“We all thank God that you are safe,” Bligh was greeted; “we were told you were put into a little Boat & sent a drift without any thing to eat or drink, and that you must perish.”
Bligh soon had the new nursery under way, and the collection of breadfruit began again. The Providence and Assistant remained just over three months at this task, during which time Bligh resumed his earlier commentary on the customs and manners of the island. But whereas his log of the Bounty radiated curiosity and tireless discovery—and indeed, Bligh’s own happiness—the log of the Providence lacks the consistent zest of Bligh’s earlier record. He was tired and still unwell and the sheer novelty of the place had worn off.
Some of Bligh’s old energy was manifested in his reports of intelligence he received of Christian and the mutineers. Two months after his own departure, Bligh learned, the Bounty returned to Tahiti under Christian’s command, where it was greeted with astonishment by the islanders. It was at this time that Christian gave his story about how Bligh had met with Captain Cook in Whytootackee, where Cook planned to settle. The generous Tahitians, surprised but cooperative, had given Christian all he had asked for—hogs, chickens, plants and women—but not, as it turned out, without some misgivings. Months later, the Bounty was back again, and this time Christian appears not to have come ashore. With the majority of his men discontent and sensing a suspicious coolness on the part of the Tahitian chiefs, he had remained long enough only to drop off “16 of his Associates,” Bligh recorded in his log; he had originally written, and then crossed out, “16 of his Villains.” Similarly, his statement of “satisfaction and pleasure in hearing that all these Mutineers were taken by Captain Edwards” was a revision of his earlier noted pleasure “to hear of these Wretches all being taken.” Bligh was also to hear his own story; as he noted with some amazement, one woman had so perfectly learned it “that she told me of all the men who came into my Cabbin and assisted to tie my Hands.”
George Stewart, Thomas McIntosh and Richard Skinner had left daughters behind, Bligh learned, while Thomas Burkett and John Millward had left sons. No child of Peter Heywood was mentioned. Some of the mutineers’ children were now said to be dead, but eventually two were brought for Bligh to see. One of these was George Stewart’s daughter, a pretty child about a year old. Her mother had been poor Peggy, “the Woman that Stewart always kept on board the Bounty,” who had pined and died after Stewart was taken on the Pandora. Later, McIntosh’s wife, Mary, brought her daughter for Bligh to meet, a baby of about ten months old, “a fine little girl,” as Bligh noted.
A few other material relics of the mutineers’ lives survived. There was a big drum that Christian had brought from Tubuai. On the dreadful occasion of a human sacrifice, Bligh noted that the king’s maro, or ritual feather belt, was adorned with human hair “of a pretty auburn colour”; this, he learned, had once belonged to Richard Skinner, formerly the Bounty’s barber. Most significantly, Bligh had been able to contemplate the neat houses and cottage gardens laid and tended by Peter Heywood—“the Villain who assisted in taking the Bounty from me”—and his closest friend George Stewart.
“His House was at the foot of a Hill, the top of which gave him a fine lookout,” Bligh wrote; the lookout was that from which Peter had first seen the Pandora. “He had regulated his garden & the Avenue to his House with some taste.”
According to Mary McIntosh, her own husband, Coleman, Hilbrant, Norman, Byrn and Ellison “scarcely ever spoke of me without crying. Stewart & Haywood were perfectly satisfied with their situation, and so were the rest of them.”
“They deserved to be killed”; so thought Mary, but she “hoped those who had cried for me would not be hurt.” At the time of Bligh’s writing, in May 1792, Hilbrant had long since gone down in chains with the Pandora. The Gorgon was on her way to England with the captured mutineers, and young Ellison was shortly to be hanged.
Toward the end of June, as the breadfruit were successfully accumulated, Bligh was revisited with another attack of his malady.
“I have now no longer the power of bearing much fatigue,” he wrote in his log. “Many necessary duties however cause me to suffer a great deal & I am frequently overcome.” Once again, Lieutenant Portlock was obliged to step in. “Besides a constant Head Ach, I have frequently in the day a sinking at the pit of my stomach, then a dreadfull heat flies up into my Face, which all but a report seems to fly out at the top of my head, as if shot through me—a lowness & flurry of my spirits takes place.” This entire passage Bligh later deleted from his text; such complaints were not consistent with naval duty.
The Providence and Assistant departed Tahiti on July 19. In addition to 2,126 successfully transplanted and potted breadfruit, his ship also carried 508 “other” plants, one Tahitian passenger, one stowaway, and thirteen crew members from a shipwrecked British whaler, the Matilda. Perhaps the tension of preparing for departure had increased Bligh’s “nervous” affliction because, as he wrote in his log, his crippling headache was such that he could not “bear the sight of the sun.” Tynah and Iddeeah took leave of Bligh, and as Lieutenant Bond reported, their “real friendship with our commander” and sorrow at parting from him were deeply affecting. The loyal Tahitians promised Bligh that they would build him a house at Point Venus, so that he might return and live with them—later visitors would confirm that the islanders kept their word. But reeling under the blue Pacific skies, William Bligh had no thought of return and took final leave of the island he once described, of all places in the world, as harboring happiness “in the highest perfection.”
Bligh directed his ships toward and through the Fijis, taking the opportunity to fix more accurately discoveries he had made from the Bounty launch. Working in careful tandem with the admirable Lieutenant Portlock, Bligh noted and marked dozens of these small islands. Having completed the survey, the ships continued northwest, and by early September were at the entrance to the Endeavour Strait. Trusting the next perilous steps to no one, Bligh clambered up the masthead from where he conned his ship himself; he did not yet know of the Pandora’s fate in these waters. Several days later, an unpleasant encounter with hostile islanders resulted in a number of the ships’ party being wounded by arrows.
The navigation of the strait took nineteen days of careful, painstaking vigilance. Midshipman Matthew Flinders, destined to make the first circumnavigation of Australia, later wrote of this passage that “perhaps no space of 3½° in length presents more dangers.” Yet, as he noted—as had the Admiralty—“if a passage moderately free from danger were found ships might save five or six weeks of their usual route.” Although the West Indies merchants wanted their breadfruit, and Banks was all for a botanical endeavor of this kind, the Admiralty’s real interest—perhaps only real interest—in the breadfruit voyages was the opportunity they afforded for navigation of this unknown and dangerous passage, so strategically placed to the eastern trade routes and the New South Wales colony.
Through the strait and into the Indian Ocean, Bligh’s ships made for Coupang, which they reached on October 2. Ironically, Bligh was more gravely ill on this occasion than when he had arrived three years before in the Bounty’s launch. He immediately wrote to Betsy.
My ever Dear Love and my Dear Children,
I am happily arrived here—I anchored this day & found a Country ship bound to Batavia, by which I have this opportunity to tell you I am well, except a low nervous disease which I have had more or less since I left Tenariffe—I have gone through the most extreme dangers, but after all a gracious God has restored me to this place of safety.
He planned to stay no more than a week—this intention was much on his mind, for it was twice repeated in the letter—and he had only praise for Lieutenant Portlock and his men: “Portlock has been of great service to me & behaved very well, indeed every person has come up to my expectations. This is the last Voyage I will ever make if it pleases God to restore me safe to you,” Bligh suddenly exclaimed, and as once before in the Dutch
Indies, his yearning for home is achingly palpable:
I hope I shall live to see you & my Dear little girls.—Success I hope will crown my endeavors & that we shall at last be truly happy. . . . Next June, my Dear Dear Betsy I hope you will have me home to protect you myself—I love you dearer than ever a Woman was loved—You are, nor have not been a moment out of mind, Every joy and blessing attend you My Life, & bless my Dear Harriet my dear Mary, my Dear Betsy, My Dear Fanny, My Dear Jenny & my Dear little Ann. I send you all many Kisses on this paper & ever pray God to bless you—I will not say farewell to you now my Dear Betsy because I am homeward bound. I lose no time every happyness attend you My Dearest Life and ever remember me your best of Friends & most affectionate Husband.
Wm. Bligh.
At Coupang, Bligh and his company had learned of the fate of Captain Edwards and the wreck of the Pandora; that they had now brilliantly succeeded where others had miserably failed could only have underscored the deep satisfaction at attaining this landmark on the homeward run. They had survived all the usual vagaries of weather and storm at sea, armed attacks by hostile islanders and the most tortuous and difficult reef-scattered strait in the world.
The Providence and the Assistant arrived at St. Vincent, in the West Indies, on January 23, 1793. A mere week later, the ships departed for Port Royal, Jamaica; Captain Bligh was very anxious to return to England, as the St. Vincent botanist observed. Although hundreds of breadfruit had died en route, Bligh was able to deposit 544 plants at St. Vincent and 620 in various districts of Jamaica. A token gift of 50 plants, including 12 breadfruit, had been presented to the governor of St. Helena, during a brief call there. The remainder of plants, along with a tub of Otaheite soil, were destined for Banks and for Kew. For his pains, Captain Bligh received public dinners and encomia, memorials and tributes from various island assemblies and councils, as well as a hundred guineas’ worth of silver plate. Most remarkably, the Jamaican House of Assembly awarded as token of its thanks a gift of five hundred guineas to Lieutenant Portlock and one thousand guineas to William Bligh.
“[Y]ou have made a good man happy,” Banks wrote to a member of the assembly on learning of Bligh’s gift, “and a poor man comparatively rich.”
Bligh had intended to leave Jamaica at the beginning of April, but a mail packet bearing grim news changed his plans. The King of France had been executed and the French ambassador expelled from England—the British government had no intention of maintaining relations with regicides. British ships had been attacked and now the countries were at war. Wary of an attack on Port Royal, the authorities detained Bligh until mid-June, and it was not until early August that the Providence and Assistant entered the Thames. Under the drear skies of late summer, the ships made their way upriver past the bodies of executed men hanging in chains from gibbets, a barbaric spectacle that horrified their Tahitian passenger. On August 7, 1793—two years and four days since their departure—they reached Deptford, and Bligh was home.
A local newspaper gave an eyewitness report of the dispersion of Bligh’s men, commenting on the “cordial unanimity” of the officers and the “decency of conduct and the healthy and respectable appearance of the seamen, after so long and perilous a voyage.” This last in particular bespoke that “good order and discipline” had been observed.
“The high estimation in which Captain Bligh was deservedly held by the whole crew, was conspicuous to all present,” the paper noted. “He was cheered on quitting the ship to attend the Commissioner, and at the dock-gates the men drew up and repeated the parting acclamation.”
All had not been fair sailing on this hard, long, demanding voyage, as the papers of Bligh’s half nephew made abundantly clear. In a letter to his brother sent from St. Helena, which he implored be kept in the utmost secrecy, Lieutenant Bond had railed against Bligh, calling him a “Major Domo” whose elevated opinion of himself had been insupportable. “I don’t mean to depreciate his extensive knowledge as a seaman and nautical astronomer, but condemn that want of modesty, in self-estimation,” Bond had confidentially told his brother. Bligh’s imperious manner, he claimed, had made it impossible to take instruction from him.
“[N]otwithstanding his passion is partly to be attributed to a nervous fever, with which he had been attacked most of the voyage, the chief part of his conduct must have arisen from the fury of an ungovernable temper,” was Bond’s damning summation. Especially galling had been Bligh’s discouragement of Bond’s ambition to keep an extensive journal of the voyage, having declared that “[n]o person can do the duty of a 1st Lieut. who does more than write the day’s work of his publick Journal” or log. He had refused wholly to delegate any authority to his lieutenants; he, Bligh, had given the warrant officers their instructions directly, rather than trusting to the medium of his officers.
Bond’s report must be trusted, but it should be read along with the reminiscences of another lieutenant from this same voyage—reminiscences in fact addressed to Bond himself in later years. George Tobin was third lieutenant on the Providence, and his recollections, made twenty-four years after the voyage, reflect a mature appreciation of Bligh’s management, as opposed to the shredded vanity of a callow officer still nursing fresh wounds.
“I am sure, my dear Friend that in the Providence there was no settled System of Tyranny exercised by him likely to produce dissatisfaction,” Tobin observed of their former captain. “It was in those violent Tornados of temper when he lost himself, yet, when all, in his opinion, went right, when could a man be more placid and interesting. For myself I feel that I am indebted to him. It was the first ship in which I ever sailed as an Officer—I joined full of apprehension,—I soon thought he was not dissatisfied with me—it gave me encouragement and on the whole we journeyed smoothly on. Once or twice indeed I felt the Unbridled licence of his power of speech, yet never without soon receiving something like an emollient plaister to heal the wound.”
Bond’s position on the Providence was analogous to that held by Fletcher Christian on the Bounty. Both young men served as the officers immediately under Bligh, and both were the particular objects of his attention. The words Bligh had written of his mentoring relationship to Christian (and Heywood) could also have applied to Bond: “with much unwearied Zeal I instructed them, for I considered them very worth of every good I could render to them.”
It can be fairly said of Bligh that his great asset as a seaman was not only his unimpeachable professional skills, but his unshakable, complacent, immodest confidence in them. This confidence—the wellspring of his professional optimism, and indeed his courage—was what had enabled him successfully to command the Bounty launch on the most historic open-boat voyage yet made. This confidence in turn sprang from a relentless perfectionism, an unwavering and exacting adherence to the strictest letter of the laws of his duty. The gift of perfectionism and all that flowed from it was what Bligh sought to instill in his protégés. However, it may be that the very specialness of his relationship with these chosen young men was the weight that crushed them.
“Sir, your abuse is so bad that I cannot do my Duty with any Pleasure,” Fletcher Christian was reported to have complained to Bligh shortly before the mutiny. The master’s mate, as perhaps Lieutenant Bond, had not yet learned that duty was not intended to be pleasurable.
No other whiff of dissatisfaction with Bligh’s command of the Providence voyage was brought to light. This was especially striking in view of the fact that busy inquiries were later made of the Providence men by parties who placed a high premium on finding discredit. If Bond’s report is given credence, “unhappy” incidents—or, to use Tobin’s words, “passing squalls”—surely occurred, but a firewall of loyalty seems to have been erected around Bligh. Perhaps at voyage’s end, his men harbored more instructive memories than the miscellaneous slights they may have received: Captain Bligh, shaken with fever, reading the morning service, for example; or, ashen with the headache that made him feel the top of his skull had been blown off
by gunshot, conning his ship from the masthead under the Pacific sun he could no longer endure; or, for nineteen days, expertly navigating the treacherous waters of the Endeavour Strait. Perhaps, too, on those days of foul and stormy weather, as the Providence pitched and lurched on her two-year voyage to the end of the earth and back, her officers and men looked out upon the roiling seas and imagined what it would have been like to have made the same journey on starvation rations and in a very small boat.
For his part, Bligh was unstinting in his praise of his men. In letters to the Admiralty, as well as privately to Betsy, he indicated throughout the voyage that his company had “come up to expectations.” Now, on his return, he attempted to do his duty to them. Shortly after the ships had been paid off, Bligh presented the Admiralty with a list of officers who were “qualified and highly deserving of Promotion.” This included, first and foremost, Lieutenant Nathaniel Portlock, whose “vigilance upon every occasion” Bligh commended as deserving his “warmest recommendation.” Others in his honor roll included the master, the first officer of the marines, Surgeon Harwood (to whom Bligh felt “highly indebted”) and his young gentlemen. The warrant officers were “all of them good Men” and other of the lower officers “from their good conduct during the Voyage” he also recommended. Those serving on the Assistant were particularly deserving for bearing with so much cheerfulness “the fatigues of the Voyage increased by the smallness of the Vessel.” Such a list, one must imagine, had all gone well, would have concluded the voyage of the Bounty.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 38
