause for your Verdict!” Given the web of Heywood family interests that touched so many of the judges, this was perhaps not an empty plea.

  After solemnly professing that Peter’s heart would “rely with confidence on its own innocence” until the day his Spirit faced “that unerring Judge, before whom all Hearts are open, and from whom no Secrets are hid,” Const completed the reading of Peter’s formal defense. Thus far, Peter had been served by the penmanship of Aaron Graham and the reading of Francis Const, but for this next stage he would be trusting to his own wits. Each defendant was allowed to call witnesses to “establish the facts,” and Peter planned to call Fryer, Cole, Purcell and Peckover from the Bounty, as well as Captain Edwards and Lieutenant Larkan of the Pandora. It was for this moment that Pasley had been justifiably concerned that Peter be properly prepared and coached.

  To each of the witnesses, once again summoned into the great cabin before the grave assembly, Peter directed the same essential line of questioning: Had they not seen him assist in the preparation of the larger launch? And had his swift assistance not helped ensure that Bligh was safely in the launch before Christian had time to change his mind about having given his captain the safer boat? What was the height of the gunwale above the water? What was the state of mind of Mr. Hayward—“was he cool and collected or did he seem to be agitated and alarmed?” The tenor of these questions was to suggest that all the young gentlemen had been terrified at the prospect of getting into the boat—and that the only reason Hayward and Hallett were not on trial instead of Peter was that, in his words, they were so “fortunate as to quit the Ship.”

  Another question was more speculative: “If you had remained in the Ship in hopes of retaking her,” Peter demanded of Peckover, “should you from your knowledge of my Conduct from the first Moment you knew me, to the Moment in which you are now to answer the question, have entrusted me with your design and do you believe I would have given you all the assistance in my power?” To this question, Peckover and his shipmates replied gravely in the affirmative: Yes, had they remained on the Bounty and not been survivors of a six-week ordeal in the open sea, they would have looked to Peter for assistance. All parties were also in agreement, in Fryer’s reverent words, that Peter was “[b]eloved by every body, to the best of my Recollection.”

  Peter had one key, all-important witness: William Cole, who was now boatswain of the Irresistible, moored at Sheerness, and who had traveled down to Portsmouth in company with Captain Pasley. He was the one living person to whom Peter claimed to have confided his intention to quit the ship upon hearing George Stewart’s sobering advice. In his own evidence for the prosecution, Cole’s statement had tended to support Peter’s claim: “I saw Mr. Peter Heywood one of the Prisoners who was standing there lending a hand to get the Fore Stay fall along,” Cole had stated, “and when the Boat was hooked on, he spoke something to me, but what it was I do not know, for Christian was threatening me at the time, and Mr. Heywood then went below and I do not remember seeing him afterwards, whilst we were in the Ship.” Questioned by the court the previous week, Cole had further recalled that although he had earlier stated that only Coleman, Norman and McIntosh had been detained, he also believed Heywood had been too—he had thought “all along he was intending to come away.” Under closer questioning still, Cole had also recalled that he had heard “Churchill call out, ‘keep them below’—who he meant I do not know.”

  Now, pressed by Heywood himself, Cole’s memory was further jogged.

  “As you have said that when I left the Deck to go below, I said something to you but you cannot now recollect what,” Peter prodded, “I would ask you whether it was not that I would go and put some things into a Bag and join you in the Boat?”

  “I know it was something about a bag,” Cole allowed uncertainly, “but what I could not tell, I supposed he was going to get some things to come into the Boat.” Afterward, Peter reminded him, orders had been given to one of the sentinels “not to let them come up again. . . . Do you think he meant me as one of them, whoever they were?”

  “Yes, I do,” Cole replied. Of the other witnesses summoned, Purcell too stated he had heard Churchill’s command to “keep them below.”

  But Peter had given significantly different versions of these events on at least two different occasions: it is probable that these variant details were among the “few particulars” resulting from “the errors of an imperfect recollection” that, as he had told the court, he had mistakenly submitted to Lord Chatham. Both in his letter to his mother from Batavia and in an early draft of his defense, Peter stated that his pivotal decision to quit the Bounty had taken place after Bligh was already in the boat.

  “I was not undeceived in my erroneous Intention till too late which was, after the Captain was in the Launch,” Peter wrote his mother before going on to describe how he had changed his mind.

  Similarly, in a more detailed draft of his defense, Peter had written, “[M]y intentions therefore to remain in the Ship were not improper, & I was confirmed in this Opinion by Mr. Bligh’s telling several of the Men (when he was in the launch) who were endeavouring to get into the Boat, ‘for Gods Sake my Lads don’t any more of you come into the Boat, I’ll do you Justice if I ever get Home.’ ”

  It is not difficult to see why Aaron Graham edited this last vivid scene out of his lawyerly version of Peter’s defense. The image of Bligh in the perilous boat evoking justice could hardly have helped Peter’s cause. Yet more damning was the clear evidence the scene gave that Peter had been watching at the rail when his captain was forced into the launch. Since Bligh had been the very last person to enter the launch, Peter’s subsequent realization that he should leave the Bounty had come at the last possible minute—literally, mere minutes before the launch was cast off. How, then, had he been able to confide his resolution to Cole (“. . . on hearing it suggested that I should be deem’d Guilty if I staid with the Ship, I went down directly, and in passing Mr. Cole told him in a low tone of voice that I would fetch a few necessaries in a Bag and follow him into the Boat . . .”)? How had Cole and Purcell overheard Churchill’s command to “
keep them below” if this applied to Heywood and Stewart? Both men had been in the launch for some time, from where, as all testimony had indicated, it had been impossible to hear much of anything (“. . . there was so much Noise and Confusion in the Boat that I could not hear one man from the other,” Fryer had testified).

  “Who were the People that forced Mr. Bligh into the Boat?” the court had asked William Cole, when he had been examined as a witness for the prosecution.

  “I cannot tell,” Cole had replied, matter-of-factly. “I was in the Boat, I could not see.”

  Cole and, to a lesser extent, Purcell seem to have entered Peter’s account rather late in the day. Pasley had found these men to be “favorable,” but had never suggested they had offered anything as welcome as an alibi. One must suspect that the revised details appeared along with Aaron Graham. Was this what had so heartened Pasley and Peter following their respective meetings with this very able adviser?

  “I was not undeceived in my erroneous Intention till too late.” This straightforward and, one is tempted to say, even innocent summation was Peter’s most intimate confession.

  The last witnesses Peter summoned were from the Pandora. Edwards’s treatment of the prisoners, as Peter knew through Pasley, was generally deplored. Accordingly, he had earlier aimed a satisfying barb at this most despised of captains, which had undoubtedly been appreciated by the court: “But tho’ it cannot fail deeply to interest the humanity of this Court and kindle in the breast of every Member of it compassion for my sufferings,” Peter had declaimed, after evoking the “fear and trembling” that had gripped every prisoner as the Pandora went down, “yet as it is not relative to the point, and as I cannot for a moment believe that it proceeded from any improper motive on the part of Captain Edwards whose Character in the Navy stands high in estimation both as an Officer and a Man of humanity . . . I shall therefore waive it and say no more upon the Subject.”