THE MAN WHO ATE AN INNOCENT ALBATROSS

The Man Who Ate An Innocent Albatross

The center illustration shown here is cliché art, olden day disinformation spin of a blundering spiritless Governor Bligh, his diplomatic acumen tested and broken. Whether accurate or not the historic artwork, “The Arrest of Governor Bligh”, held by the National Museum of Australia of Bligh being dragged from under a bed should not be entirely disbelieved; it is a one-of-a-kind treasure and should be confronted.

March 31st 1788: after approaching Cape Horn yet unable to claw west, HMAV Bounty is driven 200 torturous miles further into the freezing south. The snub-nosed little ship is often stalled and lay-to under main and foresail only. The Bounty was making way, yet losing it by contrary surface currents and Bligh realized it only too well. Below deck Bligh is peering at his charts dead-reckoning marks, biting his nails and while the ship is heeling and pitching he braces himself against a bulkhead. A kind-hearted paternal Bligh chats with his supernumerary gardener that he has ordered the men’s wet clothes be sufficiently dried by the fires and a pint of hot portable soup be served to every man before going on deck for their watch.Meanwhile the stoves are stoked with wood and men are busily drying their clothes, some coughing in the smoke.

During a lull in the westerly gale, the sun, breaking through clouds brings Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and Midshipman Hayward out onto the windward side of the quarterdeck with sextants in hand. They get their fix and disappear below to calculate and crosscheck the ship’s position. Taking advantage of the officer’s absence, two able seamen ask the Master of the watch if they may cross the quarterdeck to the ship’s stern and try catching albatrosses that had been following them for weeks diving at the ship’s jetsam.

The hunters set a line in the ship’s wake, baiting it a little distance from a trailing hook, cry hoops of glee when they snare two large birds and after breaking their neck they hasten below to deliver their catch to the cook. News of the capture quickly spreads amongst the men and a near blind fiddler, the only Irishman on board, fondles a dead albatross with his fingers and expresses his fear that a “trailing albatross is an omen of good luck my lads, but this dead one I fear shall bring upon us a great burden of penance”. Murmurings of gloom follow but Christian, who had overheard the fiddler, speaks well of the catch and says “I’m sure you’ll all forget that superstitious nonsense when our cook serves us a delicious portion of albatross pie”. While Bligh and Christian eat into their portions they’re interrupted by the Master who declares,“I see a southerly wind shift coming where we might take advantage back on port tack”.  Christian orders the Master to bring up all hands necessary and resume tacking every half watch. Bligh, finishing his albatross pie, pushes his plate aside and compliments Christian for his adherence to duty.

Be that as it may the ghastly deed was done; a sailor’s forbidden fruit, brutally treated then butchered. According to prophecy Bligh had partaken in the murder and gormandizing of an innocent wandering albatross and the stage was set for three mutinies to befall him: first on the Bounty voyage, then in 1797 another uprising while in command of HMS Director in the Thames estuary, and yet a third rebellion against him in 1808 while he was Governor of New South Wales. The latter more commonly known as the Rum Rebellion was part of a broader Australian story that led to plays, films, and television productions. The first titled “The Man Who Shot the Albatross” was followed by twelve 30-minute episodes of “Stormy Petrel”, and then came the two-part series, “Rogue Nation”: accomplished actors John Wood, Brian James, and Leo McKern, delighting their audiences with portrayals of a flamboyant Governor Bligh, including his capture while hiding under a bed in his fortified Government House.

Whatever it is that drives a man to be heroic on one occasion yet cowardly on another is an age-old paradox. Bligh apologists don’t like to be reminded of the cowardice Bligh displayed when he was Governor of New South Wales. To a brassy tune of the Grenadier Guards, Lieutenant Colonel Johnston and his Corps marched on Government House to arrest Bligh. As a climax to the event called the Rum Rebellion, on 26 January 1808, to avoid arrest by Johnston’s brigade, Bligh, in full military dress, panicked and ignominiously hid under a bed in an upstairs room of Government House: an historic event downplayed by some as merely a debatable aspect of his career.* Yet even Bligh’s staunchest advocate and biographer, George Mackeness, in dismissing any claims that he could have hidden under the bed in order to effect an escape, concluded, “in spite of all the arguments, we can only repeat our reasoned conclusion that in a time of crisis, he failed to face up to the issue, and hid under or behind a bed”.

Notwithstanding the odds were against him, instead of standing firm at the gates of Government House, and confronting the soldiers or at least offering to surrender in a dignified manner, while Bligh was cringing under his bed, his own daughter stepped up to the gates and ‘made a valiant attempt to oppose the entry of Johnston and his soldiers.’ In resolving that Bligh had failed in a time of crisis, and rejecting all arguments that his motives were of a strategic nature, Mackaness effectively, reluctantly, acknowledged that Bligh was guilty of cowardice.

There is little doubt that Bligh would face up to a duel where he knew he had a fighting chance, but when faced with a hostile mob, like he was by his own armed soldiers, the facts are that Bligh was terror-stricken and stands forever condemned for his inglorious and shameful conduct. Whether Johnston’s search party found Bligh under or behind a feather bed, as it seems he was, my work adds further insight into Bligh as a coward. Undoubtedly the venerable author Watkin Tench thought so in 1808 when he wrote, “I was firmly and decidedly of opinion that Governor Bligh by tyranny, oppression and rapacity has drawn upon himself the just resentment of the inhabitants of the Colony and met with that spirited opposition and final defeat which I trust all unprincipled despots, whether in court or cottages, always will encounter (…) the concealment under the feather bed made me smile, but did not surprise me the least, as I had long possessed the strongest testimony from a friend who had served with Governor Bligh that he was not only a tyrant, but a poltroon.”

* Bligh was governor of New South Wales from 13 August 1806 to 26 January 1808. Due to his interference in the trading practices of the New South Wales Corps, purportedly for their trafficking of rum, he was deposed in a military putsch led by Johnston. In Captain Bligh’s other Mutiny, 2007, Dando-Collins disputes that rum was the cause of the rebellion, but not Bligh’s inglorious arrest.