Pacifist or Villain — Bligh’s Lucrative Mutiny!

Bligh was not a victim in the Bounty mutiny:

In January 1989 as the bi-centenary of the Bounty mutiny gathered momentum, a ‘New Yorker’ cartoon showed Captain Bligh drifting away from the Bounty in a rowboat and shouting, “So, Mr. Christian! You propose to unceremoniously cast me adrift?”

A lampoon of the famous painting by Robert Dodd depicting the mutineers on the quarterdeck of the Bounty with Bligh gesticulating at Christian from his crowded launch, points to something more than the cartoon caption reads: i.e., “The crew can no longer tolerate Captain Bligh’s ruthless splitting of infinitives.”

It can be entertaining to split an infinitive but in this cartoon there is a double entendre that lurks beyond the ambiguity. Notably the drawing shows all the mutineers having their fingers pressed into their ears. Mirroring the children’s rhyme, “… names will never hurt me”, the taunting is meant to be mischievous. In reality, shamefully, the only resistance Bligh threw at the mutineers during his entire three-hour arrest was more of his verbal abuses. And why would Bligh risk his skin when all the while he was smartly aware that an opportunity for fortune and glory was rapidly unfolding.

Bligh was not a victim in the Bounty mutiny. On the contrary, by offering only token resistance to mutineers, he greatly profited from their crime. Of all the strange things about the mutiny, the oddest of all was that no blood was shed when there should have been. No resolute commander of the times, other than a consummate coward, would ever have abandoned his ship without a ferocious fight, unless he had a fallback plan. Bligh did have such a plan and collecting five hundred guineas compensation for “not” delivering the Bounty’s breadfruit is but one example of just how successful his contingency plan turned out to be. And of the five hundred guineas prize? Bligh kept all of it for himself, and became famous to boot, instead of fading into mediocrity.

(Illustration by cartoonist J. B. Handelsman: published 1989 in the New Yorker; Condé Nast Collection — online)