The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

by Caroline Alexander

  The little band of mutineers had forged a successful settlement, with each Englishman building his own thatched house and tending his own garden, together with his wife. Good, rich soil and an abundance of fruit, coconut, fish and wild birds made it possible to build new lives from scratch. The breadfruit tree was found in abundance.

  The colony had prospered, although two of the mutineers died in the first two years, one of “sickness,” one by jumping off the towering rocks in a fit of insanity. Four or five years later, six of the seven remaining mutineers, including Fletcher Christian, were killed in the night by their “Otaheite servants,” who had risen against them. Only Alexander Smith had been left alive, although badly wounded. The widows of the mutineers then in turn killed their Tahitian kinsmen in revenge, and so Smith had been left with all the women, and their various offspring.

  This much came from Smith alone. As Captain Folger noted, it was peculiar, but all the children spoke only English and all the Tahitian widows only Tahitian. It was, then, obviously not possible to interview the women who had been eyewitnesses, if not participants, in the events Smith so dispassionately described.

  Before they parted, Smith gave Folger two generous and significant gifts: the Bounty’s Kendall chronometer and her azimuth compass, along with provisions and a length of mulberry bark cloth. Folger for his part presented Smith with a silk handkerchief, with which the mutineer seemed much pleased. Folger then departed, making his way back to the Topaz through the high, dangerous surf that protected the island from landfall, and continued on his sealing voyage.

  Before leaving Pitcairn’s, Folger asked Alexander Smith if he objected to having an account of his discovery published “in the papers,” and Smith said no—“he did not care for all the Navy of England cou’d never find him.” But in fact the story of the Bounty mutineers, which had evoked so much attention back in the old days, now received surprisingly little comment. Folger and his first mate made a report to a British lieutenant, Fitzmaurice, in Valparaíso, who in turn reported the discovery to his admiral, Sir William Sidney Smith, who passed the information on to the Admiralty.

  In this roundabout manner, the news reached England, eventually prompting mention in the London press. In early 1810, the Quarterly Review printed the whole of Fitzmaurice’s report, although not as an item of interest in itself, but only as a brief aside within a longer, unrelated article. “If this interesting relation rested solely on the faith that is due to Americans, with whom, we say it with regret, truth is not always considered as a moral obligation, we should hesitate in giving it this publicity,” the Review reported frostily to its Tory readers. The editors, however, had checked their facts, and independently ascertained that Alexander Smith did indeed appear on the Bounty muster, and it also appeared that “the Bounty was actually supplied with a time-piece made by Kendall.”

  In his report Lieutenant Fitzmaurice duly recorded Folger’s observation that the mutineers’ offspring all spoke English and had been educated “in a religious and moral way.” His report also made mention of a curious fact: the second mate of the Topaz asserted to him that “Christian the ringleader became insane shortly after their arrival on the island, and threw himself off the rocks into the sea.” Alexander Smith had of course told Folger that Christian had been killed in the uprising of the Otaheite “servants.” This discrepancy was reported without comment.

  More unexpected than the lukewarm reception of Folger’s news in the popular press was the apparent total lack of interest on the part of the Admiralty. Perhaps the war with France was too great a distraction, or the Pacific was simply too far away, or the fact that Americans had broken the story may have rendered it unappealing; perhaps the Bounty was a story that nobody in the Admiralty particularly wished to see revived.

  Whatever the reasons, the silence from the Admiralty was so profound that when six years later, in 1814, two British naval ships also chanced upon Pitcairn, they were completely ignorant of the events relating to the Topaz. Captain Sir Thomas Staines of the Briton accompanied by the Tagus under Captain Philip Pipon, coming from the Marquesas Islands, “fell in with an island where none is laid down in the Admiralty, or other charts”; evidently, the Admiralty had not seen fit to revise its sea maps.

  As the two ships approached the picturesque island, with its forested heights and severe crags, they, like Folger, were surprised to see evidence of habitation in the form of striking huts and houses “more neatly constructed than those on the Marquesas islands” and tidy plantations. When the ships were about two miles from shore, according to Pipon, “some natives were observed bringing down their canoes on their shoulders, dashing through the heavy surf” toward the ships. Like Folger and his crew, Captains Staines and Pipon were astonished when one of the natives hailed them in English with the cry “Won’t you heave us a rope, now?”

  The tall, young man of some twenty-four years who first climbed on board was Thursday October Christian; his companion, also a fine young man of about eighteen, was George Young, son of Edward Young who had been, with Christian, one of the only two officers among the nine Pitcairn mutineers. Evidently, at this second visit from their fathers’ world, the young men were bolder and willingly accepted an invitation to join the astonished company for a meal. The company’s astonishment was increased when one of the loincloth-clad visitors suddenly rose from the table “and placing his hands together in a posture of devotion, distinctly repeated, and in a pleasing tone and manner, ‘For what we are going to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful.’ ”

  With these words—or rather the report of these words that would eventually be read with avid and approving interest in England—the Pitcairn Islanders at last strode onto the stage of history. With the assistance of their young guides, Captains Staines and Pipon made their way toward the ironbound shore, where a murderous surf pounded the cliff face. Scrambling ashore with “difficulty and a good wetting,” they were led from the rocky beach up a steep, zigzagging trail that passed beneath trees of coconut and breadfruit to the island’s settlement. Here, on a small plateau stood a square of neat houses laid out around a lawn on which chickens ran, and which bore the appearance, in the eyes of the wistful Englishmen, of a village green. Surveying these relics of the mutineers’ domestic history, the two captains were much impressed by the neat arrangement of the “village” and its surpassing cleanliness, all betraying the “labour & ingenuity of European hands.” Alexander Smith’s house stood at one end of the square, facing that of Thursday October Christian, the two symbolizing the poles of authority around which the community revolved. This trim village also enjoyed a grand lookout over the Pacific, a point from which any chance ship might be observed.

  At the settlement the captains were met by the daughter of Alexander Smith, “arrayed in Nature’s simple garb, and wholly unadorned,” but, as Pipon later told his shipmates, “she was Beauty’s self and, needed not the aid of ornament.” This cautious beauty had been sent out as a spy to find out what might have brought the English ships. On being reassured that the men came alone and did not intend to apprehend her father, she led them to the patriarch himself. Thus Smith at last appeared, leading his wife, a very old, blind Tahitian woman, and introduced himself to the English captains as “John Adams.” This reversion to what was in fact his true, christened name was one of the many layers of truth that would be peeled away from Smith/Adams’s story over the coming years, as ship after ship came, went and made report to the outside world. Adams took the alias of Smith on joining the Bounty, enticed, one suspects, by the fact that her destination was as far from England as it was possible to travel; he may have been a deserter from another ship, or perhaps his reasons for wishing to escape detection were more personal.

  Captain Sir Thomas Staines, in his forties and with one arm lost in battle, and his colleague Captain Philip Pipon found much to admire as they strolled around the settlement. There was the island’s own rich bounty, the coconuts, wild birds and fruit, as w
ell as the produce garnered by the residents’ industry in their carefully tended fields. The captains admired the unconcealed joy the “poor people manifested, on seeing those whom they were pleased to consider their countrymen.” In Fletcher Christian’s son they had been happy “to trace in his benevolent countenance, all the features of an honest English face. . . . He is of course of brown cast, not however, with that mixture of red, so disgusting in the wild Indians,” Pipon recorded. Other Englishmen, as Pipon hardly needed reminding, had not found the Tahitian tincture so off-putting. Thursday October was now married “to a Woman much older than himself”; in fact, he had married Edward Young’s widow, a woman of his own mother’s generation.

  Above all else, the Englishmen admired Pitcairn’s young women—their “bashfulness that would do honour to the most virtuous nation,” their tall, robust forms, their regular, ivory teeth and most of all “the upper part” of their bodies, so frequently displayed whenever they laid aside the shawls that formed their only upper dress.

  “[I]t is not possible to behold finer forms,” Pipon observed delightedly. Venerable John Adams, the island patriarch, had complemented the young women’s native modesty by instilling in them “a proper sense of religion and morality.” According to Adams, since Christian’s death, “there had not been a single instance of any young woman proving unchaste; nor any attempt at seduction on the part of the men.” To the English captains wandering beneath the luxuriant trees among the bare-breasted virgins, it seemed they had entered a kind of paradise—a rich Eden with its own Adam, innocent of civilized wiles. Pitcairn had many of the attractions of Tahiti, enhanced by a recognizably English decency, the Book of Common Prayer and blushing modesty. Here, in short, a decent man might feel no shame in gawking at the island’s naked girls.

  The Englishmen’s admiration increased when on entering the houses they found feather beds on proper bedsteads, tables, chests all with neat cloth coverings. There were shutters at night, but no locks upon the doors, as the notion of theft did not exist among the pious colonists. In lieu of candles, a certain oily nut was burned for light. John Adams was not bashful about letting his visitors view his library, which “consisted of the books that belonged to Admiral Bligh.” Bligh had written his name on the title page of every volume, beneath which Fletcher Christian had inscribed his own signature.

  Adams was assured by the captains that the authorities in England were “perfectly ignorant of his existence,” and indeed it was he who informed them of the visit of the Topaz. Relaxing in his library, the old mutineer dropped his guard somewhat and chatted about the colony’s early history. His voluminous journal turned out to be a kind of landsman’s log more than a personal diary, containing only brief notations of each day’s principal events. From this, Staines and Pipon learned that one other ship had approached Pitcairn before the Topaz, in 1795. Adams elaborated on this event and in doing so contradicted his journal: three ships had arrived, he said, one in December 1795, one shortly after, and later still a third, which had come close enough to the island to see them and their houses. In later reports, he would say that one of these ships had actually sent a boat ashore, for the islanders had afterward seen evidence of its landing.

  The Bounty had arrived at Pitcairn on January 15, 1790, with the nine mutineers, eleven Otaheite women, one child, and six “black men,” by which was meant Otaheite men; the insistence on the men only being “black” while the women were “Otaheitian” is in itself striking. Despite the error of the island’s position on all the Bounty’s charts, Christian himself was certain they had found Pitcairn’s. The mutineers drove the ship into a creek against the spray-beaten cliffs, unloaded all they could carry, and then set her on fire. Adams’s account of this point of no return, the climactic and symbolic firing of the Bounty, would change over the years with different tellings. For now, to the English captains, he claimed that it was Fletcher Christian who had been responsible.

  Christian himself was never the same after the mutiny. He became, Adams said, sullen and morose and “having, by many acts of cruelty and inhumanity, brought on himself the hatred and detestation of his companions, he was shot by a black man whilst digging in his field, and almost instantly expired.” This had taken place less than a year after they were on the island. The black man was himself later assassinated, so justice had been served. Christian’s behavior had so alienated his people from him that divisive parties had formed, with feelings running very high and each seeking occasion to put the other to death. One act in particular had incurred the hatred of the black men: when Fletcher Christian’s wife died, he had then seized upon one of their wives, which had “exasperated them to a degree of madness.”

  As for old John Adams, the English captains were in agreement that on him the “welfare of the colony entirely depends.” It was he who had taught the Pitcairn Islanders the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. Other, somewhat contradictory information was given by the young men who had first romped through the treacherous surf to greet the ships. Their religion had been learned by Fletcher Christian’s order, they had reported, and “he likewise caused a prayer to be said every day at noon.”

  “And what is the prayer?” the young men were asked.

  “It is ‘I will arise and go to my Father, and say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy of being called thy son.’ ”

  Before Staines and Pipon left the island they asked Adams if he would wish to see his native land again, and to their surprise he said he would. Alone with the captains in his house when this bold ploy was discussed, Adams turned to summon his family for a consultation. Suddenly, it seemed the entire community was gathered outside his door.

  “Oh, do not, Sir, take from me my father: do not take away my best—my dearest friend,” Adams’s daughter had implored the captains, before breaking down entirely. The whole company was soon in tears. Adams’s daughter in particular was lovely in her tears, “for each seemed to add an additional charm.” With much feeling, Staines and Pipon assured their hosts that they had no intention to take the old man from his flock. And should he ever return to England, perhaps “his unremitting attention to the government and morals of this little colony” might win him his sovereign’s pardon.

  With regrets and brimming hearts, the captains bade farewell to the picturesque colony, and to the former able seaman of His Majesty’s service. Both Staines and Pipon wrote accounts of their remarkable discovery, as did their lieutenant of marines, John Shillibeer, who had remained on the ship. Following their return to England, a lengthy story appeared in the Naval Chronicle. Consisting of Captain Staines’s report filed from Valparaíso and largely paraphrasing Pipon’s more personal account, the editors of the Chronicle made discreet editorial cuts in the interest of good taste. Pipon’s observation that Christian’s death “[t]hus terminated the miserable existence of this deluded young man, whose connexions in Westmoreland were extremely respectable” was subtly revised to read simply that Christian was a man who “was neither deficient in talent, energy, nor connexions, and who might have risen in the service, and become an ornament to his profession.”

  A similar toning down was effected by the exclusion of a striking and key paragraph in which Pipon had described Christian’s actions on the death of his wife: “Christian’s wife had paid the debt of nature, & as we have every reason to suppose sensuality & a passion for the females of Otaheite chiefly instigated him to the rash step he had taken, so it is readily to be believed he would not live long on the island without a female companion.” The attachments of the mutineers to the women of Otaheite was of course the cause Bligh had ascribed to the mutiny.

  The editors of the Chronicle also took the opportunity to impress an important point upon their readers: Adams, that venerable and sage old patriarch, would one day also pay the debt of nature, and it was “exceedingly desirable, that the British nation should provide for such an event, by sending out, not an ignorant and idle miss
ionary, but some zealous and intelligent instructor.” For on Pitcairn’s Island “there are better materials to work upon than missionaries have yet been so fortunate as to meet with”—namely, men and women of English blood.

  This time, the discovery—or rediscovery—of Pitcairn and the fate of the Bounty mutineers incited wide interest. As with the story of the mutiny itself, back in 1790, this new chapter in the Bounty saga was quickly exploited in the theater. Pitcairn’s Island, “A new Melo Dramatic Ballet of Action,” opened in Drury Lane in April 1816; this distinguished theater had been managed for several seasons by the multitalented Aaron Graham.

  Snuggled expectantly in the grand auditorium, the London audience watched as the curtain rose to reveal the picturesque colony of maids and youths against the painted Pacific scenery. Entering from offstage and sporting a remarkable, long beard, Fletcher Christian suddenly appeared behind the footlights. The script describes his entrance: “he extends his arms in giving them a general Benediction.” Two ships appear:

  “With what Terror do I recognize the Ensigns of my Country,” Christian exclaims. As the English crew approach, dressed as captains and jolly tars, Christian departs into hiding, admonishing his people to show the visitors “the graves of the departed and let them think that my family lie buried there with my companions.” There is playful interaction between the sailors and the handsome children of the mutineers, and a midshipman chats up a native daughter. Later Christian reappears, disguised and pretending to be John Adams, to preside over various sporting games between his people and the sailors. Finally, the visitors return to their boats as tearful women cling to them, waving flowers and with hearty cries of “when we meet again!”