During the night, a shocking incident occurred: The provost-martial, serving as both “gaoler and hangman,” had come into the gun room and, within earshot of the prisoners, given his opinion that “[t]he young one’s a hardened dog!” Then, as the stunned officers and other guards watched, he pulled a nightcap out of his pocket, exclaiming, “Here is one; I have all three of their caps in my pocket”—these, nightcaps of mutineers of the Bounty, would make profitable souvenirs.
At nine in the morning of Monday, October 29, the gun was fired and the yellow flag raised to assemble for the executions. By ten, the Brunswick was ringed by boats from all the ships of the fleet, manned and armed. Leaving the gun room, the prisoners thanked Captain Curtis and the officers for the humane treatment they had received during their confinement. On deck, the ship’s company stood at attention in solemn columns, “the yard ropes stretched along in each man’s hand.” Just before eleven, the prisoners were led behind four clergymen through the ranks of men up to the fo’c’sle, where they stood facing the assembled company. The fine weather of their last evening had departed, and it was now clouded over with occasional rain.
Across the harbor, men, women and children thronged the shore and filled the shallow wherries in the water, straining for a view; although, as newspapers would report, the “number of spectators . . . was certainly great, yet many respectable inhabitants purposely left the town till the melancholy scene closed.”
Accounts of the last words of these now forlorn mutineers differed wildly. According to the Brunswick officer, Millward had stood upon the cathead and “addressed the ship’s company, confessed the errors they had been guilty of, acknowledged the justice of their sentence” and warned onlookers to avoid their ways. The speech “was nervous, strong, and eloquent, and delivered in an open and deliberate manner.” But, according to the popular press, the men had embraced one another repeatedly, “saying, ‘God bless you, God receive you in mercy;’ but persisted to the last moment of their existence, that they were totally innocent of the crime for which they were to suffer.” For this last half hour of their lives, the three men received their final offices—not from the Reverend Mr. Howell or any of the other naval chaplains, but from James Morrison, boatswain’s mate, who had remained to minister to his shipmates.
Bags had been placed over the heads of each man, and now nooses were placed around their necks. At 11:26, according to Curtis’s log, the gun was fired for execution, and the crews assigned to each prisoner’s rope pulled hard away. “Thomas Burkitt was Run up to the Starboard Fore Yard Arm, Milward and Ellison to the Larboard, and There Hung Agreeable to their Sentence,” Curtis logged.
For two hours the bodies of the executed men hung from the yards. The rain became heavy, then moderated. At half past one, the bodies were cut down and ferried across the water to Haslar Hospital, that imposing refuge for the naval sick and hurt. The Navy Board was billed seven shillings and sixpence for the cost of each interment. Young Ellison, it was noted in the hospital records, was a “Captain’s servant”—another mark of the special privilege he had thrown away.
The following Sunday, the Reverend Mr. Howell, in one of his infrequent appearances in his own chapel, preached a sermon on Hebrews 13:7: “Remember then which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God; whose faith follow.”
In the very wide coverage of these men’s deaths, several newspapers chose to comment on the fact that “the sufferings of the unhappy mutineers of the Bounty were greater than it could be imagined human nature is capable of bearing.” Their shipwreck and terrible confinement under Captain Edwards was cited, but it was also curiously reported that “[b]efore the mutiny took place, from the extreme length of the voyage, forty men were put on the allowance of twelve, and even that scanty pittance consisted of food condemned.” Where this extraordinary—and false—report originated cannot be known, but it is worth noting that it appears after Morrison’s acquittal. As a pardoned mutineer still in Portsmouth, it is likely that he would have been sought out by reporters.
Another point of special interest was flagged by the officer of the Brunswick, who noted that “[g]reat murmurs are also carefully breathed, and are assiduously promulged, on the pardon of the midshipman and boatswain’s mate: and, according to the vulgar notion, money bought their lives; and that the others fell sacrifices to their poverty.” It was perhaps no coincidence that a number of newspapers toward the end of September reported that Mr. Heywood was “an accomplished young gentleman, genteely connected, with a fortune of 30,000l. fallen to him since he has been in confinement,” a rumor that appears to be without any basis. These were dangerous sentiments to have bandied around, with the news of the massacres in France still coming in from across the Channel. The Brunswick officer raised the point only to shoot it down; his entire report, and most especially his desire to accurately depict the penitents’ heartening last words, was motivated, he said, by a desire to correct such vulgar notions.
This view was also shared by Captain Hamond, again the acting port commander in Hood’s absence, who noted in his official report to the Admiralty that “the criminals behaved with great penitence, and decency.” Parties from every ship in harbor and at Spithead had attended the execution, and as he noted, from the reports he had received, “the Example seems to have made a great Impression upon the Minds of all the Ships companies present.”
The execution over, Morrison returned to naval service. Muspratt was still awaiting the outcome of his petition. By early December he knew himself reprieved, and on February 11, 1793, he learned that he had also received His Majesty’s pardon. Deeply shaken by the executions, it was reported, he had “not since spoke a word to any person; nor can he by any means be prevailed on to do so.”
After traveling to the Isle of Man to be with his family, Peter too returned to naval service. Offers for midshipman positions came from a number of sympathetic captains, including Lord Hood himself, but Peter’s immediate decision was to opt for the Bellerophon under his uncle Pasley. This brief service was followed by a more prestigious position on the Queen Charlotte—the flagship of Lord Howe, brother-in-law to James Modyford Heywood, Vice Admiral of England and commander of the Channel fleet.
On these ships, Peter discovered, perhaps to his surprise, that he had become a figure of some glamour.
“Amongst the number of our new midshipmen is Mr. Haywood, a very fine young man—who was one of the mutineers in the Bounty,” a fellow middie wrote excitedly to his father. “[H]e speaks in great raptures of the poeple and climate at Otaheite and would be very much pleased to go back again to his wife and children whom he left there; it is a curious circumstance,” the young writer mused, “that his associates were hanged upon the same day by which they had promised to return if cleared by their country.”
JUDGMENT
Duty.
The backbone of honor.
When in 1794, under heavy fire in the campaign of the Glorious First of June, Admiral George Bowyer lost a leg and was carried to the cockpit for treatment, he had insisted that traditional protocol be observed and that those wounded before him be assisted first. Here, however, he was thwarted, for a sailor who had also lost his own leg swore vehemently that he “would not be dressed before the Admiral.” Duty ennobled both the fallen admiral and the common seaman.
In private life duty was the demarcation between honor and discredit, gentleman and scoundrel. In public life the stakes were even higher, and nowhere more so than in the British navy, where each campaign was scrutinized, each failure of duty actionable. Admiralty files are filled with records of courts-martial brought against one officer or another for some alleged dereliction of duty—and filled too with courts-martial that officers who felt their honor impugned petitioned to have called upon themselves to clear their names. Pamphlets issued by two of the Bounty court-martial judges—“The reply of Sir Roger Curtis, to the person who stiles himself A neglected naval officer”; “A Refutation of the In
correct Statements, and Unjust Insinuations . . . as far as the same refers to the conduct of Admiral Sir George Montagu, G.C.B.”—were among many similar publications produced by numerous officers to counteract charges that they had failed in some point of their duty. Such publications had even followed Cook’s voyages.
Duty was part of the cement that bound the British navy, the code of conduct that enabled the captain of a 90-gun man-of-war to stride his quarterdeck secure in the certainty that the officers and eight hundred men under his direction would perform when and as he required. Duty was what helped to form a loyal company out of a ship’s mixed complement of volunteers and impressed men, who, dragooned for the King’s service against their will, made up the majority of working seamen.
Duty was invoked at the outset of the most celebrated of all British naval battles. Leading the north column of ships of the line at the onset of the battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Nelson ordered a final rally of encouragement to be signaled to his fleet. Raised aloft flag by flag, his last message had been straightforwardly simple:
ENGLAND—EXPECTS—EVERY—MAN—WILL—DO—HIS—DUTY.
Hours later, the admiral lay mortally wounded.
“Thank God, I have done my duty” were Nelson’s last words.
William Bligh had done his duty.
The Providence, accompanied by her tender, the Assistant, had set sail from Spithead on August 3, 1791, with combined complements of 127 souls all told. Soon, Bligh’s log was recording the familiar bustle of cleaning, drying and airing of his ship, the lighting of fires, the ministrations of vinegar. Thrown badly, Bligh was back in the saddle; although battered, he remained unbowed. His orders were given with the same unqualified, uncompromising certitude with which he had commanded the Bounty.
“[M]y officers will become habituated to that attention which very few indeed are acquainted is necessary in these Voyages,” Bligh reported confidently to Banks. A good officer was made, not born. Others felt this imperious command very differently. According to the Providence’s first lieutenant Francis Godolphin Bond, who was also Bligh’s half nephew, Bligh’s orders were given hastily and in a manner so “devoid of feeling and tact” that he was soon smarting with resentment at his uncle. Bond was particularly incensed by Bligh’s insistence on supervising every aspect of his officers’ work.
But for all this show of undaunted leadership—demonstrating that despite a full-blown mutiny there was no chink in the armor of his command—Bligh was a very ill man. Four weeks out from Spithead, the Providence and Assistant rode at anchor under Tenerife, assailed by a strange parching heat that seemed exhaled from the mountainous land. A cricket had somehow found its way to the Providence, and on the nights of dreadful, windless calm its high, clear voice could be heard across the water on the Assistant.
“[A]t Night light Airs off the High land, heated as if they had passed through fire,” Bligh wrote in his log. “Myself most materially felt the effect; I was seized with a Violent Fever.” The raging fever and “most dreadful Head Ach” mounted alarmingly, driving him at times literally out of his mind; on occasion his illogical commands led his anxious men to fear for his sanity. Recognizing this, Bligh took the drastic precaution of relieving himself from command; the enormity of such a step could have been fully appreciated only by himself. Lieutenant Nathaniel Portlock, in command of the Assistant, was summoned to take over the Providence, while Lieutenant Bond was in turn dispatched to the tender. For the next weeks, Bligh lay in his cabin, dangerously ill; the precautions he had taken by this change of command, as he logged, had been done “while I had power to think” to ensure that the service of the ships “might go on with a greater certainty of success in case of my death.”
As the two vessels continued south toward the Cape of Good Hope, Bligh’s log kept a record of his health: “Myself very Ill”; “very Ill”; “I still continue very Ill.” Off Santiago, in the Cape Verde Islands, he dictated a letter to his wife:
“My dear Betsy, I beg you will not be alarmed at not seeing my own writing.” The handwriting was that of Surgeon Edward Harwood, who had advised him against attempting even a letter. Bligh was afflicted again with a dreadful headache so severe that the least noise “distracted” his brain, and orders were given to keep a profound silence on the ship; in his log Bligh noted how “wonderfully & kindly” this silence was preserved. His condition was “of a nervous kind,” Bligh told his wife, referring to the blinding headaches that deprived him “of reason,” the chills and shaking fever that prostrated him; in reality he was almost certainly suffering from a vicious bout of recurring malaria, caught two years ago in pestilential Batavia. Significantly, the two other Bounty men who sailed with the Providence, Lawrence Lebogue and Bligh’s servant, John Smith, also suffered from “Batavia” fever on the voyage.
“God bless you my Dear Love & my little angels,” Bligh had scrawled in his own hand as a footnote to the surgeon’s letter. His voyage was but five weeks out; his safe return home, if all went well, was nearly two years away.
Three weeks later, Bligh was sufficiently well to read the morning service for his company. However, Portlock, who had been a master’s mate on Captain Cook’s last voyage, remained de facto in command until mid-November, when the Providence and Assistant arrived at Table Bay. Here, Bligh was sufficiently recovered to write to the Admiralty: his voyage to date had been without incident, his two vessels were performing to his best expectation and his crew were in good health. But, as for Bligh himself, “I am yet very unwell,” he wrote in this brief report. With his familiar, indomitable optimism, he believed that the change of climate would soon “perfectly restore” him to his health. However, the sojourn at the Cape was to last some six weeks, two weeks longer than planned, and it was nearly Christmas before his expedition set forth again. Left behind at the Cape was John Smith, whose illness was too severe for him to continue.
Retracing his own steps, Bligh headed his ships for Van Diemen’s Land, where the Bounty had stopped for wood and water in August 1788. Arriving in early February 1792, under dark, low skies, Bligh had found many relics of his former visit. The saw-pit where wood had been billeted, and where William Purcell had caused Bligh his first serious confrontation with his officers, had filled only partly with debris over the years. Crops he had sowed for the betterment of this sparsely inhabited outpost remained, although of the numerous apple trees he had planted only one was thriving. More striking was the discovery of a piece of baize fabric dropped by one of the Bounty’s men, its red color “perfectly fresh” despite lying at the mercy of the elements.
Wary of his precarious health, Bligh took care to avoid the heavy, soaking dews that fell during fine nights. He did, however, make a short, taxing excursion to a rocky hill that was covered with small trees and overlooked the beach. He named it Nelson’s Hill, after the Bounty’s loyal gardener, now buried in Coupang.
The Providence and Assistant left Adventure Bay in late February for Tahiti, where they arrived six weeks later, on April, 9, 1792. Under boisterous weather, the ships rounded Dolphin Bank and worked into Matavai Bay, to anchor less than a mile from Point Venus, the site of the Bounty’s old nursery. Canoes soon appeared, and in one a native man was seen by Bligh’s quick eyes to be wearing a European shirt. This seemingly trivial detail proved to be a harbinger of great and tragic changes wrought in this paradise of the world. Few European ships—the Pandora, Vancouver’s Discovery and Chatham—along with the crew of a shipwrecked whaler, had touched at Tahiti since the departure of the Bounty, but already European contact had left more than venereal disease, which was rampant as before, and Bligh observed a new fondness among the islanders for liquor. A small arsenal of firearms, gleaned from various ships, was a proud and closely guarded treasure. While Bligh’s company remained in Tahiti, they were witness to the flares of regional strife that had always undermined island life, but these were deadlier now than ever before, thanks to the European guns, and as a result of such strife, Mata
vai was a deserted village. The handsome Tahitians were dressed in sailors’ ragged cast-offs and it was difficult to find, as Bligh noted with sadness, the gleaming white bark cloth that they had worn “with much ellegance.” Their very language had changed.
“Our country Men must have taken great pains to have taught them such vile blackguard expressions as are in the mouth of every Otaheitan,” Bligh wrote in his log. He had difficulty getting his friends “to speak their own language without mixing a jargon of English.” Among Bligh’s crew, it was not just the old hands but also those who had never before been to Tahiti who expressed disappointment. “Nothing was as delectable as described,” wrote the disillusioned Lieutenant Bond. Even the women did not pass universal muster. “Nothing like European beauty had been seen among the women,” he noted. Their famous seductive arts struck the men as being calculated for gain, rather than arising from any real affection.
Despite these disappointments, Bligh was heartened by the welcome he received from old friends. Iddeeah soon appeared, and Tynah, who was away, was quickly summoned; both now went by the name Pomare, a reference to the disease that had recently killed their daughter. “Nothing could exceed the joy of these People at seeing me,” Bligh wrote, and although he was still unwell his own spirits briefly soared.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 37
