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

by Caroline Alexander

  Barrow’s classic book was the beginning of the Bounty book industry. Following it was an account that further sentimentalized Heywood’s role, written by Diana, now Lady Belcher—Edward, the most violent and despised officer in the service, had been knighted. The piety of the Pitcairn Island community formed the greater part of Lady Belcher’s book, which pointed out, as had Barrow’s, that Peter’s Tahitian vocabulary, drawn up to while away the hours of imprisonment on the Hector, had “proved of great value to the missionaries” who were first sent to Otaheite.

  Published in 1870, over eighty years after the events, Lady Belcher’s book, The Mutineers of the Bounty and their Descendants . . . , together with Barrow’s, cemented the many falsehoods that had insinuated their way into the narrative up to this point: Bligh met the Heywoods at their ancestral home, “the Nunnery” (in fact, sold for debts in the year of Peter’s birth), and wrote to “Deemster Heywood” to offer his son a position on the Bounty; Hayward and Hallett, the loyalists, were asleep on their watch and so the passive cause of the mutiny; Bligh knew that Heywood had been “kept below” from joining him in the boat, and by omitting this fact from his own narrative deliberately jeopardized the boy’s life; the reason Heywood, with Stewart, had been kept below was that the mutineers had thought that if they were allowed to leave “there would be no one capable of navigating the ship in the event of any thing happening to Christian.” Christian had spent the last hours before the Bounty’s final departure from Tahiti in soulful conversation with Peter and George Stewart “at the house of a worthy chief”; as “the day began to dawn,” Christian prepared for departure and Peter and Stewart accompanied him to the beach. “You are both innocent,” the mutineer told the young men as the sun rose over the sand, “no harm can come to you, for you took no part in the mutiny,” and he confided to Peter a secret message for Christian’s family that would “extenuate” his crime. In reality, of course, as Edward Christian’s inquiry had determined, Christian had never come ashore during the Bounty’s last, fleeting visit, but had secretly cut the ship’s cable and left in the night. One detail alone allegedly conveyed by Christian might well have been true. On the night before the mutiny, he had gone to bed “about half-past three in the morning, feeling very unwell,” and when Stewart woke him half an hour later for his watch, “his brain seemed on fire.” This was consistent with the report that he had been drinking.

  It was also from Heywood, by way of John Barrow’s book, that there arose one of the most tenacious and intriguing of the Bounty legends. “About the years 1808 and 1809,” Barrow wrote,

  a very general opinion was prevalent in the neighborhood of the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, that Christian was in that part of the country, and made frequent private visit to an aunt who was living there. Being the near relative of Mr. Christian Curwen, long member of Parliament for Carlisle, and himself a native, he was well known in the neighborhood. This, however, might be passed over as mere gossip, had not another circumstance happened just about the same time, for the truth of which the Editor does not hesitate to avouch.

  In Fore Street, Plymouth Dock, Captain Heywood found himself one day walking behind a man, whose shape had so much the appearance of Christian’s, that he involuntarily quickened his pace. Both were walking very fast, and the rapid steps behind him having roused the stranger’s attention, he suddenly turned his face, looked at Heywood, and immediately ran off. But the face was as much like Christian’s as the back, and Heywood, exceedingly excited, ran also. Both ran as fast as they were able, but the stranger had the advantage, and, after making several short turns, disappeared.

  Heywood, said Barrow, thought about making further inquiry, “but on recollection of the pain and trouble such a discovery must occasion him, he considered it more prudent to let the matter drop; but the circumstances was frequently called to his memory for the remainder of his life.” Barrow was himself from the Lake District, so his knowledge of this local “gossip” may have been firsthand.

  The rumor that Fletcher Christian had not died on Pitcairn was not new, although Heywood’s story gave it compelling credibility. As Barrow and others had pointed out, John Adams had never given a consistent report of the manner in which Christian had died: what was he hiding? That ships found Pitcairn before the Topaz was evident from Adams’s own journal, which had recorded both sightings and an actual landing of several strange vessels. Whalers’ logs indicate how close they came to this island, so strategically situated between the great whaling fields of the Pacific, and American ships in particular might have been sympathetic to a British mutineer. A passage back to England by way of China, where the sealers plied their trade, the East Indies or even America was not out of the question. There was also the mysterious fact that the ducats and Spanish dollars that the Admiralty had given Bligh were never found; surely, the mutineers had not let them vanish with the ship? And while nails, notebooks, furniture and clothes from the Bounty surfaced on Pitcairn over the years, of this hard currency there has never been a glimpse.

  As early as 1796, an account of the mutineer’s later adventures purportedly written by Fletcher Christian had been circulating around London. In this pamphlet, “Christian” had described his travels and eventual shipwreck off the coast of South America while rescuing “Don Henrique, Major General of the Kingdom of Chili,” an act of courage that resulted, as one review stated, in Christian’s “present lucrative establishment under the Spanish Government in South America.”

  “[I]s it possible that Wretch can be at Cadiz?” Bligh wrote to Banks in steaming outrage, “and that he has intercourse with his Brother, that six-penny Professor, who has more Law about him than honor—My Dear Sir, I can only say that I heartily dispise the praise of any of the family of Christian and I hope & trust yet that the Mutineer will meet with his deserts.”

  The Christians, as it turned out, were as alarmed as Bligh about this representation; the last thing they desired was a colorful rumor floating about that would keep this family shame alive. None other than William Wordsworth loyally took up his pen in their cause to repudiate the pamphlet. In a letter to The Weekly Entertainer—the only letter he ever deigned to write to a newspaper under his own name—Wordsworth informed the editors “that I have the best authority for saying that this publication is spurious.” Far from putting the rumor to rest, however, Wordsworth’s letter only fueled further speculation. While its most sensible interpretation was that through his own wide literary connections Wordsworth knew the wag responsible for this hoax, conspiracy theorists saw it differently: what had he meant by “the best authority”? That the Christian family had told him the truth—namely, that Fletcher was in England?

  One of the more intriguing questions that Edward Christian had put to the Bounty survivors was revealed by Lawrence Lebogue: “Mr. Christian asked me if I thought Captain Bligh could hurt his brother, if he ever came home.” Lebogue’s astonishingly misinformed answer—“I said Captain Bligh had such a forgiving temper, that I did not think he would”—is of less importance than the evidence that the Christians had at least contemplated Fletcher’s homecoming.

  That the rumors of Christian’s return just happened to be in circulation precisely around the time of the Topaz’s discovery—“about the years 1808 and 1809,” according to Barrow—was surely no coincidence. Although the Admiralty had not seen fit to act upon or broadcast the news it had received from the American sealer, Peter Heywood had been informed of it at the time. The discovery, he would recall, “naturally interested me much when I first heard of it in 1809, at the Admiralty.” The story had also seen light of day in the press and probably incited much excited gossip. At least one other spurious publication appeared around this time, Statements of the Loss of His Majesty’s New Ship The Bounty . . . As Communicated by Lieutenant Christian, the Ring-leader to a Relation in England. Very likely, the report that Fletcher Christian’s island had been discovered with one of the mutineers still alive had metamorphosed in t
he course of its transmission from London to the Lake District into something more suggestive.

  For poor Heywood, securely a post-captain with the Bounty, as he thought, far behind him, the news from the Topaz must have aroused a host of troubled, guilty thoughts. What else had John Adams told the visitors? Deep in thought, hastening along Plymouth Dock where the busy traffic brought ships from all over the world, Peter may very well have conjured his friend of old, Fletcher Christian.

  Less easy to rationalize, however, although also written in this critical period of 1809, was another series of letters that came from a far less susceptible source. Away up in the Lakes, Robert Southey, future poet laureate, kept a lively correspondence with his many friends and associates. Southey was many things—a prolific wordsmith, an outpourer of often wholly unreadable masses of verse, biographer of Nelson, brother-in-law of Coleridge, friend of Wordsworth, and originator of the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. His lifelong friend and most faithful correspondent was Grosvenor Charles Bedford, a resident of Brixton, and to him, in October 1809, Southey casually dropped an electrifying piece of information. In a recent review of “South Sea Missions” published in the Quarterly Review, Southey had made reference to “the notorious Capt. Bligh.” Bedford had queried his friend on this remark and Southey made reply: “I called Captain Bligh notorious as the only way in which I could imply that he was a thorough rascal,” Southey explained, adding a weak pun about missionaries and Christians.

  “I know a great deal of that affair of the Bounty from James Losh,” he continued. Losh had been on Edward Christian’s committee of inquiry; he was the radical who had been in France, and it was he who had made the veiled reference in his diary to the Bounty: “I explained the real state of a Christian’s mutiny.” One of the men present and “much struck” at this conversation of 1798 had been Robert Southey.

  “I know too,” said Southey, “or have every reason to believe that Fletcher C. was within these few years in England and at his fathers house—an interesting circumstance in such a history, and one which I hardly ought to mention—so do not you let it get abroad. For tho the Admiralty would be very sorry to hang him, some rascal or other would gladly enough apprehend him for the price of blood, and hung of course he would be, but if every man had his due Bligh would have had the halter instead of the poor fellows who we brought from Taheite. Is not that a sad story of Stewart and the Taheitian Girl? . . .”

  Bedford does not appear to have cared much about the revelation that the Admiralty would be sorry to hang Christian—one reason, perhaps, for their remarkable lack of action on learning the Topaz’s news—but was eager for details of his appearance in England, with which Southey, a week later, obliged:

  “I will tell you all I know concerning poor F.C.,” he wrote to his friend.

  F. is a native of this country. One of our country gentlemen (a very remarkable and strong headed man) who was his schoolfellow and knows his person as well as you know mine told me, that about five or six years ago, as he was walking near his own house with his daughter, he saw two Gentlemen riding towards him, and recognized one of them time enough to say to his daughter—look at this man—it is F.C.—and also to consider that it would be better not to speak to him—which he was on the point of doing. There was a dog with the horsemen, and presently afterwards some boys came along who had picked up a collar, bearing the name of F.C.’s father. My friend had no doubt before of his identity, and this was a confirmation of the fact. What is become of him since God knows. . . .

  Fletcher Christian: aged twenty-three at the time the Bounty sailed, tall, dark-skinned and with long brown hair. Strong made, and now covered with exotic tattoos; a gentleman, genteelly connected.

  “[I]t was very easy to make one’s self beloved and respected on board a ship,” Fletcher was said to have told his family, after his return from India on the Eurydice. “[O]ne had only to be always ready to obey one’s superior officers, and to be kind to the common men, unless there was occasion for severity, and if you are severe when there is a just occasion, they will not like you the worse for it.”

  “Fletcher when a Boy was slow to be moved,” his brother Charles had observed, in anguished incomprehension, on learning of the mutiny. He remembered his younger brother “full of professional Ambition and of Hope.” Baring his arm at their final meeting, Fletcher had delightedly amazed the other with his brawniness.

  “This,” said the future mutineer, “has been acquired by hard labour.” He said “I delight to set the Men an Example. I not only can do every part of a common Sailor’s Duty, but am upon a par with a principal part of the Officers.” This was to be the last time Charles saw his brother; they had parted in stormy weather, Charles back to the Middlesex, Fletcher to the Bounty.

  What caused the mutiny on the Bounty? The seductions of Tahiti, Bligh’s harsh tongue—perhaps. But more compellingly, a night of drinking and a proud man’s pride, a low moment on one gray dawn, a momentary and fatal slip in a gentleman’s code of discipline—and then the rush of consequences to be lived out for a lifetime. As Edward Christian wrote at the conclusion of his Appendix, had his brother “perhaps been absent from the Bounty a single day, or one ill-fated hour,” the story might have turned out very differently. How tempting, then, to imagine him safe returned to his native land, wandering the woods and byways of the wild north country. Later tradition would have him working as a smuggler, just over the Scottish border, but known “by the authority of his family,” as one Scottish newspaper reported, to have died in 1804. By this account, Fletcher Christian lived to the middle age of forty.

  Charles Christian died in 1822, aged sixty. He had spent some of the intervening years working as a surgeon on a slave ship that had traveled to the Guinea coast and West Indies. He returned to live with his mother on the Isle of Man, a damaged, if not broken man, as the tenor of his writing suggests. His and Fletcher’s mother predeceased him by nearly four years. Their personal effects were sold at auction a month after Charles’s death.

  The following year, 1823, also saw the death of the last member of this perplexing family. Edward Christian had married, but had no children, and settled in Hoddesdon, outside London, from where he ran his variegated careers as professor of common law at Downing College, Cambridge, and chief justice of Ely. He died, as his sly cousin Lord Ellenborough remarked, “in the full vigour of his incapacity.” Among possessions handed down to his wife’s relatives was “a strange native hat” from Pitcairn Island. Like his brother Charles, but very strangely for a lawyer, Edward did not leave a will.

  Following the court-martial, William Cole had enjoyed what must have been a relatively comfortable ten-year stint on a single ship, Irresistible, with two of his sons doing duty as his “servants.” He was admitted to his pension in 1805; if he was indeed the William Cole who died at Greenwich, then he had a good long run at his retirement.

  William Purcell went out to the West Indies after the court-martial; eventually, he would serve in fourteen more ships before retirement. Sometime after 1800, he married Hannah Maria Mayo, a widow. Purcell died in 1834, after having “shown symptoms of derangement,” in Haslar Hospital, across the water from Portsmouth. His death was thought to warrant a notice in the Gentlemen’s Magazine, in which he was referred to as “the last surviving officer of the Bounty, and one of those turned adrift in an open boat on the Pacific ocean.” Touchingly, his wife’s grave-stone also commemorated this event, referring to Mrs. Purcell as the relict of one who had been “an adherent of Captain Bligh’s.”

  Purcell was indeed the last of the officers to die, but the last survivors who had sailed on the Bounty were still alive on Pitcairn. Mauatua—Maimiti, Mainmast, “Isabella”—the widow of Fletcher Christian, was to die in 1841, at a very advanced age. White-haired but still mentally alert, she had “frequently said she remembered Captain Cook arriving at Tahiti,” as the Pitcairn Island register recorded. She had, then, seen it all, from the long-ago age of discov
ery when the white men descended on her island, through the death—or departure—of her famous husband. She was attended by Teraura, the widow of both Edward Young and, spanning two generations, Fletcher’s son, Thursday October Christian. Teraura died in 1850.

  Bligh himself did not live long enough to see the end of his own story. He had known himself to be “notorious,” and read countless cruel summations of his character that appeared unchecked in every variety of literature. Doubtless he knew he was said to have pushed “the discipline of the service to which he belonged, . . . to its extreme verge . . . goaded into a mutiny a crew of noble-minded fellows, the greater part of whom it has been since discovered, pined away their existence on a desolate island.” In the final telling, he “was an unfeeling tyrant, and induced the mutiny by his harshness and cruelty.” Over the years, Bligh’s “cruelty” would be made brutally physical; a comparison was even made between the necessary atrocities committed by the French revolutionaries and the deeds of the mutineers; “we will merely draw a parallel by observing . . . the excessive folly and tyranny of her government.” Lieutenant Bligh, who had hoped to complete the Bounty voyage without a single flogging, would be transformed into “Captain Bligh of the Bounty,” a sadistic bully who bloodied his men with the lash.