Millward recounted, “[W]hen the Boat was Ordered to be Cast off I pull’d my Jacket off and threw it in to George Simpson, who was my Messmate, and with my prayers for their protection.” Since he was closely watched, this was all that he could do.
Having cited so many witnesses to his good intentions—Cole, Fryer, Burkett, Muspratt—Millward now called upon only Cole, asking the boatswain whether he recollected how Millward had told him of Fryer’s intention to retake the ship. To this forlorn hope, Cole now replied, “I don’t remember anything of it at all.”
Thus, at last, was the defense of the Bounty mutineers concluded. It was late in a long, emotionally exhausting day, and court was adjourned until nine the following morning. Accordingly, on Tuesday, September 18, the ten prisoners were carried one last time back to the Duke amid intermittent showers. Admitted to the court, they were asked if they “had anything more to offer to the Court in their Defences.” Only Peter Heywood responded, handing over no less than three attestations that his birth had indeed occurred on June 5, 1772, “between the hours of six and seven o’Clock in the Evening,” thereby confirming his claim at least of “youth” at the time of the mutiny. None of the other prisoners, it seems, offered a further word. The preceding night had apparently afforded no sober second thoughts—or perhaps no further hope.
The court was cleared, and the twelve post-captains remained to deliberate. Guilt or innocence had to be determined in the case of each and every one of the men before they would pronounce a judgment. The deliberations appear to have taken several hours, for it was not until half past one in the afternoon that the Duke hauled down the court-martial signal. By then the prisoners had been reconvened in the great cabin to receive their sentences. Humbly arrayed before their judges, the ten men heard Lord Hood pronounce their fates.
The Court, Lord Hood declared, had found “the Charges had been proved” against Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Thomas Ellison, Thomas Burkett, John Millward and William Muspratt, “and did adjudge them and each of them to suffer Death by being hanged by the Neck, on board such of His Majesty’s Ship or Ships of War, at such Time or Times and at such Place or Places” as should be directed.
But, “in Consideration of various Circumstances,” the Court did also “humbly and most earnestly recommend the said Peter Heywood and James Morrison to His Majesty’s Royal Mercy.”
The charges against Norman, Coleman, McIntosh and Byrn were found not proved, and the court “did adjudge them and each of them to be acquitted.” And with this, the condemned prisoners were conveyed one last time to the Hector.
SENTENCE
The news of Peter’s sentencing reached the Isle of Man six days later, on September 24. For a full week contrary weather had held the regular packets at Whitehaven and Liverpool, preventing all communication between the mainland and the island. The news was broken to the Heywood household on the Monday evening “by the son of one of their particular Friends,” who ran into the house and abruptly announced “that the Trial was over & all the prisoners condemned—but Peter recommended to Mercy.” The boy had heard the news from another man, who had just arrived from Liverpool by fishing boat, and who was at once summoned by the startled and frightened family. On arriving, the man reported that he read the news in a Liverpool newspaper—unfortunately, he had not thought to bring the paper with him.
Three more agonizing days passed before the anguished household received any further information, and this, when it at last came, amounted to a grim confirmation of their earlier intelligence. A letter arrived from James Heywood, the twenty-six-year-old brother of Nessy and Peter, sent from Liverpool along with a copy of the damning article; this account of the Bounty verdict had in fact been syndicated in newspapers across the country.
James, like Peter and their younger brother, Henry, had also commenced a naval career of sorts, although he does not appear to have pursued it with any particular energy. He was in Liverpool with Henry, who was just returned from the West Indies, and shortly due to sail again. James wrote Nessy that as she would undoubtedly wish to come to Portsmouth, he would await her arrival in Liverpool, so that they might travel down together.
“Our Friends will not let me go from hence,” Nessy wrote back despairingly. Unwilling to pin their faith on a single news item, friends and family were awaiting official word from the expected mail packet.
“We are in an Agony of Suspense—I can scarcely support my own misery, much less keep up poor Mama’s dejected spirits,” Nessy confided. All at home were in agreement “that there was not the smallest Danger,” Nessy reported, briefly rallying. Nonetheless, if there was the least apprehension for Peter’s life, she told her brother in a rush of terror, he should “go, for Heaven’s sake, to Portsmouth, without waiting for me.”
At midnight of the same day, the long awaited packet arrived across now calm seas with a backlog of mainland mail. Amid this flurry of correspondence were letters confirming the newspaper report; the trial was indeed over, the verdict was guilty, and Peter had been recommended to His Majesty’s mercy. And yet, bewilderingly, in the very same breath, the letter writers closest to the events all offered unfeigned, unqualified congratulations.
“I have the Happiness of telling you that the Court Martial is this Moment over, & that I think your Son’s Life is more safe now, than it was before his Trial,” wrote Mrs. Bertie to Peter’s mother on the very day the verdict was reached. “[A]s there was not sufficient proof of his Innocence, the Court cou’d not avoid condemning him: but he is so strongly recommended to Mercy, that I am desired to assure you, by those who are Judges, that his Life is safe.” Such judges would include obviously her own husband, Captain Albemarle Bertie. Mrs. Bertie was on her way, as she wrote, to see her father, the well-connected James Modyford Heywood.
The good news was even more unqualified in the letter from Aaron Graham, written “about half an hour” after the conclusion of the trial. Graham, discreet as always, had not presumed to write directly to Peter’s family, but had entrusted his letter to Dr. Patrick Scott, a Douglas physician and loyal friend of the Heywoods.
“Before I tell you what is the sentence I must inform you that his Life is safe,—notwithstanding it is at present at the Mercy of the King,” Graham began. “That any unnecessary Fears may not be productive of Misery to the Family I must add that the King’s Attorney Gen[era]l, who with Judge Ashurst attended the Trial, desired me to make myself perfectly easy, for that my Friend was as safe as if he had not been condemned.” Graham was writing to Scott, he said, so that the news would not be “improperly communicated to Mrs. or the Miss Heywoods whose Distresses first engaged me in the Business.”
The unfortunate sentence, for what it was worth, had been the result of “a Combination of Circumstances, Ill-Nature, & mistaken Friendship,” but “everybody who attended the Trial is perfectly satisfied in his own Mind, that he was hardly guilty in Appearance in Intention he was perfectly Innocent.”
Yet more remarkable was Graham’s matter-of-fact discussion of the appropriate course of action once Peter was free. He intended to write to Commander Pasley, he told Scott, and to “take his Advice about what is to be done when Mr. Heywood is released . . . my Intention is afterwards to take him to my House in Town, where I think he had better stay till one of the Family calls for him; for he will require a great Deal of Tender Management after all his Sufferings.”
This extraordinary discrepancy between the reactions of those who took the news at face value and those close to the events would continue right to the very bitter end of what Graham called “the Business.” And no one, it would appear, took the verdict at more solemn face value than Peter himself. Two days after the conclusion of the trial, Peter wrote Dr. Scott a long letter characterized alternately by naked fear and professed resignation.
“The Morning lowers—& all my Hope of worldly Joy is fled far from me!” Peter wrote in this letter from the Hector. “On Tuesday Morning the 18th Inst. the dreadful Sentence
of Death was pronounced upon me!” His letter would come as no shock, Peter ventured, as Aaron Graham had already conveyed his melancholy news. It would appear either that Graham had not shared his own sanguine expectations with the unhappy prisoner, or that Peter was not able to bring himself to believe them.
“I always like to be prepared for the Worst,” Peter would later tell Nessy, “for if the Worst does happen, ’tis then Nothing more than was expected.”
And expecting the worse, he had retreated to that spiritual sanctity he had sought during his more melancholy moments on Tahiti. The task at hand, he now told Dr. Scott, and would soon be telling one and all, was to prepare his soul.
“I bow my devoted Head, with that Fortitude, Chearfulness, & Resignation, which is the Duty of every Member of the Church of our blessed Saviour & Redeemer Christ Jesus! To him alone I now look up for Succour; in full Hope, that perhaps a few days more will open to the View of astonished & fearful Soul, his Kingdom of eternal & incomprehensible Bliss.” But, despite his sternest efforts, his fear and anger briefly, abruptly, surfaced.
“I have not been found guilty of the slightest Act of the detestable Crime of Mutiny,” Peter protested, breaking in on his own higher thoughts. “But—am doomed to die!—for not being active in my Endeavours to suppress it—Cou’d the Evidences who appeared on the Court Martial be tried, they would also suffer for the same & only Crime of which I have been guilty—But I am to be the Victim!” The memory of Hayward and Hallett’s tears of fear as they had been forced into the boat were bitterly vivid.
“But, so far from repining at my Fate—I receive it with a Dreadful kind of Joy, Composure, & Serenity of Mind!” Peter continued, collecting himself, “—well assured that it has pleased God to point me out, as a subject, thro’ which, some greatly useful, tho’ at present unsearchable, Intention of the Divine Attributes, may be carried into Execution, for the future Benefit of my Country.”
Carried away, he was working toward a great and improbable crescendo: “Then—why shou’d I repine at being made a Sacrifice for the Good of perhaps Thousands of my Fellow Creatures! forbid it Heaven! Why shou’d I be sorry to leave a World in which I have met with nothing but Misfortunes . . . ?”
It would appear that while for Peter the turn of events was devastating and unexpected, for Graham “the Business” was very much under control. Graham may have been relying on a two-pronged approach from the beginning. In the best of all worlds the strangely muted alibi that had been nudged from Cole would have done the trick, but failing this, a pardon could be counted on.
On September 22, the minutes of the court-martial were sent to the Admiralty in London. These, with the written verdict, were to accompany the court’s recommendation and to be sent together to the King, currently enjoying the last of his annual outing to Weymouth. Aaron Graham left for London the same day.
At this time too Peter screwed up his courage to write directly to Nessy with his doleful news; every person involved in “the Business” steered away from addressing poor Mrs. Heywood, who had all but collapsed with grief. To Dr. Scott, the trusted family friend, he had allowed himself to vent his fear and anger, along with expressions of resignation. But to his sister, Peter made a valiant, gallant effort to appear tranquil and at peace: “[C]onscious of having done my Duty to God & Man, I feel not one Moment’s anxiety on my own Account,” he assured her. But, as he imagined the effect of the news on his family, he briefly cracked, “Oh! my Sister—my Heart yearns, when I picture to myself the Affliction—indescribable! which this melancholy News must have caused in the Mind of my much honored Mother! But—let it be your peculiar Endeavour to watch o’er her Grief & mitigate her pain . . . we had only Hope then,” he recalled of the optimistic days immediately before the trial, “& have we not the same now? Certainly endeavour then my Love to cherish that Hope.”
Despite Peter’s heartfelt plea that she attend to their mother, it became impossible for Nessy to remain in Douglas. The erratic schedule of the mail packets was driving the household wild, and family and friends were now in agreement that Nessy should go to the mainland, so that at least one member of the family would be in a position to monitor events and be within call of Peter. Amid the flood of delayed mail was a letter from Aaron Graham repeating an offer to play host to Peter’s sister if she wished to come to London. This invitation Nessy now spontaneously accepted.
Consequently, only days later, on October 1, while the family was at breakfast, word was brought to the Heywood household that a fishing boat was set to sail from Douglas for Liverpool in half an hour. A glance out the window of the house showed that the weather was bad and the wind contrary; evidently the small boat was hoping to beat a coming storm. Fearful of being isolated once again, Nessy grabbed a few things and raced to the harbor.
The subsequent voyage in tempestuous winter seas was to take forty-nine hours of hard sailing in the face of the driving wind. For two nights, Nessy did not sleep. Wrapped in her plaid shawl, she huddled on the vessel’s bare planks and tried only to stave off the piercing, wet cold and the “villainous smells” of the fishing boat.
“[L]et me but be bless’d with chearing influence of Hope,” she wrote to her mother when she finally arrived in Liverpool, “and I have spirit to undertake any thing!” Soaked to the skin by the waves that had broken over her when her boat reached the mouth of the Mersey, Nessy stopped only long enough to meet up with her brother James and dine with family friends; young Henry had already sailed on his next voyage. The same evening, she and James departed by mail coach to London. The following day, as the coach changed horses at Coventry, she dashed off a quick note to her mother, noting that although she had not slept for three days she could “scarcely feel a sensation of Fatigue.”
Nessy and James arrived in London at six in the morning of October 5. At the coaching inn, she changed her clothes and took breakfast, and then dispatched her brother with her visiting card to Aaron Graham’s house. Within an hour, James returned in Graham’s coach accompanied by Graham himself, who warmly greeted Nessy. Shortly afterward, the coach deposited the exhausted siblings at Graham’s fine home on Great Russell Street.
Mrs. Graham and one of her two daughters were currently in the country. It is not clear at what point during Nessy’s stay Graham’s wife returned. The former Sarah Dawes, Mrs. Graham had pretensions of nobility, being a first cousin of Sir Henry Tempest, a roguish and dissolute baronet with whom both Grahams were very close. But of this lady of the house, Nessy had nothing to report in her frequent letters to the Isle of Man. Of Mr. Graham and his younger daughter, Maria, on the other hand, she could not say enough: “[H]e has a most prepossessing Countenance with Eyes in which are strongly pictured the sympathetic Worth & Goodness of his Heart,” she gushed to her mother. Maria was “a beautiful Girl about my own Size,” of fifteen or sixteen. Most impressive of all, Mr. Graham was full of reports of his conversations with Peter.
“I look upon him to be the most amiable young Man that can possibly exist”; so Mr. Graham had told her, Nessy reported proudly to her mother after a long and highly satisfactory discussion about Peter’s situation.
“But Sir may I really be sure it will be settled to our Satisfaction?” Nessy had implored Graham.
“You may indeed Ma’am depend upon it” had been the magistrate’s prompt and gratifying response. “[W]as not this charming?” Nessy concluded to her mother. Her own eyes were heavy with fatigue and it was now after teatime.
Two days later, James set out for Portsmouth. Once again, Nessy had been absolutely forbidden to see Peter: “Mr. Graham does not wish it,” Nessy allowed. But the day after her arrival, she wrote her beloved brother directly, telling him that she was in London and anxiously inquiring after how he was faring.
“[T]ell me for God’s sake how you are—if your Health shou’d suffer by the dreadful Evils you have borne with such exemplary Fortitude—but I will not—dare not give Way to the Idea of losing you!” poor Nessy almost wailed
. Peter’s surprised response came the next day, praising her “little Bravery of Spirit” in making the journey and reassuring her of his health—and imploring her “For Gods Sake” to let nothing prompt her to come to see him. To have Nessy’s exalted sentiments unleashed in the dark gun room before the other prisoners and awkward guards was a possibility not even to be imagined.
It was the evening of October 7, a Sunday, when one of the guards on the Hector informed Peter that a brother of his was waiting in the ward-room, and asked if he “would wish to see him?” Amazed, Peter found himself some minutes later before James. An officer gave the two brothers the privacy of his own cabin for what was Peter’s first sight of any member of his immediate family since he had taken leave of his father in the summer of 1787. The two embraced with great emotion, and James was incautious enough to let fall “some womanish Tears,” in Peter’s words, which he suppressed on receiving a “civil Check” from his younger brother. For an hour, the brothers were allowed to meet alone: “the Goodness of the Officers to him is beyond Expression,” James reported to Nessy. Spending the night in Portsmouth, he returned to the Hector the following day to enjoy a full eight hours with Peter: “when with me he is suffered to be without Irons.”
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 35
