The mutiny on the Bounty revisited
Fletcher Christian was acting first lieutenant on HMS Bounty. On 28 April 1789, he was the apparent leader of a bloodless revolt in which he seized control of his ship. The mutiny divided the crew with eighteen loyalists and their captain being expelled in the ship’s launch and the remainder staying on with Christian in the Bounty. To this day, arguments have raged as to why Christian committed the outrage. Was it his commander’s tyrannical behavior that caused the men to revolt? Were lovelorn men overtaken by desire to return to their Tahitian attachments, or was Christian’s act simply the result of a moment’s aberration? All these are plausible explanations, but are they really good enough reasons to carry out such an abominable maritime crime? There was nothing too unusual about despotic captains, amorous sailors, or officer’s overly impulsive reactions, so was there an additional cause?
The public perception of the Bounty story starts from the proposition that due to the American war of independence, food import embargos and adverse climatic conditions between the mid 1770’s and the mid 1780’s, occasioned Jamaican colonizers to lose thousands of their slaves through famine. As slaves had become costly or difficult to replace, the planters looked to a less vulnerable, more reliable nourishing food to sustain the slaves they owned. After reviewing glowing reports of a bread like fruit that grew upon trees all year round – which required little cultivation and were not damaged by hurricanes – breadfruit was sought after as a more suitable sustenance than maize, cassava and plantain bananas: their serf’s common staples. A concerned Sir Joseph Banks took up the cause with King George III who, in a great show of benevolence, instructed Banks to arrange for a collection of the breadfruit plant that prospered at Tahiti. Those young trees would then be transported to affected colonies in the West Indies. It was to be a simple fetch and carry naval enterprise sent forth to exploit the King’s newfound discoveries in the Pacific. For his expertise as a cartographer and having had previous experience as Master with Captain James Cook, Banks appointed talented thirty-two year old Lieutenant William Bligh to head the expedition.
Bligh’s small ship, the Bounty, had the tween-decks gutted and re-fitted as a state of the art floating arboretum. Bligh was commissioned to the venture on the sixteenth of August 1787. Because the planned departure times were checked by inclement weather and bureaucratic delays, he was thwarted from entering the Pacific from the Atlantic in the forthcoming austral summer as his Admiralty orders had first imposed. Finally, departing from England late in December 1787, Bligh proceeded first to Tenerife and from there, unable to weather the headwinds off Cape Horn, he turned about and ran down wind to Cape Town. After one further stop at Adventure Bay in Tasmania, Bounty was finally brought to a safe anchorage at Matavai Bay, Tahiti. During this lengthy outward voyage of ten months, there was some discontent, there was some violence, but for the most part it was comparatively uneventful. Except for the death of one seaman due to septicemia, the men generally arrived in reasonable health.
The commonly held notion is that from the moment Bounty’s anchor hits the bottom of the bay the countdown for mutiny accelerates. Traditionally we read of nymphs of the ‘noble savage’, voluptuous Tahitian woman, swimming out to storm the Bounty in rapidly dissolving tapa robes for the recreation of Bligh’s crew. A mean-spirited blue-jacketed Bligh, a stickler for the rules, some said unfit to command, then steps ashore and fools a native chief into believing he is Captain Cook’s son. Exchanges of gifts take place and the ruling host is further tricked into providing breadfruit plants as reciprocal offerings to the trusted visitor’s King. There are impressions of breadfruit groves, abundant supplies with budding shoots just waiting to be harvested by Bligh’s gardeners. The romantic minded may wish to believe that for the next twenty-three weeks there was nothing less than a sailors spree of unbridled shore leave, of debauchery and gourmandizing on sweet fresh tropical fruits, the pairing off of copper and pale skins in a sun-drenched utopia. As for the Bligh stereotype, from some we read of his stubborn nature, his violent temper, a notorious sadistic tyrant ill-treating his officers and crew alike; from others that his personage was kind for the times, a self-righteous exactor of the Christian faith, a pious voyeur forgiven for his odd interests in ethnology. Or that Bligh was not cruel enough, that there was a notable lack of floggings and this confused his crew who expected, even yearned, for more abuse. But there was tyranny on the quarterdeck, it continued without abate, the grandiloquent Bligh tormented his acting lieutenant, abused his long time friend, foul-mouthed the gentleman officers, swore at his crew. The New Cytherea looked more attractive by the day; there was discontent on the Bounty; but sanctuary behind the beach. Supposedly pressed seamen, brutalized underdogs of underdogs, unused to the pleasantries of ribald Tahitian woman, were reluctant to revert from whence they came – they ran away – they were captured – they were dehumanized.
As for twenty-three weeks collecting breadfruit, Bligh recorded only snippets. The most popular tenet as to why he stayed so long at Tahiti was timing for his return passage, to seek out and survey a safe route through Torres Straits. Therefore to gain the advantage of prevailing winds, Bligh would have to remain in Tahiti till early April. The story goes that this overstay served to undermine the discipline of his crew, it allowed them to form tender attachments, to become slothful bluejackets, disorderly seamen. No European ship had ever tempted so long a stay at such a Garden of Eden. Eventually the Bounty laden with potted breadfruit departed for the dreaded Torres Strait. Then as the sharp-coned peaks and green cut ravines fade into the mist, the allure of Tahiti presses deep upon the loins of a lovelorn brutalized crew. Christian is dazed, blurred and maddened from his Captains constant abuse: the two protagonists clash, Christian cannot win, Bligh twists the knife and Christian breaks down but conditions are soon ripe for his ascendancy. There is a lack of water, there is an altercation about coconuts, there is dissent. Christian considers deserting the ship but decides to steal it instead.
The mortified young gentleman championing the cause of his tyrannized shipmates suddenly turns mutineer. Christian, once Bligh’s favored and privileged friend, who was charged with the most favored ship and shore duties, is now seen treacherously ordering his astonished Captain on deck then into the Bounty’s launch: banishing Bligh, the ships master and seventeen stalwart loyalists, castaway on a glorious Pacific morning to a dark and dubious fate. Apart from a bit of noise, the mutiny was oddly bloodless, it had a curious quality of a bizarre family feud, the entire affair had an eerie almost surreal peculiarity, a strange essence indeed.
After leaving ‘Bully-Bligh’ and his faithful to their end, a mutineer is said to have whooped ‘huzza for Tahiti’. After ridding Bounty of the bothersome breadfruit, Fletcher Christian and his rebels returned to their connections at Tahiti. Faring badly as villains often do, the outcasts soon turned upon themselves and culminating at Pitcairn Island, the Bounty was deliberately destroyed by fire. In a grand quixotic finale, years later, only one escapee survived to tell the tale. The legend continued with Bligh’s epic voyage in the launch to Timor and his eventual return to England. There, to an eager audience, Bligh narrated his dour watery ordeal. In this his first battle for public empathy, he had become the popular hero. But then came the people’s turn for revenge. In an expedition of retribution, the Admiralty mobilized its bounty-hunter; juggernauts on a capture or kill mission. After sailing to Tahiti, Captain Edwards in the Pandora manages to arrest fourteen of the Bounty delinquents and incarcerates them in his scandalous Pandora’s box. But on the return passage he too loses his ship. Pandora is wrecked and sinks among the same Torres Straits reefs where Bligh was loath to go. Castaway as Bligh was, Edwards and ninety-nine survivors all surmount epic open boat treks to Timor. In due time, ten remaining accused are returned to England to face the Kings justice. Meanwhile spurred with further incentives, Bligh returns to Tahiti in the Providence to complete his original undertaking. Finally in 1793, he triumphantly delivered up his potted breadfruit to the botanic gardens of St. Vincent then Jamaica. It is often reported that the little trees prospered in their new island grounds, and as the seasons rolled by, the planters rejoiced at the deliverance of the ‘staff-of-life’. However, their toilers, those wretched ungrateful black slaves, turned their noses up at the fleshy strangers and stubbornly refused to eat them.
Outlined above is classical Bountiana; the hackneyed story; the Hollywood concept; but it’s not historically accurate. Conspiracy on the Bounty is a factual account with an unusual forensic approach: by analyzing what most likely would have occurred had there been no mutiny at all, and Bligh had continued on his way, new facts behind the mutiny unfold. What really happened on the Bounty is quite different from the stereotype. Emerging from records of Bligh’s Bounty and Providence expeditions, and applying what science can now tell us about his collections of breadfruit plants, perceptions of the mutiny are dramatically changed. Before going there I should warn that this book is not a remix of traditional Bountiana, it is not characterized by familiar signs, the mutiny is not approached from a purely logical aspect, at least not to begin with. With compelling fresh evidence begging to be told, the enquiry is reopened.