To Owen Rutter. Over the last 230-odd years this incredible
story has had many enthusiasts gathering materials, doing
research, trying to work out exactly what happened.
None, however, were more dedicated, tenacious or
infectiously obsessed than the English historian Owen
Rutter and a hundred years later, I salute his work.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
List of Maps
Introduction
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
One In the Beginning
Two On Their Way
Three On the Horn of a Dilemma
Four Land Ho!
Five Paradise Found
Six The Mood Turns Mutinous
Seven Mutiny on the Bounty
Eight Adrift on the High Seas
Nine ‘All Around the Rugged Rocks, the Ragged Rascal Ran …’
Ten Hard Times, Changing Climes
Eleven Return to the Promised Land
Twelve Batavia Bound
Thirteen What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailors?
Fourteen Pitcairn
Fifteen Opening Pandora’s Box
Sixteen Trials and Tribulations
Seventeen Before the Court of the People
Eighteen Pitcairn – A Reckoning of Accounts
Epilogue
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
Picture Section
Copyright
LIST OF MAPS
First voyage of Captain James Cook, 1768–1771
Second voyage of Captain James Cook, 1772–1775
Third voyage of Captain James Cook, 1776–1780
Isle of Wight and Portsmouth Harbour
Route of the Bounty from England to Tahiti, 1787–1788
Bligh’s visit to Adventure Bay with Cook in January 1777
Matavai Bay coastline
Tahiti chiefdoms of 1780s
Islands of the South Central Pacific
Places named by Bligh on the coast of New Holland
Voyage of the Bounty’s Launch
Bounty at Tubuai
Bligh’s route, June to October 1789
Track of the Bounty after the Mutiny
Pitcairn Island
HMS Pandora’s voyage in search of mutineers, March to August 1791
England: Peter Heywood’s family waiting to hear news
There never was a mutiny of the Bounty. Rather there was a revolt of one man against another, Christian against Bligh …1
Glynn Christian, author of Fragile Paradise,
direct descendant of Fletcher Christian
Awake, Bold Bligh! The foe is at the gate! Awake Bold Bligh! Alas! it is too late!2
Lord Byron, ‘The Island’
INTRODUCTION
It was at a fabulous 60th birthday party in Melbourne, a couple of years ago. Our hostess had placed Lisa and me next to the wonderful acting couple, Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burstall. Over the entrée, Tom raised the story that had long fascinated him, the one he had been gathering material on for 20 years, and had long thought could be the perfect film – Mutiny on the Bounty. He was insisting it was the perfect book for me, a killer story, which had not yet been done in the fashion I do my historical stuff, making it live and breathe like a novel, but backing it with footnoted fact.
I knew very little about it – not much more than Fletcher Christian rising against Captain William Bligh, before the former reached Pitcairn Island, and the latter returned to England – and was half-interested, at first. But as Tom continued to paint a picture, the contours of the tale, the staggering sexual freedoms of Tahiti, the brilliance of Bligh as a navigator, his bastardry as a Captain, his amazing feat of endurance after the Mutiny occurred; the courage of Fletcher Christian, his extraordinary fate; the division of the Bounty crew, first into Mutineers and Loyalists; then the division of the Mutineers into Blacks and Whites, and then most fascinatingly of all, women and men … I listened ever more intently.
‘What do you think?’ he asked when he had finished.
I was both stunned, and sceptical, but didn’t know him well enough to express the last part.
Quietly, privately, I couldn’t believe the story could be as good as he said. I had always said that the best story in the history of the world was the shipwreck of the Batavia, and noted how sad I was when I finished writing it, because I knew I’d never work on a better one. But the history Tom had just recounted had even more – the twists, the turns, the agony, the ecstasy, the endurance, the hatred and love – and lots of situations where the eternal question occurs: what would I do in that situation?
But could it possibly all be true, and actually backed up by the kind of original documentation I’d need to believe it was true, to give it the fine detail and dialogue I always cherish most, to make my version of history truly come alive?
A quick cruise trawling the internet later that night gave me the preliminary view – it was true! It was all there. Tom and I corresponded thereafter. He sent me some documents he had collected, I put one of my researchers, my cousin Angus FitzSimons, onto pursuing all the diaries, logs, letters, testimony and transcripts that surrounded the saga. Angus worked hard for three months, getting his head around the whole thing, working out where all the documents were, how they could best be accessed, what had already been done in the field, where we could strike new paths.
When he was finished, we had lunch, which I had scheduled for two hours or so. Four hours later, after I had filled both sides of 15 serviettes and one menu with notes, we got up from the table, and I went home and told Lisa that I had just heard the new best story in the history of the world, that this was an important day.
A year later, here we are!
As ever, and as I always recount at the beginning of my historical work, I have tried to bring the story part of this history alive, by putting it in the present tense, and constructing it in the manner of a novel, albeit with 1500 footnotes, give or take, as the pinpoints on which the story rests. For the sake of the storytelling, I have put the whole account in strong, though not strict, chronological order of events, and I have occasionally created a direct quote from reported speech in a journal, diary or letter, and changed pronouns and tenses to put that reported speech in the present tense. When the story required generic dialogue – as in the things a Captain of that time would say when weighing anchor – I have taken the liberty of using that dialogue to help bring the story to life. Equally, every now and then I have assumed generic emotions where it is obvious, even though that emotion is not necessarily recorded in the diary entries, letters, etc.
Always, my goal has been to surmise what were the words used, based on the primary documentary evidence presented, and what the feel of the situation was. For the same reason of remaining faithful to the language of the day, I have stayed with the imperial system of measurement and used the contemporary spelling, with only the odd exception where it would create too much confusion otherwise. I also note the obvious, that in the eighteenth century displaying a consistency in spelling, particularly with place names and foreign words, was clearly so low on the priority list no-one was remotely fussed. This means that the primary documents have a wide array of different spellings, sometimes from the same person. I have broadly restored consistency, while mostly going with the way Captain Bligh spelt things. In the spirit of depicting the vernacular and thinking of the day, the sailors’ terms for Polynesian and Indigenous people – Natives, Indians, or Blacks – have been retained, for the sake of authenticity. And while, at the time, Tahiti was sometimes referred to as Otaheite, I have made it Tahiti thr
oughout, for the sake of consistency.
All books used are listed in the Bibliography, but here I cite most particularly the words recounted by those who lived through the events: James Morrison, William Bligh, ‘Jenny’ the Tahitian Native, Alec Smith and Peter Heywood. In the modern era, I especially enjoyed the book on Bligh by Rob Mundle – while disagreeing with his fundamental conclusion on Bligh as a leader of men – and also Diana Preston’s book, Paradise in Chains.
My deepest debt, however – as it is for just about anyone of the modern day who writes about the Mutiny – is to the scholar, writer and editor Owen Rutter who, in the 1930s, produced volume after volume of carefully transcribed and collated documents, trial transcripts, diaries, letters and logs of ‘Bountiana’ as he put it. Thanks to him we have access to the unfiltered voices of the Bounty court martial, the complete stories of James Morrison, John Fryer and especially William Bligh. To indicate the infectious level of his enthusiasm on that maddening man Bligh, I can do no better than to quote his own words, introducing his final volume of Bligh’s logs and letters: ‘Probing into Bligh’s affairs and poring over his papers as I have during a course of years I seem to have come to know him very well: far better, I feel, than I could have known him in life. There have been moments when I could have sworn he was in my room, standing at my elbow as I wrote. Fancy, no doubt; yet at times a fancy that has been curiously real.’* Funny he should say that. For I, too, feel like I know Bligh, and can only hope the reader experiences many such moments before they lay this book down.
I must also thank that Aladdin’s cave of Bountyia, the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The Mitchell Library is a national treasure, a place of calm and diligence, a public institution that restores your faith in public institutions. You fill in your request slip for some arcane ancient magazine or incredibly rare, incredibly expensive volume of memoirs, and 45 minutes later, there it is, sitting waiting for you in the collection dock.
To give just one example, William Bligh wrote a Log after the Bounty mutiny, a Log full of complaints, arguments, drawn swords and (spoiler alert) further mutinies. This Log was never published by Bligh, there is not any copy of it in the Admiralty records in London, so where is it? The Mitchell Library. Bligh’s grandchildren donated it in 1902 and there it sat, waiting for its amazing story to be discovered by researchers like Owen Rutter in the 1930s, who could scarcely believe these scandalous, wonderful records still existed. And they still do, thanks to the Mitchell Library.
For the last decade I have relied heavily on a great team of researchers, and this book owes them as great a debt as ever. Now, if it sounds like nepotism to say I worked on this with my cousin Angus, perhaps it is – and I can only say I am very grateful that, in the name of our very tight extended family – his beloved grandfather was my uncle – he agreed to work with me. For he was brilliant, working on the story from first to last, around the globe, from north to south and back again, and there are no parts of this whole saga not stronger for his input. Long after my own intellectual resources were spent trying to get to the bottom of something from the frequently conflicting primary accounts, Angus worked on into the night and when I woke up in the morning, there it was! (Bligh did have his actual commission handed to him by Christian when he was getting into the Launch, and here is the quote that proves it!)
Dr Libby Effeney has worked with me on the last six books and, again as previously noted, as a researcher and friend she is as good as it gets – she is hard-working, and, curiously, as intellectually strict as she is herself creative in working out how the story can be told better while still remaining within the parameters of what happened. Her work on this, going into what we call the FD, Fine Detail, was stronger than ever. From the ground up she took each chapter by the scruff of the neck, worked out what I had, what was not backed up by the historical record, and what else I could add – backed by the historical record. If she were an aeroplane, she’d be a Learjet – fast, and first-class all the way.
My warm thanks also to Dr Peter Williams, the Canberra military historian who first started working with me on my book on Gallipoli, and has stayed with me thereafter. He joined this project late in the piece, but proved to know more about maritime lore, not to mention law, than all of the rest of us put together. As ever, his own commitment to accuracy strengthened the book throughout.
As ever, I also relied on other specialists in their fields, including Dr Michael Cooper for all matters medical, from scurvy through to syphilis.
I am once more indebted to Jane Macaulay for the maps, which you will see throughout. And I offer my thanks once again to Colonel Renfrey Pearson for finding rare documents in archives in the United Kingdom.
My long-time sub-editor, Harriet Veitch, meanwhile, took the fine-tooth comb to the whole thing, untangling hopelessly twisted sentences, eliminating many grammatical errors and giving my work a sheen which does not properly belong to it. She has strengthened my stuff for three decades now, and I warmly thank her.
In all my books, I give a draft of the near-finished product to my eldest brother, David, who has the best red pen in the business. When his interest flags, it is a fair bet so too will the interest of most readers, and I generally slash what doesn’t grab him, so long as it is not key to the story. In this book, he was as astute as ever, and I record my gratitude.
My thanks also, as ever, to my highly skilled editor Deonie Fiford, who has honoured my request that she preserve most of the sometimes odd way I write, while only occasionally insisting that something come out because it just doesn’t work.
I am grateful, as ever, to my friend and publisher, Matthew Kelly of Hachette, with whom I have worked many times over the last three decades, and who was enthusiastic and supportive throughout, always giving great guidance.
Finally, my thanks to my wife, Lisa. In the midst of this book she had something of a professional upset when, one Monday night, I asked her if, while she was up, she’d mind changing channels … and she did! She went from Channel Nine to Channel Ten in about 45 minutes and if that had its challenging moments, it at least meant that there were three glorious months when she was marginally less busy, and we could return to the great days earlier in our marriage when she was able to place her excellent editorial skills at the service of my manuscript, advising on what worked and what didn’t. This book also owes those skills an enormous debt.
I hope you enjoy it.
Peter FitzSimons
On the High Seas,
South of Cape Horn,
Late February 2018.
(The waves are every bit as high as Bligh said they were.)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The crew of the Bounty as it leaves Spithead
COMMISSIONED OFFICER
Lieutenant William Bligh, Captain of the HMS Bounty but a Lieutenant of the Royal Navy in rank. Age: 33.1 A brilliant bastard from Plymouth, whose brilliance is narrowly outdone by his bastardry. Having first gone to sea at the age of seven, as a cabin boy, he has salt water in his veins and has risen to become a superb sailor and navigator, who has hauled himself high, despite his common beginnings, to be in command of a mercantile ship from the age of 30, and his first naval command, the Bounty, at 32. Of his many undoubted talents, the most singular is an extraordinary capacity to raise the hackles of the men he is meant to lead, against him. In a crisis, few men are better; in tranquillity, none more terrifying.
WARRANT OFFICERS
John Fryer, Master. Age: 34. A stubborn, proud man, born and raised in Norfolk. A good sailor, he is convinced that he is the best sailor on the ship, after Bligh. As Master, he is in charge of running the ship in its day-to-day operations, and also charged with aiding the Captain in matters of navigation.
William Cole, Bosun2 – the ship’s officer in charge of equipment and the crew. Age: unknown, estimated early 30s.
William Peckover, Gunner. Age: 39. Peckover, from London, is the real ‘old South Seas hand’ on board the Bounty. He had been on all thre
e of Cook’s voyages and, since Cook had visited Tahiti four times (twice on the second voyage), Peckover’s visit on the bread-fruit expedition will be his fifth. He speaks Tahitian fluently and has an excellent understanding of Tahitian customs and ways of thinking.
William Purcell, Carpenter. Age: 26. Proud of his carpentry skills, he works well at them, but – in his first time on a naval, as opposed to merchant, ship – has no interest in other duties.
Dr Thomas Huggan, Surgeon. Age: 43. From Scotland, he is the oldest man on board and the drunkest. ‘The drunken sot’,3 as Bligh called him. An obese and incompetent surgeon.
PETTY OFFICERS
Fletcher Christian. Joined the Bounty as Master’s Mate but was promoted to Acting Lieutenant in March 1788, three months into the voyage. Age: 23. Born in Cumberland. Handsome, charming, popular, proud, moody and prone to secret fits of depression. He had sailed twice before with Bligh, albeit as part of the merchant marine, and not in the Royal Navy as with this trip.
William Elphinstone, Master’s Mate. Age: 36. Born in Edinburgh.
Thomas Ledward, Surgeon’s Mate. Age: about 30. From Scotland, quiet and conscientious.
John Hallett, Midshipman. Age: 15. Close to Bligh’s family.
Thomas Hayward, Midshipman. Age: 20. Born in London. A snippy Loyalist to beat them all.
Peter Heywood, Honorary Midshipman. Age: 15. Born on the Isle of Man. This is his first time at sea.
George Stewart, Honorary Midshipman. Age: 21. From the Orkney Islands. Well educated and experienced. Initially Bligh, who knew his family, considered Stewart a good seaman who ‘had always borne a good character’.4 Shares a mess with Christian, Tinkler and Heywood.
Ned Young, Honorary Midshipman. Age: 21. Born on St Kitts, West Indies. His father was an English gentleman, his mother a native of the West Indies – and he, an illegitimate child of wealth. He is a strong man with dark hair and naturally a dark complexion. There is something slightly unsettling about Mr Young to Bligh, who notes that he has ‘a bad look’.5
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