The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (51 page)

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Authors: Caroline Alexander

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval

BOOK: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
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The
Providence,
accompanied by her tender, the
Assistant,
had set sail from Spithead on August 3, 1791, with combined complements of 127 souls all told. Soon, Bligh’s log was recording the familiar bustle of cleaning, drying and airing of his ship, the lighting of fires, the ministrations of vinegar. Thrown badly, Bligh was back in the saddle; although battered, he remained unbowed. His orders were given with the same unqualified, uncompromising certitude with which he had commanded the
Bounty.
 
“[M]y officers will become habituated to that attention which very few indeed are acquainted is necessary in these Voyages,” Bligh reported confidently to Banks. A good officer was made, not born. Others felt this imperious command very differently. According to the
Providence
’s first lieutenant Francis Godolphin Bond, who was also Bligh’s half nephew, Bligh’s orders were given hastily and in a manner so “devoid of feeling and tact” that he was soon smarting with resentment at his uncle. Bond was particularly incensed by Bligh’s insistence on supervising every aspect of his officers’ work.
 
But for all this show of undaunted leadership—demonstrating that despite a full-blown mutiny there was no chink in the armor of his command—Bligh was a very ill man. Four weeks out from Spithead, the
Providence
and
Assistant
rode at anchor under Tenerife, assailed by a strange parching heat that seemed exhaled from the mountainous land. A cricket had somehow found its way to the
Providence,
and on the nights of dreadful, windless calm its high, clear voice could be heard across the water on the
Assistant.
 
“[A]t Night light Airs off the High land, heated as if they had passed through fire,” Bligh wrote in his log. “Myself most materially felt the effect; I was seized with a Violent Fever.” The raging fever and “most dreadful Head Ach” mounted alarmingly, driving him at times literally out of his mind; on occasion his illogical commands led his anxious men to fear for his sanity. Recognizing this, Bligh took the drastic precaution of relieving himself from command; the enormity of such a step could have been fully appreciated only by himself. Lieutenant Nathaniel Portlock, in command of the
Assistant,
was summoned to take over the
Providence,
while Lieutenant Bond was in turn dispatched to the tender. For the next weeks, Bligh lay in his cabin, dangerously ill; the precautions he had taken by this change of command, as he logged, had been done “while I had power to think” to ensure that the service of the ships “might go on with a greater certainty of success in case of my death.”
 
As the two vessels continued south toward the Cape of Good Hope, Bligh’s log kept a record of his health: “Myself very Ill”; “very Ill”; “I still continue very Ill.” Off Santiago, in the Cape Verde Islands, he dictated a letter to his wife:
 
“My dear Betsy, I beg you will not be alarmed at not seeing my own writing.” The handwriting was that of Surgeon Edward Harwood, who had advised him against attempting even a letter. Bligh was afflicted again with a dreadful headache so severe that the least noise “distracted” his brain, and orders were given to keep a profound silence on the ship; in his log Bligh noted how “wonderfully & kindly” this silence was preserved. His condition was “of a nervous kind,” Bligh told his wife, referring to the blinding headaches that deprived him “of reason,” the chills and shaking fever that prostrated him; in reality he was almost certainly suffering from a vicious bout of recurring malaria, caught two years ago in pestilential Batavia. Significantly, the two other
Bounty
men who sailed with the
Providence,
Lawrence Lebogue and Bligh’s servant, John Smith, also suffered from “Batavia” fever on the voyage.
 
“God bless you my Dear Love & my little angels,” Bligh had scrawled in his own hand as a footnote to the surgeon’s letter. His voyage was but five weeks out; his safe return home, if all went well, was nearly two years away.
 
Three weeks later, Bligh was sufficiently well to read the morning service for his company. However, Portlock, who had been a master’s mate on Captain Cook’s last voyage, remained de facto in command until mid-November, when the
Providence
and
Assistant
arrived at Table Bay. Here, Bligh was sufficiently recovered to write to the Admiralty: his voyage to date had been without incident, his two vessels were performing to his best expectation and his crew were in good health. But, as for Bligh himself, “I am yet very unwell,” he wrote in this brief report. With his familiar, indomitable optimism, he believed that the change of climate would soon “perfectly restore” him to his health. However, the sojourn at the Cape was to last some six weeks, two weeks longer than planned, and it was nearly Christmas before his expedition set forth again. Left behind at the Cape was John Smith, whose illness was too severe for him to continue.
 
Retracing his own steps, Bligh headed his ships for Van Diemen’s Land, where the
Bounty
had stopped for wood and water in August 1788. Arriving in early February 1792, under dark, low skies, Bligh had found many relics of his former visit. The saw-pit where wood had been billeted, and where William Purcell had caused Bligh his first serious confrontation with his officers, had filled only partly with debris over the years. Crops he had sowed for the betterment of this sparsely inhabited outpost remained, although of the numerous apple trees he had planted only one was thriving. More striking was the discovery of a piece of baize fabric dropped by one of the
Bounty
’s men, its red color “perfectly fresh” despite lying at the mercy of the elements.
 
Wary of his precarious health, Bligh took care to avoid the heavy, soaking dews that fell during fine nights. He did, however, make a short, taxing excursion to a rocky hill that was covered with small trees and overlooked the beach. He named it Nelson’s Hill, after the
Bounty
’s loyal gardener, now buried in Coupang.
 
The
Providence
and
Assistant
left Adventure Bay in late February for Tahiti, where they arrived six weeks later, on April, 9, 1792. Under boisterous weather, the ships rounded Dolphin Bank and worked into Matavai Bay, to anchor less than a mile from Point Venus, the site of the
Bounty
’s old nursery. Canoes soon appeared, and in one a native man was seen by Bligh’s quick eyes to be wearing a European shirt. This seemingly trivial detail proved to be a harbinger of great and tragic changes wrought in this paradise of the world. Few European ships—the
Pandora,
Vancouver’s
Discovery
and
Chatham
—along with the crew of a shipwrecked whaler, had touched at Tahiti since the departure of the
Bounty,
but already European contact had left more than venereal disease, which was rampant as before, and Bligh observed a new fondness among the islanders for liquor. A small arsenal of firearms, gleaned from various ships, was a proud and closely guarded treasure. While Bligh’s company remained in Tahiti, they were witness to the flares of regional strife that had always undermined island life, but these were deadlier now than ever before, thanks to the European guns, and as a result of such strife, Matavai was a deserted village. The handsome Tahitians were dressed in sailors’ ragged cast-offs and it was difficult to find, as Bligh noted with sadness, the gleaming white bark cloth that they had worn “with much ellegance.” Their very language had changed.
 
“Our country Men must have taken great pains to have taught them such vile blackguard expressions as are in the mouth of every Otaheitan,” Bligh wrote in his log. He had difficulty getting his friends “to speak their own language without mixing a jargon of English.” Among Bligh’s crew, it was not just the old hands but also those who had never before been to Tahiti who expressed disappointment. “Nothing was as delectable as described,” wrote the disillusioned Lieutenant Bond. Even the women did not pass universal muster. “Nothing like European beauty had been seen among the women,” he noted. Their famous seductive arts struck the men as being calculated for gain, rather than arising from any real affection.
 
Despite these disappointments, Bligh was heartened by the welcome he received from old friends. Iddeeah soon appeared, and Tynah, who was away, was quickly summoned; both now went by the name Pomare, a reference to the disease that had recently killed their daughter. “Nothing could exceed the joy of these People at seeing me,” Bligh wrote, and although he was still unwell his own spirits briefly soared.
 
“We all thank God that you are safe,” Bligh was greeted; “we were told you were put into a little Boat & sent a drift without any thing to eat or drink, and that you must perish.”
 
Bligh soon had the new nursery under way, and the collection of breadfruit began again. The
Providence
and
Assistant
remained just over three months at this task, during which time Bligh resumed his earlier commentary on the customs and manners of the island. But whereas his log of the
Bounty
radiated curiosity and tireless discovery—and indeed, Bligh’s own happiness—the log of the
Providence
lacks the consistent zest of Bligh’s earlier record. He was tired and still unwell and the sheer novelty of the place had worn off.
 
Some of Bligh’s old energy was manifested in his reports of intelligence he received of Christian and the mutineers. Two months after his own departure, Bligh learned, the
Bounty
returned to Tahiti under Christian’s command, where it was greeted with astonishment by the islanders. It was at this time that Christian gave his story about how Bligh had met with Captain Cook in Whytootackee, where Cook planned to settle. The generous Tahitians, surprised but cooperative, had given Christian all he had asked for—hogs, chickens, plants and women—but not, as it turned out, without some misgivings. Months later, the
Bounty
was back again, and this time Christian appears not to have come ashore. With the majority of his men discontent and sensing a suspicious coolness on the part of the Tahitian chiefs, he had remained long enough only to drop off “16 of his Associates,” Bligh recorded in his log; he had originally written, and then crossed out, “16 of his Villains.” Similarly, his statement of “satisfaction and pleasure in hearing that all these Mutineers were taken by Captain Edwards” was a revision of his earlier noted pleasure “to hear of these Wretches all being taken.” Bligh was also to hear his own story; as he noted with some amazement, one woman had so perfectly learned it “that she told me of all the men who came into my Cabbin and assisted to tie my Hands.”
 
George Stewart, Thomas McIntosh and Richard Skinner had left daughters behind, Bligh learned, while Thomas Burkett and John Millward had left sons. No child of Peter Heywood was mentioned. Some of the mutineers’ children were now said to be dead, but eventually two were brought for Bligh to see. One of these was George Stewart’s daughter, a pretty child about a year old. Her mother had been poor Peggy, “the Woman that Stewart always kept on board the
Bounty,
” who had pined and died after Stewart was taken on the
Pandora.
Later, McIntosh’s wife, Mary, brought her daughter for Bligh to meet, a baby of about ten months old, “a fine little girl,” as Bligh noted.
 
A few other material relics of the mutineers’ lives survived. There was a big drum that Christian had brought from Tubuai. On the dreadful occasion of a human sacrifice, Bligh noted that the king’s
maro,
or ritual feather belt, was adorned with human hair “of a pretty auburn colour”; this, he learned, had once belonged to Richard Skinner, formerly the
Bounty
’s barber. Most significantly, Bligh had been able to contemplate the neat houses and cottage gardens laid and tended by Peter Heywood—“the Villain who assisted in taking the
Bounty
from me”—and his closest friend George Stewart.
 
“His House was at the foot of a Hill, the top of which gave him a fine lookout,” Bligh wrote; the lookout was that from which Peter had first seen the
Pandora.
“He had regulated his garden & the Avenue to his House with some taste.”
 
According to Mary McIntosh, her own husband, Coleman, Hilbrant, Norman, Byrn and Ellison “scarcely ever spoke of me without crying. Stewart & Haywood were perfectly satisfied with their situation, and so were the rest of them.”
 
“They deserved to be killed”; so thought Mary, but she “hoped those who had cried for me would not be hurt.” At the time of Bligh’s writing, in May 1792, Hilbrant had long since gone down in chains with the
Pandora.
The
Gorgon
was on her way to England with the captured mutineers, and young Ellison was shortly to be hanged.
 
Toward the end of June, as the breadfruit were successfully accumulated, Bligh was revisited with another attack of his malady.
 
“I have now no longer the power of bearing much fatigue,” he wrote in his log. “Many necessary duties however cause me to suffer a great deal & I am frequently overcome.” Once again, Lieutenant Portlock was obliged to step in. “Besides a constant Head Ach, I have frequently in the day a sinking at the pit of my stomach, then a dreadfull heat flies up into my Face, which all but a report seems to fly out at the top of my head, as if shot through me—a lowness & flurry of my spirits takes place.” This entire passage Bligh later deleted from his text; such complaints were not consistent with naval duty.

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