Who Dares, Loses !

Bountiana in Decline:

It is a sad fact that the story of Lieutenant Bligh’s historic launch voyage has been relegated to a trashy reality television show. On 10 July 2017 Australian SBS television re-aired Channel 4’s first episode of “Mutiny”, a five part UK series in which SAS — Who Dares Wins — instructor Anthony Middleton and 8 other men, very badly recreate Bligh’s journey from Tonga to Timor following the mutiny on the Bounty.

Bligh’s open boat voyage was undoubtedly a tough and risky venture, but it should be kept in perspective with other navigators who had previously led the way. Through successive involuntary or voluntary migrations and visitations, by c1400 AD, all the Pacific archipelagos had been populated and almost all the islands had been discovered using rudimentary craft compared with Bligh’s sturdy heavy displacement launch. From the available drawings, on a carefully calculated safe load line, the launch would have displaced approximately 3¼ tons though its actual light-weight would be closer to two tons. ‘The largest ship’s boat on a naval ship in 1788 was commonly called the longboat. However by that date many were built with a deep broad hull and were known as launches.’ Bligh’s launch was 23ft 2in length, 7ft beam, and 2ft 10½in draft (7.06 — 2.13 — 0.87 meters).

Lavishly funded and produced by Windfall Films*, the series promoters falsely claim the reenactment was the first of its kind where in fact there has now been five reenactments and possibly others who had kept their achievements to themselves. Looking at the better-known events let us adjudicate how each of these performances should be placed: i.e., as survival challenges rather than quests for fame or material gain.

1. Definitely first place should go to Irish adventurer, William Verity: in the early 1970’s 45 year Verity (bottom left photo) decided to build an exact replica of the Bounty’s launch and follow single-handedly in Bligh’s wake to Timor. Like Bligh, Verity was experienced in handling open boats in any conditions. Verity’s launch had been shipped from America to Tonga as a bare-boat, though before departing, for optimum stability, Verity had his vessel loaded to a displacement close to that which Bligh contended with in the Bounty launch. Aside from accidentally surfing the much-feared outer Great Barrier Reef, Verity’s reenactment was an uneventful affair; nothing of biblical proportions arose; much different from Bligh, indeed other reenactors; Verity was a reserved individual. After arriving in Bali quite safely Verity sent a post card to the Editor-in-Chief of the Popular Science magazine stating he “had one hell of a boat ride plus a 1000 miles extra to make a phone call! Exposure, poor food, lack of sleep, and cooked through and through by the sun made for a tough 5000-mile solo passage. The launch could not have been better at sea”.

2. Second place goes to Jasper Shackleton, a 31 year descendant of the Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton: his replica was built on the same slipway where Bounty’s launch had been built some 200 years before. Departing in 1989 with four other keen men, without anything like the pomp and ceremony of other reenactments, Shackleton said that despite their privations the five-man crew was ‘first rate and got on very well’. And similar to Verity sailing the extra 1000 miles to make a phone call, when Shackleton reached Timor, he and his crew were deported and they sailed an additional 550 miles to Bali. Also like Verity’s reenactment, Shackleton sailed without the aid of a support vessel.

3. Third place goes to Ronald Ware: In enormous contrast to Verity’s humble reenactment, Ware, a seventh generation descendant of Bligh’s daughter, Mary, decided to act out his boyhood dream and in 1982 had a replica of the launch built in Whangarei, New Zealand. He called his dreamboat Child of Bounty. In 1983 after much ado and a ‘bon-voyage’ from HRH Prince Philip himself, Ware, his six man crew plus a supernumerary cameramen managed to get the Child’ caught on a lee shore off Tofua, and before the show had begun, was lucky not to get shipwrecked. Embarrassingly, Ware had to be towed clear of Tofua by an accompanying yacht (the expedition film crew) to nearby Kao Island. Finally they set sail for Fiji where they staged a mock battle with headhunting Fijian actors for the benefit of the on-board camera crew. Stopping here and there to bathe in Melanesian pageantry, and fishing for tuna in between, Ware headed for Vanuatu. There they picked up an additional cameraman and met with their film crew on another vessel that would accompany them. After departing Vanuatu for Restoration Island, Ware wrote how they ran before a Force 10 gale and ‘whooped exultantly’ as they surfed their replica down waves at speeds of ‘30-35 knots’. At such an incredible velocity, the Child’s barnacles must have been blown away. Soon after arriving at the Great Barrier Reef they anchored at Restoration Island. Here they completed pratique (quarantine). After a sumptuous barbecue from the fruits of the sea as Bligh could have done, they fixed a plaque to commemorate Bligh’s landing and no doubt theirs. Ware then headed for Thursday Island in the Torres Strait where an unsettled crewmember bid farewell. Upon setting out for Timor, Ware considered that an unusual El Niño weather pattern was responsible for an increase in normal winds and rain during his 1983 reenactment. If Ware’s analysis is accurate, it shows that Bligh’s Launch had not been subjected to anywhere near its potential seaworthy capabilities.

4. Fourth place goes to veteran adventurer Don McIntyre. Up against public boredom with familiar reenactments, with a compliment of four men, McIntyre’s 2010 adventure very publicly advertised his promoter’s single malt Talisker Scotch Whisky. In this longer 7.62-metre double-ended whale boat McIntyre admitted it was not an attempt to be historically correct, rather to try getting close to Bligh and his men, using similar navigational equipment and facing similar deprivations, like taking no charts nor even toilet paper, as one naïve journalist wrote.

5. Last place must go to Anthony Middleton’s overly fanciful and highly inaccurate reenactment. The subject of Channel 4’s Mutiny series is human conflict, survival, and performance of nine all-male actors under duress. The filmmaker provides a background of first person narrative taken out of context from Bligh’s notebook, and does nothing to revive the question of unreliability of Bligh’s remarks. Middleton’s alpha male performance and contrived winging only demonstrates that Bligh was more stoic than he was. We are left with the aesthetic experience and the cast’s overacting as if they were lampooning Bligh’s serious efforts, certainly not in line with the producer’s esoteric message. Even so Middleton’s portrayal does do something to sanitize Bligh’s darker side. Bligh was a fascinating character, and whether you’re a Bligh proponent or not is irrelevant when collecting material on Bligh “the man”, more important is not getting beguiled by groups with confined interests.

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Curiosity about Bligh has spawned an industry that’s grown into something of a bountiana juggernaut: a lucrative industry resisting change, and in this instance, denies other collaborative material into the player’s scripts. Notably a scriptwriter for this series was directed to base his draft on Caroline Alexander’s book The Bounty, a work crafted to dampen Bligh’s evil reputation. The scriptwriter said, and I quote, he was ‘hide-bound by the fact that my producers have optioned Caroline’s book so wish to play close to her version’. For Channel 4’s corporate culture, Conspiracy on the Bounty presents an inconvenient reality so the scriptwriter was compelled to adhere to his terms of reference or else! Channel 4’s pretense that Middleton’s performance was the first reenactment has not escaped public criticism. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/05/done-mutiny-bounty-recreated-decades-ago-channel-4-bill-new/

Putting challenger shows to one side, it was Bligh’s own performance that attracted the greatest personal benefit; it catapulted an undistinguished Lieutenant to Captain and rewarded him with gold and guinness as well. Bligh had a vested interest in exaggerating the dangers and embellishing the proceedings of his launch voyage, yet there are no obvious exaggerations to be found in one crewmember’s journal. According to Fryer there were only two occasions when the launch came near to ‘swamping’: once within clear sight of the south shore of Timor, and then again within swimming distance in the channel between Roti Island and Timor. On both occasions the launch had been caught in ‘foul’ cross-seas produced by wind against tide. Conspiracy on the Bounty — Bligh’s Convenient Mutiny, presents a very different picture of Bligh’s voyage from Tofua to Timor plus what went on before, and what came after.

Back on the Bounty as the mutiny unfolded Bligh got most things he needed and it was only bad timing that he hadn’t obtained firearms as well. Few realize that after Bligh boarded the launch, Christian attempted to tow him ashore; further, after his departure from nearby Tofua Island only a wind shift prevented a day’s sail to Tongatapu where Bligh was friendly with prominent chiefs and where he could wait for a visiting ship. Cashing in on Bligh’s fame, all five recreations of the boat voyage, while they’ve not been without incident, notably they have all been without serious accident. If nothing else these reenactments have demonstrated that Bligh’s launch, and the replicas that followed in its wake, were an adequate means of voyaging from Tonga to Timor. Certainly the reenactments would never have taken place if the performers ever truly believed there was a real chance they might die.

Well in advance of the mutiny Bligh considered there was a far better chance of navigating through Torres Strait in a shallow open boat than he would have had in the Bounty.** It is a responsibility of a commander to plan for the possibility of accident ahead. By passing through the uncharted strait in the launch, Bligh was well rewarded and it secured him a place in history – it enhanced his chances of survival. Back in England people could not be expected to relate to the relative safeness of Bligh’s boat journey. Running about London trumpeting his story, Bligh reinvented himself as a Naval hero. If the launch voyage was ever an overly tough human endeavor then it was Bligh who had made it that way by rushing instead of recouping where he had had the chance. In reality Bligh was delighted to make Timor so swiftly, and in comparative good health; it was a brave new beginning for him, but it was a bittersweet landing for his reluctant crew – they aught to have been commemorated for preserving their commander and not expelling him along the way.

An afterword for modern sailors:
For cautious folk sailing hither-and-thither over the global milk-run, if you’re planning to sail from Tonga to Timor keep a good watch at night for replicas of Bligh’s launch with no lights; and if you do spot one, for the sake of seagoing courtesy, toss a cheer by waving ahoy to the want-to-be-in-it challengers, and also to the crews on their brightly lit support ships frolicking close by on the waves.

* The “Mutiny” series was commissioned for Channel 4 by Rob Coldstream and produced by Windfall Films, part of the Argonon group and GroupM Entertainment. The Executive Producers for Windfall are Ian Duncan and David Dugan, Series Editor Sophie Todd and Series Producer Steven Handley.

** What happened prior to the mutiny was a sequential failing of Bligh’s cargo of breadfruit plants — a systemic collapse of the plants biological resources, a reason that triggered Bligh’s odd behavior prior the bloodless mutiny. Conspiracy on the Bounty rigorously questions Bligh’s orders to sail through Torres Strait in an unsuitable ship without the aid of an escort vessel. The book thoroughly addresses the cause of the mutiny, and why Bligh ended up sailing to Timor in his launch instead of Nuku’alofa at the populous island of Tongatapu.

[Karl E. A. Lorbach — 23 July 2017]