Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  Peter Linkletter, Quartermaster. Age: 30. From the Shetland Islands.

  John Norton, Quartermaster. Age: 34. From Liverpool. Functions as the helmsman, responsible for steering the boat. Obese. Previously sailed with Bligh on the Britannia.

  George Simpson, Quartermaster’s Mate. Age: 27. Born in Westmoreland in Cumbria.

  James Morrison, Bosun’s Mate. Age: 27. A Scot, five foot eight, with a sallow complexion, long black hair, slender. He has been a sailor since he was 18. Although he is qualified as a Master Gunner, that position is already filled on the Bounty and so he will serve as the Bosun’s Mate, the man who administers the floggings with the dreaded cat o’ nine tails. Morrison, who had previously served as a Midshipman, is a cut above your average seaman – a well-educated, witty, hard-working and mischievous man with a rather sardonic and cynical view of life.

  John ‘Jack’ Mills, Gunner’s Mate. Age: 38. A cruel bully.

  Charles Norman, Carpenter’s Mate. Age: 26. Pitted by smallpox.

  Thomas McIntosh, Carpenter’s Mate. Age: 28. Born in North Shields, England.

  Lawrence Lebogue, Sail-maker. Age: 40. Born in Nova Scotia, Canada. Served under Bligh on Britannia in 1786.

  Charles Churchill, Master-at-Arms. Age: 28. Born in Manchester. In a rogues’ gallery, this brutal thug could count on his large portrait hanging in pride of place, in the major salon, before the picture window, so maximum light could fall upon this creature from the dark underworld.

  Joseph Coleman, Armourer. Age: 38. Born in Dorking, Surrey. Apprenticed as a blacksmith, he sailed in the Discovery (the consort ship to the Resolution) on Cook’s final voyage.

  John Samuel, Captain’s Clerk. Age: 26. He was born in Edinburgh and is that rarest of all things, a simpering Scot.

  John Smith, Captain’s servant. Age: 36. Born in Stirling, Scotland.

  Henry Hillbrant, Cooper. Age: 24. Born in Hanover, Germany. ‘Sandy hair, strong made, left arm shorter than the other, having been broke … speaks bad English.’6

  Thomas Hall, Cook. Age: 38. Born in Durham. Evidently it was not easy to be a ship’s cook under Bligh because of the scanty rations he ordered to be issued to the men.

  Robert Lamb, Butcher. Age: 21. Born in London. Served under Bligh on the Britannia in 1786.

  ABLE SEAMEN

  Thomas Burkett. Age: 21. From Bath.

  Robert Tinkler, Ship’s boy. Tinkler is Mr Fryer’s 12-year-old brother-in-law. Born in Norfolk.

  William Muspratt, assistant cook and also the Bounty’s tailor. Age: 29. From Yarmouth, England.

  Michael Byrn, The ‘Blind Fiddler’. Age: 28. From Kilkenny, Ireland.

  Thomas Ellison, also known as ‘Monkey’. Age: 15. Born in Deptford, London. Sailed with Bligh previously on the Britannia.

  Bill McCoy. Age: 25. Born Aberdeen, Scotland. As hard as nails, but not nearly as sharp.

  Isaac Martin. Age: 30. Born in Philadelphia. Served on an American ship during the Revolutionary War, was captured by the Royal Navy and then joined it.

  John Millward. Age: 20. From Plymouth.

  Matthew Quintal. Age: 21. Cornishman from Padstow.

  Richard Skinner. A former hairdresser. Age: 22. Born in Tunbridge Wells, England.

  Alec Smith. Age: 20. A working-class lad from Hackney with such a troubled past he has mustered under an assumed name. His real name is John Adams.

  John Sumner. Age: 22. Born in Liverpool.

  Matthew Thompson. Age: 37. From the Isle of Wight. A violent bastard who is bad to the bone.

  James Valentine. Age: 28. Born in Montrose, Scotland.

  John Williams. Age: 26. Born in London, grew up on Guernsey.

  CIVILIANS

  David Nelson, Botanist. Age: Mid-30s. Gardener at Kew Gardens when he accepted the post on the Bounty arranged by Sir Joseph Banks. Sailed with Cook on his last voyage. Bligh regards him as a friend. Described by Captain Clerke as, ‘one of the quietest fellows in nature’.7

  William ‘Billy’ Brown, Assistant Botanist. Age: 26. Born in Leicester, Acting Lieutenant on the Resolution with Cook, but changed careers to become a gardener.

  PROLOGUE

  In Two Scenes

  I, whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go …1

  Captain James Cook, 30 January 1774

  Scene I

  In the beginning, there was Tane, the Father of Gods, the Maker of the World, ‘the cause of all things; light, darkness, thunder, lightning and rain’.2

  And He was Good, and He was Great, and nowhere was His Goodness or His Greatness better shown to all His children than in the creation of these islands of Otaheite, Tahiti. A sprinkling of land from His mighty hand sits gracefully atop the impossible blueness of the ocean, and beneath the sparkling sun, life flourishes. The coconut palms, plantain plants and bread-fruit trees grow tall and keel over heavy with their fruits; the grass is verdant, the sand is fine, the birds roam and chatter, the surrounding sea bubbles with life, and the blessed people are smiled upon by Tane like no-one else on this earth. The men of these lands are handsome, strong and supple, able to shinny up the coconut trees in mere seconds, never putting a foot wrong. The women are glistening and voluptuous, with round hips, bountiful bosoms and unrelentingly accommodating natures.

  On no-one does Tane more shine, however, than the Tahitian King, Otoo, whose lineage reaches back to the dawn of time and Tane himself. Otoo is divine, Otoo can do no wrong. And Otoo will remain King, until such time as a male child is born to his Queen, at which point that child will be King, until such time as he, too, is blessed with a male child.

  For so has Tane decreed.

  So it has been. So it is. So it will always be.

  As Great as Tane is, however, as Divine as King Otoo is, there comes a day in the life of Tahiti, unchanged for centuries, when a Greater Man, a visitor from another land, somewhere far beyond the seas, arrives in a vessel the likes of which the Tahitians have seen only twice before.

  His own men call him ‘Captain Cook’, and he arrives in April 1769, aboard a vessel called the Endeavour. Initially, the Tahitians are wary. After all, the first visitors to their shores, two years earlier – Captain Samuel Wallis and the crew of the Dolphin – had provided a brutal introduction to how British men might use their power. But this man, Captain Cook, some 40 years of age, is not like that at all. For he comes not to conquer, nor to plunder. No, he comes on a peaceful mission of science. In an effort to pronounce his name, they call him ‘Toote’.3

  Using sign language, Cook tries to explain to them precisely why he has come, but it is quite beyond the people’s understanding. (This is no surprise to Cook. A careless carpenter missing a few digits could easily count on the fingers of both hands how many of Cook’s own crew actually understand their reason for being here.)

  He has come, you see, to observe the Transit of Venus, an event that occurs with pairs of transits, each pair eight years apart, in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, when for around six hours the planet moves in front of the sun, showing up as a small black disc on its face. When compared with the observations made in London and other points around the globe, it is hoped that the distance from Venus to Earth can be calculated, and that scientists can thereafter use that data to calculate the distance of all the other known planets from Earth,4 as well as the diameter of the Earth itself.

  There are many things in the Tahitian way of life that are quite beyond the understanding of Cook and his men. Things like … the Heiva, a jigging dance, performed often and complete with costumes, movements and facial expressions the like of which the men have never seen. One Tahitian who explains these strange rituals and rites introduces himself as Hetee-Hetee, a curiously charismatic 40-year-old with a face like a dropped pie, who clearly wants to be of use to these powerful white men, and who makes the effort to learn as many of their words as he can. In the meantime, though Hetee-Hetee, as Cook’s surgeon will note, ‘
was almost constantly drunk with Kava’,5 he also gets Kava for the men and anything for the officers.

  And then there’s something the British really, TRULY don’t understand … the Tahitian women and their overwhelming availability, sexually. Back in England, to get a nice woman to lie with you required a commitment of marriage, while those of easier virtue could be persuaded for a good chunk of your wages, around two shillings. But here in Tahiti, even the comeliest maidens, the most gorgeous creatures, are ready, willing and relentlessly, amazingly able.

  Captain James Cook, happily married to Elizabeth Batts, who is waiting for him back in England with their four children, not only declines all offers on the grounds of his marriage vows, but also because he believes it sets a bad example to his men. He is a moderate man.

  No matter, one of Cook’s trusted associates on the voyage to these shores, the 26-year-old naturalist from the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, is more than happy to take over the skipper’s share. Born into a very wealthy family, Banks was educated at Harrow, Eton and Oxford, but his sexual education masters degree takes place on Tahiti. Banks has scarcely set foot on the island paradise, which he records as the ‘truest picture of an arcadia of which we were going to be kings’,6 when two beautiful women invite him to partake of their considerable charms, at the same time, the only problem being they do so in broad daylight!

  Banks records the situation as delicately as he can: ‘The ladies who shewd us all kind of civilities our situation could admit of, [but] we had not an opportunity of putting their politeness to every test that maybe some of us would not have failed to have done had circumstances been more favourable; indeed we had no reason to doubt any part of their politeness, as by their frequently pointing to the matts on the ground and sometimes by force seating themselves and us upon them they plainly shewd that they were much less jealous of observation than we were.’7

  Yes, in broad daylight, gorgeous naked maidens are inclined to throw you to the ground to have their way with you. For these extraordinary people, sex is not a matter of shame, nor furtive groping in the dark. It is something to be celebrated, engaged in, vigorously. In the same spirit, there is no sense that the job of the woman is merely to succumb to the male’s desires. If the women are so inclined, and they frequently are, it is for them to initiate and no eyebrows are raised. No-one pursues the study of this extraordinary cultural phenomenon more than Joseph Banks, who throws himself at the task with enthusiasm, first with the handmaiden of the Tahitian Queen, at which point he is stunned to get an offer from the Queen herself! A few days later, double-canoes arrive bearing more young Tahitian maidens, and just so there can be no mistaking their intentions, one woman disrobes as she walks to him, displaying all her charms, ‘and gave me a most convenient opportunity of admiring them by turning herself gradually round’. Well, what is an English gentleman to do? ‘I took her by the hand and led her to the tents acompanied by another woman her friend …’8

  Of course Banks recounts his adventures to a bemused Captain Cook, but Cook has no interest in such dalliances himself. He is the Captain, and keeps himself well removed from such activity, for he has serious work to do, in this case starting with the observation of the Transit of Venus which is drawing near.

  Banks wishes him well, and when, on 3 June 1769, the Transit of Venus takes place – Cook is certainly occupied with it, as are the astronomer Charles Green and their helpers, but not Joseph Banks. Instead, he closely observes the transit of three Venuses at sunset, with his journal subsequently overflowing with delight:

  3 hansome girls came off in a canoe to see us … they chatted with us very freely and with very little persuasion agreed to send away their carriage and sleep in [the] tent, a proof of confidence which I have not before met with upon so short an acquaintance.9

  And so, as Captain Cook works through the night making highly detailed observations of heavenly bodies, so too does Banks. Both men are confident they have done fine work, with Banks unable to resist recording the evidence, noting in his journal the following morning: ‘We prepared ourselves to depart, in spite of the entreaties of our fair companions who persuaded us much to stay.’10

  Unfortunately Cook’s observations do not go quite so well. His measurements are off. As Cook glumly records, the separate observations taken by himself, the naturalist Dr Daniel Solander and the astronomer Mr Charles Green all differ by ‘more much more than could be expected’.11 A ‘dusky shade round the body of the Planet … very much disturbed the times of the contacts’,12 Cook writes.13

  It is regrettable, but the opportunity has passed and is not coming around again for over a century. The Royal Society – the most powerful and venerated scientific institution in England, boasting all the leading scientists – will have to make do with the recorded observations; the result will have to be just an approximation, rather than a definitive distance.

  With their primary goal achieved, Cook now opens his sealed orders from the British Admiralty – that august institution based at Whitehall, run by the maritime Lords, appointed by the Crown to be responsible for the conduct of the Royal Navy – which were to be read only after the transit observation had been completed. Only now does he find out the second part of his mission.

  His secret orders are to seek a Continent or Land of great extent14 – the long-postulated Terra Australis Incognita.

  A long journey awaits, and clearly it will take some time to fill the pantries and supply rooms of the Endeavour with all the fresh food and water from Tahiti they will need.

  Thankfully, there are plenty of exotic fresh fruit and belly-filling roots on this munificent island. And there is one particular plant that has astonished Joseph Banks: the bread-fruit tree, which is so bountiful it has made Tahiti a modern-day Garden of Eden.

  It is as big as an apple tree, albeit with enormous multi-pointed leaves and fruit that can grow up to five times the size, and all the Tahitians have to do when hungry is to pick a bread-fruit, bake it in an underground oven, covered in hot coals, or over an open flame and then pick off the black crust of the rind.15 What remains is, as explorer William Dampier described it in 1688, ‘a pure substance like bread’.16

  Joseph Banks is impressed and intrigued by the possibilities. It has made the Tahitian life so easy:

  Scarcely can it be said that they earn their bread with the sweat of their brow when their cheifest sustenance Bread-fruit is procurd with no more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling it down.17

  Perhaps, he muses, there might be a use for such plants in another part of the British Empire, where they could provide an enormous amount of food, for a minimal amount of effort.

  On 13 July 1769, after three months in emerald and azure Tahiti, the Englishmen bid farewell to Obarea, the Queen, and many other acquaintances who have come down to the shore, and now surround the ship with their canoes. The Tahitians farewell Cook as they would a God about to depart for Heaven. From Toote’s first days in these islands, despite the extraordinary power of the ship with the big guns that he commanded, he had been kind and benevolent to them, had treated them with respect and honour. He had killed no-one, never betrayed territorial ambitions, had forbidden his sailors to harm the Tahitians or their property in any way, and always made it clear that he was only here for his Transit of Venus observations, and then would go. And now that day has come.

  And so farewell. Practically a God, we tell you – benevolent, all powerful, the divine Toote.

  Captain Cook gives the orders. The anchor is weighed, the sailors haul on the ropes, the swathes of heavy canvas unfurl and fill with the light easterly breeze, and the Endeavour sails away, many of its crew crowding the stern, gazing back to the green pearl sinking into the blueness, just as the Natives on the shore gaze at the receding white sails until they, too, sink into the hazy horizon.

  Among those so gazing is a young girl, Mauatua, the daughter of one of the Chiefs. The impression left by these magnificent officers in their dashing blu
e coats is so strong that Mauatua will spend many a’night thereafter dreaming of the return of beings just like them.

  Scene II

  A decade later, in November 1778, James Cook is at the height of his powers, the pinnacle of his fame, but … in the depths of his temper.

  Yes, the ships he commands, the Resolution and Discovery, have reached a similar kind of paradise to Tahiti – this one called Hawaii – but he can no longer command a steady mood.

  Despite the warm weather, the plentiful food and the agreeable Natives, any sailor can see all is not right with Captain Cook. The warm and rather caring soul of previous voyages seems to be slipping away. He is remote, perpetually irritable, even on a good day, and so prone to losing his temper in such theatrically furious form that his sailors even have a name for it. Captain Cook is doing his Heiva, they say of the ‘violent motions and stampings on the deck’, that little jigging dance of demonic fury and ‘the paroxysms of passion’,18 which so resembles the dance the Tahitians used to do, back in ye good olde days.

  ‘The old boy has been tipping a Heiva to such and such a one,’19 the men would remark as they ate their evening meal and recounted the fate of the latest poor officer who had copped a blast from Cook that day, usually unfairly.

  It is all so reminiscent of those days, the crew-members even call him Toote, the name the Tahitians had for him.

  At balmy daybreak on 16 January 1779, after more than a month of sailing around and charting this new land, Captain Cook sees a decent bay, fit for anchor. It may just be the place they need ‘to refit, and supply ourselves with every refreshment that the place could afford’.20

  He sends out his Master, a Mr William Bligh, to sound and reconnoitre the harbour. Young Bligh, a Cornishman by birth, is now 24 but has been signed to the Royal Navy since the tender age of seven, and so, having spent most of his life on the water, is a more than worthy Master. Responsible for the ship’s navigation, maintaining the Log, setting the sails as required for the conditions, and advising the Captain on the state of the crew and seaworthiness of the ship, he shows a particular aptitude for the technical work of the voyage – sounding and reconnoitring harbours, as well as surveying and charting with remarkable skill. Perhaps seeing a little of himself in the lad, Cook places great value on the young man’s abilities. True, Bligh – a man of very humble origins, and, it has to be said, quite common visage, with a head like a potato not plucked at its prime – has an acerbic nature, and often speaks more roughly to the men than Cook would like. But, in the end, his capacity to get the job done is reason enough for Cook to overlook his shortcomings – his rough manner and ever-ready snapping tongue – not to mention the palpable air of tension that too often follows in his wake.