Now summoned forth, Edwards, surely discomfitted by his introduction, nonetheless confirmed, in his phlegmatic and noncommittal way, that Peter had voluntarily come on board and had been helpful in relating what had happened to the Bounty after the mutiny.
“I had recourse to his Journals,” Edwards stated, “and he was ready to Answer any Questions that I asked him.”
Similarly, Lieutenant Larkan reported that “Peter Heywood came on board about 2 Hours after the Ship was at Anchor, in a Canoe, and gave himself up to me on the Quarter Deck as one belonging to the ‘Bounty.’ ”
“Mention the Words he made use of?” asked the court, suddenly interested.
“He said, ‘I suppose you know My Story,’ ” Larkan replied.
“Did any Person on board the ‘Pandora’ to your knowledge inform the Prisoner that any of the ‘Bounty’s’ Crew had arrived in England or did he know that Lieutenant Hayward was on board before you took the Prisoner, down to Captain Edwards?” In other words, had the prisoner known the game was up?
“Not to my Knowledge,” was Larkan’s reply.
“[K]nowing from one of the Natives who had been off in a Canoe that our former Messmate Mr. Hayward, now promoted to the rank of Lieut. was aboard, we ask’d for him,” Peter had written to his mother of his first movements on the Pandora. Neither Larkan nor Edwards was privy to the fact that there could be few secrets on Tahiti.
Thus concluded Peter’s defense. Mr. Const reappeared one last time to read a summation of the evidence, presented again in Peter’s voice. He had been asleep when the mutiny occurred; he had continued on board longer than he should, it was true, “but it has also been proved I was detained by force”; he had surrendered as soon as he was able.
This concluding statement added one new, audacious and vastly fraudulent claim: that Peter had by the absence of Captain Bligh “been deprived of an Opportunity of laying before the Court much, that would have been at least grateful to my feelings, tho’ I hope not necessary to my defence.” If present, Bligh would “have exculpated me from the least disrespect.”
In stark contrast to Peter’s extravagant defense, Michael Byrn took exactly four sentences to state his innocence. Born in Ireland, and now thirty-three, the Bounty’s fiddler was a slight man, slender built and standing five foot six, with pale short hair and pale skin. The adjective most used to describe him, by Bligh and mutineers alike, was “troublesome.” Later events would suggest a fondness for drink. Bligh himself seems to have been unsure of where Byrn had stood, sometimes giving him the benefit of the doubt by referring to him as one of four “deserving of Mercy being detained against their inclinations”; on the other hand, unlike Coleman, Norman and McIntosh, Byrn had been confined in irons for the entire voyage from the Dutch Indies along with those deemed mutineers.
Byrn had gone to sea as an able seaman at nineteen and had served on five naval ships before the Bounty. One of the judges of the court-martial was a former shipmate from his first voyage: in 1778, John Inglefield had been second lieutenant of the Robust (under Lord Hood’s brother). In a hazardous profession that left many scarred and maimed, Byrn had managed to come through fairly well, if his near blindness is excepted, bearing only one distinguishing mark—a scar on his neck from an old abscess. The fiddler appears to have been one of the few Bounty men who was not tattooed.
Read aloud by the Judge Advocate, Byrn’s defense was unexpectedly eloquent. Understated but with affecting details, it has a polish and tone that is detectable in some of the other defenses, and one is led to suspect a guiding hand—given the legal tone, Stephen Barney, William Muspratt’s lawyer, would be one obvious candidate: “It has pleased the Almighty, amongst the Events of his unsearchable Providence, nearly to deprive me of Sight, which often puts it out of my Power to carry the Intentions of my Mind into Execution,” the Judge Advocate read. The spectacle of the slight man making his way uncertainly to the witness stand served as a poignant accompaniment to these words.
“I make no Doubt but it appears to this Honorable Court that on the 28th. of April 1789 my Intention was, to quit His Majesty’s Ship the ‘Bounty’ with the Officers, and Men who went away, and that the sorrow I expressed at being detained was real and unfeigned.
“I do not know whether I may be able to ascertain the exact Words that were spoken on the Occasion,” he continued, “but some said, ‘We must not part with our Fidler,’ and Charles Churchill threatned to send me to the Shades, If I attempted to quit the Cutter, into which I had gone, for the Purpose of attending Lieut. Bligh.” As the mutiny had gathered its curious momentum, amid the taking up of cutlasses, Christian’s threats and Bligh’s defiant shouting, and the bullying of the armed mutineers, Byrn sat in the abandoned cutter crying out in confusion and fear. An entirely different boat, the larger launch, was being cranked out and he did not appear to know it.
“As to Byrn I do not know what he was crying,” William Cole had stated for the prosecution contemptuously. “I suppose for no other reason he was blind. . . .”
Byrn called upon a solitary witness for his examination. John Fryer, who had been in Byrn’s watch throughout the voyage, was asked to report upon his character, “making Allowance for my want of sight.”
“I have nothing to alledge against him,” Fryer told the court; “he behaved himself in every respect as a very good Man.”
As Fryer was led out, the court shifted in excited anticipation. James Morrison, the boatswain’s mate, was to be next. Sallow-skinned with long black hair, Morrison had already made a powerful impression upon the court. He had, as one watching officer recorded, “stood his own counsel, questioned all the evidences, and in a manner so arranged and pertinent that the spectators waited with impatience for his turn to call on them, and listened with attention and delight during the discussion.”
In Tahiti, Morrison had been the taio, or “particular friend,” of Poeno, the local chief of Ha’apape, and so a man of some importance. It was Morrison who had planned and supervised the construction of the Resolution. This little craft was much admired by naval men; the energy, resolution and skill required for such a feat admirably set Britons like Morrison apart from the dreamy “Indians” of Tahiti. In later years, Morrison’s reputation would be greatly aided by the sentimental belief that a man who could build his own boat could not be all bad.
On Tahiti, among other embellishments, Morrison had been tattooed with the Order of the Garter, which now, under the circumstances, suggested either a sardonic sense of humor, or some private and unfathomable twist of patriotism; like Fletcher Christian, George Stewart and Isaac Martin, Morrison also wore a star tattooed under his left breast.
In the great cabin of the Duke, Morrison had already revealed a lawyerly gift for driving a hard logical line of argument in his cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses. Now he presented the Judge Advocate with his own written defense—undoubtedly disappointing the waiting spectators, who would have preferred to hear the boatswain’s mate deliver this himself. Morrison had scattered his statement with emphatic underlined words and phrases, perhaps drawn for his own satisfaction, perhaps to ensure that Greetham delivered his words with the desirable force of expression: “Conscious of my own Innocence of evry Article of the Charge exhibited against me, and fully satisfied of my Zeal for His Majesty’s service,” Morrison began, with expected defiance and lack of apology, “I offer the following Narration, in Vindication of my Conduct on the 28th, day of April, 1789.
“I was the Boatswain’s Mate of His Majesty’s Ship ‘Bounty.’ ” On the night before the mutiny, Morrison had come on deck for his watch at eight and remained until midnight, taking the conn, or direction of the steering of the ship.
“There was little wind all the Watch, and we were then Near the Island of Tofoa.”
Relieved at midnight by John Norton, he had turned below and slept until daylight, when Cole woke him to tell him the ship was taken.
“I hope, Mr. Morrison, you have no
intention to join Christian’s party?” Cole asked.
“I answered him, ‘No, Sir, you may depend upon it, that I will not; for it is far from my intentions.’ ”
In its essential outline, Morrison’s account accorded with those already told. After speaking with Cole, he had hastened forward to the head, from where he had cautiously looked out to see the deck ringed with armed men. Bligh was standing between the guns guarded by Christian, who held a bayonet in one hand and had his other on Bligh’s shoulder.
Seeing for himself how things stood, Morrison went aft and again bumped into Cole, who asked him to help clear the cutter. After Purcell succeeded in obtaining the bigger launch, Morrison had turned his attention to clearing her. A hasty exchange with Fryer about attempting to retake the ship was interrupted by Quintal, who ordered Fryer back to his cabin. In the meantime, the launch had become so crowded with equipment and possessions “that those who were in her began to cry out that she would sink alongside if any more came into her.” From the deck, where he stood guarded, Bligh called out, “you can’t all go in the Boat, my lads don’t overload her, some of you must stay in the Ship.”
When, despite his pleas, Christian ordered Fryer into the boat, Morrison began “to reflect on my own Situation.” Like Heywood, he foresaw sure death if he joined the boat. Moreover, as he now told the court, he had witnessed “Mr. Fryer and Most of the Officers go into the boat without the least appearance of an effort to rescue the Ship.” He had been “heartily rejoiced” by Thomas Hayward’s hint “that he intended to knock Chal. Churchill down,” but when this intention fizzled out, he “gave over all hopes.” Morrison’s last act on behalf of his captain had been to hand into the boat some twenty-five pieces of pork and several gourds of water. Begging Christian for a musket for the men, he had been curtly refused, but had managed to obtain cutlasses, “two of which I handed in my self and Churchill bought the other two and said, ‘There, Captain Bligh! you don’t stand in Need of fire arms as you are Going among your friends,’ ” this last being a mocking reference to Bligh’s recent fraught dealings with the Friendly Islanders.
As the boat cast off, Morrison had heard Bligh “desire to speak to Mr. Christian but he gave Orders that no person should answer.”
This ended Morrison’s narration of events. The more important part of his defense—and that greatly looked forward to by the court spectators—still remained, the rebuttal of the specific charges made against him by Hayward and Hallett.
The first, and least serious, of these charges was Hayward’s claim that Morrison had looked “rejoiced,” not “depressed,” when he helped prepare the boat for Bligh. It was Morrison’s expression, Hayward told the court, that induced him to regard him as a mutineer.
“This Honorable Court knows that all men do not bear misfortunes with the same fortitude or equanimity of mind,” Morrison now countered, “and that the face is too often a bad index to the Heart.” Interestingly, he did not attempt to deny that he had worn a suspect expression on that day. Rather, as he told the court, he had deliberately dissembled “to deceive those, whose Act I abhorred, that I might be at liberty to seize the first Opportunity that might appear favourable, to the retaking of the Ship.” Bligh himself, Morrison pointed out, had allowed in his letter that he had erroneously thought “from the Carpenters sullen and ferocious aspect” that Purcell was a mutineer.
More damaging were the charges made by Hallett that Morrison had appeared at the taffrail under arms.
“Amidst such Crowd, Tumult, and Confusion might not the Arms in the hands of another wedged by my side easily be thought to be in my possession?” Morrison now asked passionately of the court. And why, if he had been a mutineer, would he have chosen to wield arms only after Bligh and his men “were placed in a helpless situation” and no use of arms was necessary? If after deliberation the members of the Honorable Court found “any doubts remain in their minds” respecting his innocence, Morrison reminded them that “it has always been Accounted the Glory of Justice in a doubtful Case to throw Mercy into the Ballance.”
Morrison turned to William Cole, the Bounty boatswain and his own immediate superior, to attempt to redress Hallett’s second damaging claim, that as the lumbered boat veered away, Morrison had called “in a jeering Manner, ‘If my friends enquire after me, tell them I am somewhere in the South Seas.’ ”
“Do you recollect,” Morrison now asked Cole, “hearing me make use of any sneering expressions—particularly over the Stern?”
“I heard him say that if anybody asked for him, to let them know that he was to the Southward of the Line or something to that Purport,” replied Cole, no doubt unexpectedly; clearly he was not going to be as cooperative in picking up hints from Morrison as he had been with Peter Heywood.
“Do you recollect that it was by the Clumsiness and Awkwardness of John Norton, that two or three Pieces of the Pork went overboard and that you damned his Clumsy Eyes, and shoved him away from receiving any more of it?” asked Morrison, furiously changing the subject.
“No, I do not remember it,” Cole replied, conceding, “I know three or four Pieces went overboard.” And when Morrison asked that his “Character at large” be told to the court, Cole had only compliments: “He was a Man of very good Character in the Ship; he was Boatswain’s Mate and steered the Captain he was attentive to his duty, and I never knew any harm of him in my life.”
Morrison’s last witness was William Purcell, who bluntly and briefly denied all that Hallett and Cole had said: he had never seen Morrison under arms, and he had never heard him use “jeering speeches.” Questioned by the court, Purcell elaborated. Yes, he had heard someone speak jeeringly from the stern, but he could not say who it had been. Like Cole and Fryer, Purcell gave Morrison a very good character, “diligent, and attentive.”
It would not appear that Morrison had effectively negated any of the most damaging charges against him; on the contrary, Cole had confirmed Hallett’s memory of his jeering speech. But the fact that a lowly boatswain’s mate had stood his ground with such consistent, unapologetic fearlessness made a favorable impression on the court.
“This ship appears to have abounded with men above the common herd of uninformed illiterates,” wrote the officer reporting on the trial, while singling out “the boatswain’s mate” for special commendation. Morrison’s clear, emphatic diction, his willingness to attack the most damaging charges head-on and his refusal to make maudlin appeals for mercy were impressive. The boatswain’s mate had addressed the superior officers who held his fate man to man—and this was admired.
Morrison’s highly ambiguous defense was followed by that of Charles Norman, carpenter’s mate, the third of the men generally held to be innocent. Just turned thirty-five, Norman had been baptized in the Holy Trinity Church at Gosport, across Portsmouth Harbour. From the boat that daily ferried him and his fellow prisoners between the Hector and the Duke, he was able to see his home; on calm, still nights he could hear the church’s bells. A Gosport baptism would suggest that his was a naval or seafaring family.
At five foot nine, tall and slender, Norman had light brown hair and fair skin pitted with the scars of smallpox. He had also, as Bligh had described, a “Remarkable Motion with his head and eyes,” suggestive of some kind of nervous tic.
Like Hayward and Hallett, Norman had shared Christian’s fateful watch. Sometime between five and six in the morning, Norman had been charged by Mr. Christian to “Coil up the Ropes on the quarter Deck.”
“When I had done I saw a large Shark alongside and call’d out, ‘There’s a Shark on the larboad quarter.’ ”
“Don’t make a noise,” Hayward said, while Hallett called out for a shark hook. Christian then reappeared and ordered Norman to “go aft and unship the Gangboard ready for Drawing water for washing Decks.” While Norman went aft, and Hayward and Hallett watched the shark, the mutiny took place. Norman saw Christian vanish down the fore hatchway and minutes later Churchill and four others arm
ed and “loading as they Came Aft.
“. . . [I]n about two Minutes after Christian Came aft with a Drawn Cutlass in his hand and follow’d them down the Hatchway. I was standing by the Larboard Gangway and I heard Captain Bligh Call out, ‘What’s the matter, What’s the matter, Murder!’ ”
From below, Churchill called out “in terrible threats” for a line to bind Bligh, and John Mills, gunner’s mate, complied. Shortly after, Bligh was led up by Christian and Churchill; the captain’s “hands were tied and he was in his Shirt without any Breeches or Trowsers.” In these humiliating conditions, Bligh was placed between the guns, where Christian assumed guard.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 32
