Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  Fryer is helping to stow the anchor when he hears a very strange and troubling order from Bligh in the distance.

  ‘Hand the Arms up!’39

  What on earth can be the use of muskets right now?

  Worried, Fryer runs aft to investigate.

  And here is Bligh in familiar form: furious.

  ‘Why don’t you come to assist me, sir?’ asks the Captain.

  ‘I did not know you wanted any assistance, Captain,’ replies Fryer. ‘I only heard you call for the arms, [which] led me to think that something was the matter.’40

  But now Fryer learns, to his great chagrin, just what the matter is.

  ‘Get the Arms up, Sir,’ barks Bligh. ‘I’ll keep those fellows and see if I can’t get the Grapnel!’41

  Finally, Fryer understands. Bligh wanted the Natives to stay on board, trading freely, just so he could trap them there, and exchange their liberation for the grapnel. Which poses the obvious question.

  Is he stark, staring mad?

  Yes, it had been a ploy favoured by Captain Cook, but not for trifles such as a grapnel. The great mariner had only used such force when he needed to find deserters, or recover a stolen boat.

  This is the worst kind of madness – the unstoppable kind, with a mad momentum all its own. Bligh is blinkered by his own rage as the weapons are distributed among the crew. Fryer is far from the only man dismayed.

  ‘The ship’s company was armed and drawn up,’ the staggered Morrison records, ‘and the chiefs made prisoners. The canoes [of the Natives] were ordered to cast off and keep astern. At this, the chiefs seemed much displeased.’42

  Now that his intentions are clear and he has the Chiefs secure, Bligh allows one of them to return to the shore, to tell all the Natives: they must find and return the grapnel, or they will never see their Chiefs again. The imprisoned Chiefs await their fate, their number including one young noble by the name of Nagatee, whose eyes glitter at the outrage so suddenly visited upon them. Those eyes meet Bligh’s, who does not blink in return.

  Just an hour later, the Chief whom Bligh freed reappears, though he refuses to come back on the ship, instead choosing to communicate through words and signs from a safe distance. It is exactly as Fryer had reported; it is Natives from another island who had stolen the grapnel, and it is now long gone.

  Very well, then.

  The Chief can maintain that, and Fryer can believe him.

  But Bligh does not, telling Mr Fryer to, ‘Make sail.’43

  The Master shouts his order. The crew swing into action. The Bounty begins to drift.

  Yes, Bligh wants the Natives in surrounding canoes to understand the fate of those who steal grapnel anchors from him – they have their Chiefs taken away, never to be seen again. And yet the wails and cries of those Natives are still not enough for Bligh. The humiliation of the detained people and their Chiefs is not complete. He has a more direct and personal punishment for them.

  ‘They were,’ Morrison recounts, ‘ordered down to the mess room, where Mr. Bligh followed them and set them to peel coconuts for his dinner.’44

  Once they are set to work, Nagatee’s eyes still glittering, Bligh returns to the deck, to deal with his own crew, who clearly think he is going too far.

  ‘You are a parcel of lubberly Rascals!’45 he bellows. They are the fools, the incompetents, the ingrates, who have allowed this to happen through their own laxness.

  ‘I would be one of five,’ he roars, ‘who would, with good sticks, disarm all of you.’46

  Christian and Fryer exchange looks. The Captain is dangerously close to being out of control, as witness his reaction when he notes that Billy McCoy is not looking at him as he speaks.

  Instantly drawing his pistol, Bligh aims it at Billy’s head and roars, ‘McCoy, I will shoot you for not paying attention!’47

  Now McCoy is paying attention, and close attention at that. Christian watches the whole thing, shaken to his core.

  Bligh storms down to his cabin as the Bounty’s slow mock ‘departure’ continues, surrounded by canoes, ‘full of People making sad lamentations for their Chiefs’,48 convinced they are about to lose them forever.

  Wailing bitterly and with an unearthly intensity, the women slash their own faces and shoulders with knives, the blood soon dribbling into the azure waters around them. The men bash their paddles against their own heads, until they, too, add to the spurting blood.

  And that is just the Natives who are free! When Morrison goes below deck he is shocked to see, ‘the oldest of the chiefs … struck himself several violent blows on the face and cut himself on the cheek bone with his fists’.49 None of this is apparent to Bligh, who remains in his cabin, fuming, but still confident that his actions will soon see the grapnel returned, for it is the only thing that counts.

  As the fiery sun sets, so too does Bligh’s temper – he’s no longer in an incandescent rage but able to judge things a little more coolly. Given that, despite the Natives’ extreme distress, the grapnel has not been returned, it really might be as they have maintained, that it has been taken by other Natives, and is now beyond their powers to retrieve.

  Mr Fryer!

  Yes, Captain Bligh?

  You may let the Chiefs go, and to make the peace, I shall give them some baubles to remember me by.

  In his journal, Bligh cheerfully records his mercy and the success of his lesson:

  As this distress was more than the grapnel was worth, and I had no reason to imagine that they were privy to or in any manner concerned in the theft, I could not think of detaining them longer and called their canoes alongside. I then told them they were at liberty to go, and made each of them a present of a hatchet, a saw, with some knives, gimblets, and nails. This unexpected present and the sudden change in their situation affected them not less with joy than they had before been with apprehension. They were unbounded in their acknowledgments and I have little doubt but that we parted better friends than if the affair had never happened.50

  Well, Bligh may have little doubt, but others on the Bounty see it differently, with Morrison caustically noting that the Chiefs ‘only smothered their resentment … seeing they could not revenge the insult’.51

  At least, not for the moment.

  For now, Bligh orders the Bounty northward, away from Annamooka, and retires for the night, recording in his journal before falling to sleep:

  As to the officers I have no resource, or do I ever feel myself safe in the few instances I trust to them.52

  Into the fine night the Bounty sails on, the sea gurgles, the masts creak, the sails flap, the dripstones drip – drip, drip, drip … drop – and the officer in charge of the watch, Fletcher Christian, stares grimly and with faraway eyes, into the darkness, pondering Bligh’s wanton cruelty and insulting words.

  27 April 1789, 80 miles south-east of Tofoa, a lovely bunch of coconuts

  On this sparkling morning, Christian is completing his brooding night watch when Bligh arrives on deck and immediately notices something amiss.

  His pile of coconuts, which had been in a large heap between the guns, seems different.

  ‘Mr Fryer,’ barks Bligh. ‘Don’t you think those coconuts are shrunk since last night?’53

  ‘Sir, they are not as high as they were last night,’54 answers Fryer. ‘But the people might have put them down in walking over them in the night.’55

  ‘No, Mr Fryer, they have been taken away,’ declares the Captain. ‘And I will find out who has taken them!’56

  Churchill, the one-time deserter and Master-at-Arms – the nearest thing on the ship to a Marine, in charge of the ship’s security and responsible for enforcing the law as laid down by the Captain – is summoned with a Bligh bellow that makes the ship quaver and its fellows shudder. And so it starts again.

  Yes, Captain?

  ‘Master at Arms, I order you to see every nut that is below, on deck.’57

  Churchill is confused, and says so. Surely Mr Bligh does not mean all the cocon
uts? And from everybody?

  ‘Every body, every body, EVERY BODY!’58 Bligh roars his answer again and again, like one demented, so there can be no doubt. And so Churchill relays the order to all the men … and all the officers. All men are to come up on deck right now, bringing with them all their coconuts. Every single one. Right now.

  In double-quick time, thus, every man on the Bounty is standing on the swaying deck, before his own pile of coconuts.

  Like a General inspecting a parade by a coconut army, Bligh wanders up and down each pile, searching for his missing nuts. Stopping before a notably large pile, he looks around, accusingly.

  ‘Whose are these?’ he asks.

  ‘Mine, Captain,’ answers Midshipman Ned Young with toothless casualness.

  ‘How many nuts did you buy?’

  Young mumbles a large number.

  ‘So many, sir! And how many did you eat?’59 spits Bligh to Young, a scoundrel, he is sure, whom he has always detested.

  ‘I do not know, sir,’ Young replies, before pointing to the coconuts at his feet. ‘But there is the remainder, which I have not counted.’60

  Both Christian and Fryer gaze on, scarcely believing the sheer unhinged absurdity of what they are seeing.

  One by one, Bligh moves down the line of seamen, asking each the same question.

  How many coconuts have you brought from the island of Tahiti?

  How many have you eaten?

  Alec Smith? Matt Quintal? Billy Brown?

  Each slippery reply is noted down by Bligh’s clerk, John Samuel, and finally it is done, as the last slippery sailor gives his last slippery answer.

  Or is it not over, after all?

  For now, without pause, and still in the presence of the common sailors, Bligh starts to question the officers, starting with – yes, of course, it has to be – his second-in-command, Fletcher Christian.

  For you, Mr Christian, were the Officer of the Watch last night and if you had attended your duties faithfully you surely should have spotted and apprehended any thief.

  Unless of course … that very officer is the thief.

  …

  …

  Well, Mr Christian, did you take the coconuts?

  …

  …

  …

  Time hangs suspended once more. Can Bligh really have asked him, an officer and a gentleman, and a supposed friend, such a question?

  Christian expostulates: ‘I hope you do not think me so mean as to be guilty of stealing yours?’61

  ‘Yes, you damned hound,’ yells Bligh, ‘I do. You must have stolen half of them, or you could give a better account of them!’62

  His words reverberate, rankle and rattle against 1000 years of breeding which has placed the likes of the Christian family so much higher in the social strata than the Bligh family.

  Still Captain Bligh goes on, pronouncing from on high the crew’s punishment:

  ‘I allow you a pound and a half of Yams,’ Bligh hisses. ‘But if I do not find out who took the nuts, I will put you on three-quarters of a pound of Yams.’63

  And, even now, Bligh is not done with his threats.

  ‘I take care of you now for my own good,’64 he yells at his sullen crew. ‘But when I get you through the [Endeavour] Straits you may all go to Hell!’65

  Now, just in case there is any confusion about how the Captain feels about them, he furthers elucidates his position.

  ‘And if you do not look out sharp I will kill one half of you.’66

  Oh, Heavenly Father above!

  Turning to, and on, his younger officers – the likes of John Hallett, Thomas Hayward and Peter Heywood – Bligh makes sure they know what awaits them, in the unlikely event they survive long enough to get to where they are going now, to drop off their cargo.

  ‘I will leave you in Jamaica! You shall not go home with me!’67

  Christian can bear it no more. Such madness must stop before even more damage is done. So if Bligh really must have a thief, then Fletcher will give him one. As Officer of the Watch, ultimate responsibility must rest with him anyway, so why not go one step further, to spare the men? Taking two bow-legged steps forward, he utters the one lie that might spare all, bar him.

  The responsibility is mine, Captain Bligh. I took the coconut.

  What? Only one, sir?

  Bligh does not believe it.

  ‘Damn your blood,’ Bligh roars, perilously close to being completely out of control, ‘you have stolen my coconuts!’68

  With a calm that he does not feel – for inside, everything is being pulled apart, including his last shreds of respect for Bligh – Christian replies evenly.

  ‘I was dry, I thought it of no consequence, I took one only, and I am sure no one touched another.’69

  …

  All eyes turn to Bligh.

  …

  Will Christian’s self-sacrifice be enough to appease the roaring and fiery demon?

  ‘You lie, you scoundrel!’ Bligh bellows. ‘You have stolen one half!’70

  The accusation is every bit as absurd as Christian’s ‘confession’, and seemingly everyone on the ship, bar Bligh, can see it – with enormous honour, and courage, Christian is simply trying to protect his men. But in his fury, Bligh sees no honour, only evil. And this last accusation has begun to break down Christian’s own control, as he struggles to speak.

  ‘Why do you treat me thus, Captain Bligh?’71 Fletcher says, in a voice shaking with surging emotion.

  In response, Bligh clenches his right fist, and with contempt pure, shakes it in Fletcher’s face.

  ‘NO REPLY!’72 he roars. For he is the Captain of the Bounty, and he will not engage in conversation with a lowly ‘thief’.73

  ‘I desire the people to look after the officers and the officers look after the people,’ Bligh spits at his entire crew, ‘for never were such a set of damned thieving rascals under any man’s command in the world before!’74

  And that’s not all.

  ‘God damn you,’ Bligh roars at his officers in particular, ‘you scoundrels, you are all thieves alike and combine with the men to rob me. I suppose you will steal my yams next, but I’ll sweat you for it, you rascals.’75

  Bligh’s words continue to tumble forth, a volcano of fury now erupting with bile pure, of vile intent – all aimed directly at these lowly curs who dare call themselves officers of the King.

  ‘I’ll make half of you jump overboard before you get through the Endeavour Strait!’76

  Really, Captain Bligh? The way Christian feels right now, there will be no need to wait all the way to Endeavour Strait. For he cannot bear this, right now!

  ‘Mr Samuel!’77 Bligh yells to his personal clerk, his anger in no way spent.

  Samuel meekly steps forth, almost like a dog who knows he is about to be beaten. But no.

  ‘Stop these villains’ grog,’ Bligh snarls, waving a dismissive hand at the seething group of six gentlemen officers – Fletcher Christian, Ned Young, William Peckover, Thomas Hayward, John Hallett and Peter Heywood – ‘and give them but half a pound of yams tomorrow and if they steal then, I’ll reduce them to a quarter!’78

  Yes, and if perchance such rations don’t suit you fine ‘gentlemen’, never fear, for there may be even worse to come.

  ‘I will make you eat grass like cows!’79 barks Bligh.

  With which, he at last seems spent. The snarls are finished and all that remains is his normal scowling countenance, which looks disposed to bite off the heads of passing boobies.

  Ah, but Christian’s own rage is only just beginning, and he is not the only one, as, by the account of Morrison, ‘the officers then got together and were heard to murmur much at such treatment’.80

  They are officers, they are gentlemen, they are innocent, and they are being treated like criminals – in front of their own men!

  Beyond rage at Bligh, much of the talk is of the yams, as the crew have brought aboard nearly as many of them as they had coconuts, and it is the
obvious next thing for Bligh to seize. Quietly thus, they go to their yam stores and start secreting them where they can.

  In a trance throughout the whole afternoon, Fletcher Christian goes about his duties, turning over and over the words of Bligh.

  ‘You damned hound … You must have stolen half … God damn you … You scoundrels, you are all thieves … liar, thief, coward.’

  The gall of the man!

  No, he can take no more.

  Instantly, Christian knows two things.

  He will not go through that again. (While it is one thing to be so abused in private, the humiliation and sheer dishonour of being abused in front of the men is excruciating.)

  He must get away. His honour simply demands it.

  Ah, but Christian, Bligh is not yet done with you today. Oh no.

  That much is clear to all those sailors within earshot – which is to say just about anywhere on the Bounty – as, throughout the entire afternoon, Bligh’s grating, screeching, penetrating, pernicious voice is heard screaming time and again at Mr Christian, who can, in turn, be heard protesting. On and on the yelling goes. So intense is the ongoing confrontation, it is clear that something will have to give, and it proves to be the emotions of the Acting Lieutenant.

  At 4 o’clock, Purcell is in his cabin, resting for his next shift, when the distressed form of Christian rushes in from the starboard quarter, tears pouring from his eyes in huge drops.

  This is staggering. Another man, yes? But never Fletcher Christian, for he is ‘no milksop’.81

  But, clearly, he can bear no more.

  ‘Mr Christian,’ Purcell asks, for all the world as if he has not been listening to it all afternoon, ‘what is the matter?’82

  Bligh! That is what is the matter!

  ‘Can you ask me and hear the treatment I receive?’83 Fletcher says.

  ‘Do I not receive as bad as you do?’84 replies Purcell.

  For, of course, Purcell knows more than most just how infuriating Bligh’s constant harangues and bullying belittlement can be.

  ‘You have something to protect you,’85 replies Christian, clearly referring to the fact that Purcell is a warrant officer and Bligh may not subject him to a lashing at the hands of James Morrison, nor strip him of that warrant at sea.