“I will by no means affirm, that I never heard Captain Bligh express himself in warm or hasty language, when the conduct of his officers or people has displeased him,” John Hallett would also declare, again on record. “[B]ut every seafaring gentleman must be convinced that situations frequently occur in a ship when the most mild officer will be driven, by the circumstances of the moment, to utter expressions which the strict standard of politeness will not warrant.” But he had never, he avowed, “heard Captain Bligh make use of such illiberal epithets and menaces” as Edward had attributed to him.
“I’m damned if I don’t sink you, you skulking son of a bitch; I mean to tow you until I work some buckets of tar out of the hawser”—thus another seasoned commander cheerfully reported his captain’s words on another, unrelated voyage. Commander James Gardner’s memoir of naval service on many ships, under many captains and lieutenants, encompasses exactly the same period of time as the Bounty voyage and its aftermath and so gives an excellent, straightforward touchstone for the kind of language commonly used at sea. With affectionate gusto Gardner recalled his various salty encounters: “The admiral, who had an eye like a hawk, would damn him up in heaps”; “No; damn my brains if you shall go,” from an “extremely passionate” commander; “you are a damned lubber . . . a blockhead”—this from Sir Roger Curtis, the Brunswick captain who had orchestrated the execution of the three mutineers; “I’ll hang the fellow”; “Where’s that little son of a bitch?”; “Go on the poop and be damned to you”; “such a rage that he swore he would flog the clerk and those who were under him.” One captain who “was a very good man at times, but often harsh and severe in his remarks,” had informed Gardner, who, as he confessed, had “never forgotten it,” that he would never be fit for anything but the boatswain’s storeroom.
There was, then, much about life at sea that did not translate well into the civilian world—principally, that naval language was more often than not spiced with profanity, and that officers and men commonly did not like their captains. Ironically, the single incident that would undoubtedly have struck a nerve with naval professionals confronted with the same testimony heard at the Crown and Sceptre was probably the last thing Edward was capable of imagining.
“Damn your blood, you have stolen my cocoa nuts,” Bligh had accused Christian.
“I was dry, I thought it of no consequence, I took one only,” Christian had plaintively replied, according to Edward.
Bligh’s own response to this episode, drafted in the third person after Edward’s publication, but never published, was unequivocal and unrepentant: “A heap of Cocoa Nutts were between the guns under the charge of the Officer of the Watch, with orders for no one to touch them untill the Ship was clear of the land, when they would be issued equally and considered highly refreshing, without which caution some would have & waste one half, & others would have none. In one Night (the first) the Officers permitted the whole within a score to be taken away. As this was evidently done through some design Captain Bligh ordered all the Cocoa Nutts to be replaced—The Officers of the Watch declared they were taken away by stelth—Here was a publick theft; a contumacy, & direct disobedience of orders.”
Bligh did not require so thorough an explanation. Under the inexorable rules that governed the hierarchy of command and conduct on board a ship in His Majesty’s naval service, the removal of a single coconut from the ship’s store, if forbidden by order of the superior officer, was a criminal act. And to Bligh’s charge that he—the officer of the watch, the acting lieutenant, the second-in-command—had contravened his commanding officer’s infrangible injunction, Christian had, in essence, replied, with pain and bewilderment in his voice—“but I was thirsty!”
Bligh appears to have read some version of Edward’s report in October 1793, not long after his return with the Providence, when Joseph Banks passed along a packet of papers he had received from Edward. This seems to have included a number of letters, notes on Bligh’s narrative, perhaps some preliminary report of Edward’s interviews—and a narrative by James Morrison. It also apparently contained a number of “news” items containing wildly erroneous reports, such as that the Providence had mutinied and taken the ship to Batavia, where Bligh had been delivered up a prisoner.
Such reports, Bligh told Banks, like the “low abuse contained in the Notes upon my Narrative are beneath my Notice.” From what he had already heard, the master, boatswain, carpenter and gunner had “made plain their own cowardice and baseness, and nothing would give me more pleasure,” he told Banks, “than to have the court martial published.” Bligh had had his own informants at the trial: John Hallett Sr. had reported to him that Fryer had been “checked by the Court for contradicting himself,” and an officer of the Duke had reported to Bligh’s brother-in-law that Lord Hood had in conversation “expressed the greatest antipathy” to the prevarications of some of the witnesses. Of the eventuality that the court-martial proceedings would be published, Bligh seemed complacently skeptical, noting that had “Mr. Christian found he was in the right in justifying his Brothers Character I suppose the World would have heard of it before this time in a fair & open Manner.” Events would shortly prove Bligh wrong.
Edward Christian’s was not the only new account of the Bounty story. James Morrison, he of the long black hair and imaginative tattoos, had also been hard at work on his own narrative. He had begun it on the Hector, at the same time that Peter had been employed in writing up his Otaheitean vocabulary; indeed, there is evidence that the two works had originally been intended for a single ambitious publication. Morrison’s “Journal” was a much expanded version of a shorter “Memorandum” that he had completed in October 1792, a 69-page ad hominem attack on Bligh composed while he was under threat of execution. The “Journal,” on the other hand, had a broader focus, and nearly half of this 382-page opus was concerned with Tahitian culture and customs, geography and natural history. Amply illustrating the uncommon abilities that had so impressed the court, the work is an extraordinary and valuable document of Tahitian life as it had been before the coming of the Europeans, and would never be again. The rest was devoted to the events of the Bounty, and it was on this part that outside attention was first riveted.
The chief advocate of Morrison’s work appears to have been the Reverend William Howell, who had attended the mutineers on the Hector. By late November 1792, following the mutineers’ trial and execution, Howell was in correspondence with an associate of Joseph Banks. His aim was to get the Morrison manuscript into Banks’s hand with the hope, ill concealed, that this would turn Banks against his protégé.
“It is very natural for Sir Joseph Banks not to think so unfavorably of Bligh as you or I may,” Howell wrote, in his almost childishly awkward script, “—there was a time when no one could have an higher opinion of an officer than I had of him—so many circumstances however have arrizen up against him attended with such striking marks of veracity that I have been compelled to change that idea of him into one of a very contrary nature.”
Howell’s correspondent was Molesworth Phillips, a man who had a number of connections with Bligh. Phillips had been the first lieutenant of marines on Cook’s third voyage and had been present at Cook’s death when his ill-commanded marines had fallen back in the panic of that crisis. Bligh’s own opinion of him can be gauged from some marginal notes he scrawled beside his name in a published account of that voyage: “This person . . . never was of any real service the whole Voyage, or did any thing but eat and sleep.” It was at the feet of Lieutenant Phillips and his panicked marines that Bligh lay blame for Cook’s death.
Morrison was getting along well with his “publication,” Howell reported to Phillips, and it would be “ready for the press in about six or seven weeks.” The narrative was to be a “very particular & diffuse account of the proceedings of Christian & party after the mutiny—with a very accurate discription of Taheite.” Nothing would be mentioned that might “tend to any disturbance or reflect on any
character.”
Morrison’s manuscript was at this time on the Isle of Wight, for reasons unknown; but some two and a half weeks later, Phillips himself was able to forward the entire, unedited work to Banks. Although there was another account that had been amply revised by “a clergyman,” Phillips allowed, he thought that Banks would prefer seeing the original “genuine unsophisticated story . . . in the mans own writing.” This was Phillips’s calculated method of ensuring that Banks read Morrison’s unedited, unbowdlerized criticism of Bligh.
Although Edward Christian had also been in correspondence with Morrison, surprisingly few of Morrison’s representations appeared in Edward’s report. Reflecting the different preoccupations of their respective social classes, Edward’s report was about character and damaged honor—and Morrison’s was about food.
Morrison’s criticisms of Bligh are strikingly specific: two cheeses had been found missing, and these were alleged to have been taken before the voyage by Bligh for his private use; after crossing the equator, Bligh had pumpkins served at short weight in lieu of bread; beef and pork seemed “light” and officers and men watched in helpless dismay as all the best pieces had been taken to the “cabbin” (as was in practice the prerogative of every commander); a sheep found dead on deck was served to the men; porridge allowance was so scant that brawls broke out in the galley, in one of which the cook suffered a broken rib. . . . More striking, most of these incidents were stated to have taken place on the outward voyage—Morrison was evidently unaware that letters sent home from the Cape by several Bounty men and officers tended to contradict his claims.
Some of the allegations were questioned even by Bligh’s critics. Was it really credible, as Morrison claimed, that Lieutenant Bligh had ordered the ship’s cooper to remove two cheeses from the Bounty while at Deptford, and then ordered seaman John Williams, another of his own crew, to ferry these up the Thames, and lug them ashore to his house in Wapping. As for serving the dead sheep, as Bligh pointed out, it was “a general rule on board of Ship, not to suffer any thing that died to be used by the Seamen, because they would always find means to kill any animal if they knew this Rule was not observed.” The cook had broken his rib after falling in the bad weather around the Horn, and so on.
Sitting at home in his cozy study in the autumn of 1793, William Bligh plowed through the considerable papers that Banks had provided. Based upon all he knew, it was difficult to take these productions with the seriousness that later events would show they deserved.
“Morrison’s accounts are made up of vile falsehoods which no body will dare to publish or sustain, that I will venture to say,” Bligh sputtered to Banks. “[My] Dear Sir, my unexpected return has been the effectual means of putting a stop to the malicious insinuations which I have been informed these People were frequently inserting in the Publick Prints.” Bligh was calming Banks’s fears. Of far greater concern to him was the fact that he had not yet received a new commission. After completing the Providence voyage with such success and against such odds, he had presumed he would be entitled “to the command of a Ship of some consequence”—so he had intended to tell Lord Chatham, had he been admitted.
Complacent in his knowledge that he had been scrupulous and unstinting in the performance of his duty, William Bligh did not trouble himself unduly with the complaints of disgruntled petty officers and pardoned mutineers. As he noted, charges had not been made until lawyers got involved. In any case, the rules of his profession were as fixed and sure as if engraved in granite, and he had obeyed the rules. One imagines Bligh reading the London Chronicle or the Times, while Betsy fussed around him in his parlor, shaking his head over Professor Christian’s ill-advised defense of his criminal brother. The implication that a mutiny had occurred because Fletcher Christian’s sensibilities had been wounded over the charge of stolen coconuts would have been laughable, had so much death and suffering not resulted. Christian had, after all, been nearly twenty-five at the time of the mutiny. Bligh was grimly entertained by Morrison’s account of Christian’s preparations for departure on his raft.
“ ‘That Christian . . . intended to go onshore 10 leagues from the land on a fair Plank with two staves for Paddles with a roasted Pig’ is too ridiculous,” Bligh scribbled as part of his running commentary on the proceedings.
It took Bligh some time to appreciate how powerful, tenacious and far-reaching were the interests of the various parties who now had stakes in the Bounty saga. By the summer of 1794, publication of Edward’s report was rumored to be near. That this was now being discussed in London outside naval circles is made clear by a diary entry of Joseph Farington, a member of the Royal Academy, a friend of Hallett’s father and an inveterate gossip. After breakfasting one morning with a mutual friend of his and Bligh’s, he confided that Captain Bligh was “fully prepared to answer any reflexions on his conduct which may be published by the friends of Christian,” adding, in words that have a Bligh-like ring, that indeed Bligh “wishes it may come to that issue.” The attacks on Bligh’s character “are partly to be imputed to Heywood and his connexions, as at present that young man though pardoned cannot have any promotion.”
While Edward’s battle was being waged for the honor of his family’s name, the Heywoods had more practical concerns. Peter had not after all been acquitted of the crime of mutiny; he had been found guilty and subsequently pardoned, an entirely different matter. And while he had so far enjoyed the eager patronage of so many of his relatives’ naval connections, this was not the same thing as advancing to lieutenancy and a proper career.
“Doubts I find, subsist in respect to the fitness, if not legality of advancing Heywood under his particular circumstances,” Lord Howe himself wrote during this same July to his friend Roger Curtis, the captain of the Brunswick.
In fact, Sir Roger was already at work on his friend’s behalf and it was he who took the trouble to consult “an eminent lawyer” on this point. This authority noted that a court-martial was empowered to offer three types of judgment: discretionary, capital and the inability to serve again in the navy. The court, having in this case prescribed death, was not empowered to serve any other judgment—and to this sentence of death, His Majesty had extended his royal pardon.
“I should myself clearly conceive,” the eminent lawyer had concluded, summarizing his argument, “that an offence attended with judgment of death, having been pardoned by his Majesty, the supposed offender is in this case, in the same situation as if no such judgment had ever been passed”—or indeed, as if no mutiny had ever happened.
The fact that Peter had been legally adjudged a mutineer was not the only complication in his bid for promotion. In addition to passing an examination, all candidates for lieutenant had to be at least nineteen years of age and have served a minimum of six years at sea, three of these as a midshipman. By the end of 1794, Peter had racked up less than two years’ service since his pardon. Previous to the Bounty, he had served precisely eleven months, one week and five days at sea. This total fell wide of the necessary mark.
But here, too, a way was found to ensure that Peter stayed on track to achieve his promotion around this impasse. In early January 1795, navy examiners certified that Peter Heywood had served on the Bounty from the day of his embarkation, August 27, 1787, until the day his court-martial ended, September 18, 1792; from October 23, 1790—the day following Bligh’s court-martial on the loss of the ship—young Peter was on record as having been promoted to midshipman. Thus Peter’s Bounty experience, under this reckoning, rounded out a satisfying five years, three weeks and one day—a period that covered the loss of his ship, his life on Tahiti and his imprisonment on the Pandora and the Hector. By contrast, the Bounty service of James Morrison, who had received the identical pardon as Peter, was officially noted as having commenced on the day he joined the ship, and ended on April 28, 1789, the day of the mutiny; the notations “Run” and “Mutineer” appear next to Morrison’s name. Peter’s application for promotion was accompa
nied by attestations to his “Sobriety and Diligence” from Captains Pasley, Sir Andrew Snape Douglas and Cloberry Christian, the last Fletcher’s relative. With this final, inconvenient hurdle overcome, Peter Heywood returned to what would be a respectable naval career. By contrast, nineteen months would pass between the return of the Providence in August 1793 and Captain Bligh’s subsequent commission.
That Peter had been successfully promoted in the face of stiff odds warned Bligh that his enemies wielded very considerable power. In any case, he had by this time been made to take seriously the charges leveled against him. Despite Bligh’s early skepticism, Edward had indeed published his report. This appeared toward the end of 1794, as an “Appendix” attached to a partial transcription of the court-martial proceedings, as prepared by Stephen Barney; the whole was entitled Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court-Martial held at Portsmouth, August [sic] 12, 1792, on Ten Persons Charged with Mutiny on Board His Majesty’s ship the Bounty: With an Appendix Containing a Full Account of the Real Causes and Circumstances of that Unhappy Transaction, the most material of which have hitherto been withheld from the Public.
Barney’s transcription included only the arguments for the prosecution, omitting all the arguments for the defense. Edward would later declare that he desired to publish the whole, but had not been able to obtain the Admiralty’s permission. Whether this was true or not, the incomplete version ensured that the public did not see representations made by certain of the defendants that, although winning sympathetic support in the emotionally charged courtroom, might not have held up to more dispassionate scrutiny.
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty Page 41
