Читать книгу The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty - Caroline Alexander, Caroline Alexander - Страница 10

On 23 December, the Bounty sailed at break of a boisterous, cloudy day. By night she was already battling heavy squalls. Near disaster occurred within the first twenty-four hours, when one of the sailors fell from the main topgallant sail, and narrowly saved himself by grabbing a stay. As rain and sleet drove down, Bligh ordered the sails close-reefed, the deadlights in and hatches battened. Heavy seas struck the ship, carrying away extra sails and a yard. By the evening of the twenty-fifth the weather had abated, which, as Bligh noted in his log, ‘allowed us to spend our Christmas pleasantly.’ Beef and plum pudding were served for dinner, washed down with an allowance of rum.

The well-timed respite was brief, and in the following days the heavy gales increased to a storm that piled up alarming, huge seas. Sleet and rain stung the men as they lurched and fumbled at their duties, and the Bounty herself was slammed with great waves that stove in all the boats, almost washing them overboard.

‘We were an entire Sea on Deck,’ Bligh recorded. The sham windows of the great cabin were also stove in, and water flooded inside. So severe was the wind that Bligh dared not attempt to turn his ship to lie to but, dangerously, was forced to scud ahead of the great following sea.

‘But the Ship scuds very well,’ he allowed – Bligh’s pride in the Bounty never flagged. When conditions allowed, he ordered fires lit to dry his men’s sodden gear. ‘Thick Rainy Weather’ continued, and belowdecks he found that casks of rum and stores of fish and bread had been damaged or destroyed by the thundering, incoming seas.

On 29 December, the weather diminished to a moderate gale. ‘Out all Reefs, Up Top G[allan]t Yards & set the sails,’ Bligh’s log sang out. Slowly the ship regrouped. Bligh ordered the men to wash all their dirty linen, and by noon shirts and breeches were hung all around the ship, fluttering in a fresh, drying breeze. Additional clothing and tobacco were given to the men, always a good move for restoring morale.

On 5 January, following a good run through the night, Tenerife was sighted, its landmark peak hidden in clouds. By break of the following day, the Bounty was safely moored off Santa Cruz. It was drizzling, but the winds were calm and the temperature pleasant, hovering just below 70 degrees.

Once anchored, Bligh detailed an officer to go ashore to pay respects to the governor. The officer in question is not named in Bligh’s log, but in a subsequent published narrative he pointedly reported that this was ‘Mr. Christian’. The delegation of the master’s mate for this vaguely prestigious function would suggest that at this early date Bligh regarded Christian as his de facto lieutenant. Christian had been instructed to request the governor’s permission to restock supplies and to repair the damaged ship. He was also to inform His Excellency that Lieutenant Bligh was willing to salute him provided that the salute was returned with the same number of guns; ‘but as his Excellency never returned the same Number but to persons equal in Rank to himself, this ceremony was laid aside.’ Still, Bligh was able to meet with the governor personally, thanking him ‘for his politeness and Civility’, and was later to dine with him.

While his ship was being prepared and stocked, Bligh toured Santa Cruz and made an informal survey of the harbour. He had been here before with Captain Cook, and this first port of call must have impressed upon him again the flattering thought that he was indeed following in his distinguished mentor’s footsteps. Although Santa Cruz was by now well-trodden ground, Bligh’s description of the town in his log is characteristically detailed and fulsome. In its barest form, a ship’s log was a record of daily weather, winds, mileage, position, and ‘Remarks’, which could be as spare as a simple notation of sails set and duties performed, or as descriptive as a proper journal, depending upon the nature of both the captain and his mission. Fortunately, Bligh was as meticulous in keeping his log as he was in performing all other aspects of nautical duty; by ‘Cloudy Weather,’ he observed in his preface, ‘is to be understood the Sun is not to be seen or but very seldom. Fair Weather or Open Cloudy Weather is when the Sun can be frequently seen…’ – nothing was left to chance. A log was also a legal document, a true and accurate account of daily proceedings, to be deposited with the Admiralty at voyage’s end. Bligh was to leave two logs of the Bounty voyage, one private and one official. Parts of each have been lost, but most of each survive, and when laid side by side they are identical in most respects. Where they do differ is enlightening; in general, Bligh was much freer with criticism of individuals, often named, in his private account, while such passages have been tactfully omitted in his official copy. Bligh’s logs of the Bounty are the only contemporary, running accounts of her voyage, written as events unfolded.

In the best expeditionary tradition, while at Santa Cruz Bligh had been careful to receive from the governor permission for David Nelson to do some botanizing in the surrounding hills. For his part, this time was mostly spent in overhauling his ship. His plan to replace damaged stores with fresh provisions, however, was disappointed, and in the end Santa Cruz supplied only 230 pounds of inferior beef, some pumpkins and potatoes. The Bounty had been victualled before departure with all the usual stores – biscuit, salt beef, pork, cheese, butter, malt, sauerkraut, peas, raisins, rum, spirits and beer, as well as the fairly innovative ‘portable soup’, slabs of dried bouillon intended as a defence against scurvy – calculated for approximately eighteen months of what would be at minimum a two-year voyage. Additional supplies, particularly fresh meat, greens and fruit, water and wood for fuel, were to be obtained en route at strategic ports of call, either by purchase or, where there were no settlements, by foraging.

Judging from the letters he wrote before leaving Tenerife, Bligh was in high spirits as he set out, despite his knowledge that the most problematic part of his journey – the rounding of Cape Horn – still lay ahead.

‘I have the happyness to tell you my little ship does wonderfully well,’ he wrote to Campbell. ‘I have her now the completest ship I believe that ever swam & she really looks like one fit to encounter difficulties…’ Before signing off, Bligh was pleased to inform him that a protégé of Campbell’s, young Tom Ellison, was ‘improving [and] will make a very good seaman.’ To Banks, Bligh reported that he and his men were ‘all in excellent spirits and I have still the greatest confidence of success in every part of the Voyage.’

On 11 January 1788, the Bounty fired a farewell salute and got under way. Only hours out to sea the ship was taken aback by rainy squalls. To ensure that his small crew would be as rested as possible for the almost certainly arduous passage ahead, Bligh ordered them into three watches, instead of the traditional two. In this manner, each watch was ensured a period of eight unbroken hours of sleep, instead of the traditional watch-and-watch – four hours on duty, four hours of sleep.

‘I have ever considered this among Seamen as Conducive to health,’ Bligh recorded in his log. ‘And not being Jaded by keeping on Deck every other four hours, it adds much to their Content and Cheerfulness.’ This was one of Cook’s innovations, and it undoubtedly was appreciated by Bligh’s men. In a decision that was to have unimagined consequences, Bligh designated Fletcher Christian, ‘one of the Mates’, as officer of the third watch.

As another measure against the uncertainties of the immediate passage ahead, Bligh mustered his company and announced that he was putting them on a ration of two-thirds allowance of bread or ship’s biscuit to ensure that it would last as long as possible. The sailors, respectful of what they knew the Horn could offer, understood this precaution, and according to James Morrison, it ‘was cheerfully received’.

The cloudy weather was soon cleared by fresh, light breezes. Four days out and the ship was actually becalmed, making only five miles in twenty-four hours. The men were kept busy airing bedding, drying bread, rechecking stores and sails. The light breezes returned and by 17 January the Bounty was ambling under clear skies through smooth seas.

‘Very pleasant Weather,’ Bligh logged. ‘All Sails set before the Wind.’ In these easygoing conditions he ordered the entire ship washed and then rinsed down with vinegar, which served as a disinfectant. This was to be a regular routine, as were his Sunday inspections of his mustered men, whose clothing and even fingernails he personally checked for cleanliness. Bligh’s model in this almost fetishistic concern for hygiene was Captain Cook. When Cook had found a man with dirty hands, he had stopped his grog. In an age in which more seamen were lost to disease than to naval wars, Cook had managed to return from voyages of several years’ duration with minimal fatalities. A diet of sauerkraut and sweet wort, or malt extract, the procuring of fresh produce wherever possible, the endless rigorous washings and inspections, the three watches – all these practices had been conscientiously noted by the young Bligh during his service to his formidable mentor and were now earnestly applied on his own little ship. Mandatory, and soon despised, dancing sessions were implemented under this same improving philosophy.

‘Sometime for relaxation and Mirth is absolutely necessary,’ Bligh had stated in his log, ‘and I have considered it so much so that after 4 O’Clock, the Evening is laid aside for their Amusement and dancing. I had great difficulty before I left England to get a Man to play the Violin and I prefered at last to take One two thirds Blind than come without one.’ This much-sought-after musician was the disagreeable Michael Byrn.

As the fair weather continued, the Bounty passed flying fish and porpoises, and occasionally spotted a shark. Towards the end of January, a fine moon shone on her as she sailed the dark night sea. Boobies, shearwaters and a man-of-war bird were seen, although far from land.

The pleasant and orderly passage was spoiled for Bligh by the discovery that his surgeon, the corpulent, lazy Thomas Huggan, was ‘a Drunken Sot’. Bligh was forced to record, ‘He is constantly in liquor, having a private Stock by him which I assured him shall be taken away if he does not desist from Making himself such a Beast.’ After all the effort and energy required to keep his ship clean scrubbed, his men in clean linen and clean habits, this was a bitter blow to Bligh. His worthy goal was to return his men as soundly as Cook would have done, and now the very individual he most required as an ally – his surgeon – had proved unfit. This meant increased vigilance of his men’s health and habits on Bligh’s part.

As the Bounty headed south, the weather thickened, becoming warmer – into the eighties – cloudier and wet. ‘Sultry & Hot,’ Bligh recorded on 26 January. ‘Got everything up from below & gave all the Air possible between Decks.’ The rainfall was never intense, but thunder and lightning often spread across the unbroken sky. Airing of the ship continued and on the last day of January, the Bounty was washed, yet again, with vinegar, so that ‘by the Evening the Ship was perfectly Sweet & refreshing.’ That same night, lightning played all around the heavens, while ‘a prodigious number of Porpoises’ swam with the ship through a sea aglow with luminous fish. The following evening as Bligh stood enjoying the spectacle of the Bounty’s long wake at the close of a fine, clear day, he was horrified to see ‘a dreadfull breaking shoal’ rising directly in their tracks. How had he and his sharp lookouts missed this? Staring again, Bligh saw the ‘shoal’ resolve itself into a school of porpoises, their backs breaking the waves as would a sandbar.

The close, occasionally thunderous weather continued and on 8 February, the Bounty crossed the equator. A somewhat modified version of the traditional ceremony for crossing the line was enacted, with the old hands presiding as King Neptune and his court. The twenty-seven officers and men, or over half the ship’s company, who had never crossed before now underwent the rough initiation – covered with tar, ‘shaved’ with the edge of an iron hoop, and compelled to give Neptune gifts of rum. The rum was in lieu of the most fearful part of the usual ceremony – ducking from the yardarm – which Bligh forbade, on the grounds that ‘of all the Customs it is the most brutal and inhuman.’

The day after the ceremony, a Sunday, Bligh ‘mustered the People and saw every thing Clean.’ Divine service was performed, by Bligh, and ‘every person attended with decorum & much decency.’ A few days later, a sail was seen in the early morning; next day they fell in with the British Queen, a whaler bound to the Cape of Good Hope. This fortuitous meeting allowed the Bounty to send letters via the Cape to England. To the Heywoods, Bligh wrote a ‘flattering’ account of young Peter’s progress. To Duncan Campbell, Bligh reported that the passage had been pleasant and that he had acquired some fine wine for Campbell, which he would present on his return.

‘My Men all active good fellows,’ Bligh wrote, ‘& what has given me much pleasure is that I have not yet been obliged to punish any one.’ Food and wine were good: ‘with fine Sour Krout, Pumpkins and dryed Greens and a fresh Meal five times a week I think is no bad living. My Men are not badly off either as they share in all but the Poultry, and with much content & chearfullness, dancing always from 4 untill eight at Night I am happy to hope I shall bring them all home well.’ Once again, Bligh ended with a note about Campbell’s protégé: Tom Ellison is a very good Boy and will do very well.’

To Joseph Banks, Bligh reported nothing but contentment. ‘I am happy and satisfyed in my little ship and we are now fit to go round half a score of worlds,’ he wrote – how different from the fretful, worried letters penned before departure! ‘Both Men & Officers tractable and well disposed & chearfulness & content in the countenance of every one. I am sure nothing is even more conducive to health. I have no cause to inflict punishments for I have no offenders and every thing turns out to my most sanguine expectations.’ This repeated reference to the fact that there had been no need for punishment – flogging – is revealing. It would seem that to Bligh, infliction of punishment was like sickness, and scurvy, something that had no place on a well-run ship. William Bligh had set out to make the perfect voyage.

To Banks, as to Campbell, Bligh concluded with an update on the progress of a protégé. ‘Young Hallet is very well and is a very fine young man,’ he informed Banks, ‘and I shall always attend to every thing that can be of service to him.’

Parting company with the British Queen, the Bounty continued south and days later ‘passed the limits of the Southern Tropic.’ Incrementally, the temperature began to drop. Vast numbers of seabirds were noted – shearwaters, albatross – as well as turtles and numerous whales; one afternoon a cloud of butterflies was blown past the ship. Then, on Sunday, March 2, after divine service and the usual inspection of his men, Bligh made an announcement ‘I now thought it for the Good of the Service to give Mr. Fletcher Christian an Acting Order as Lieut. I therefore Ordered it to be read to all hands.’ This was another clear indication of Bligh’s patronage, if not favouritism, of Christian; a long stint as acting lieutenant would in the normal course of things ensure the master’s mate of promotion on his return.

A week later, out of the blur of notations about butterflies and shearwaters, porpoises and whales, Bligh’s log records an event that returned him squarely to the world of his men: ‘Untill this Afternoon I had hopes I could have performed the Voyage without punishment to any One,’ Bligh wrote, with evident regret, ‘but I found it necessary to punish Mathew Quintal with 2 dozen lashes for Insolence and Contempt.’

In a subsequent published narrative, Bligh expanded on the event. ‘Upon a complaint made to me by the master, I found it necessary to punish Matthew Quintal, one of the seamen, with two dozen lashes, for insolence and mutinous behaviour. Before this, I had not had occasion to punish any person on board.’

Now began the whole grim ritual; the crew mustered to watch Quintal, aged twenty-two, from Cornwall, stripped to the waist and strapped, spread-eagled, by the wrists and ankles to an upright deck grating. With no marines to drum or pipe, this would have been a lacklustre ceremony, itself stripped down to its most pertinent and brutal elements. By all later reports, Quintal, of middle height and ‘strong made’, was a dangerously disaffected troublemaker. It does not appear from the manner in which the incident was logged, however, that Bligh himself had been witness to Quintal’s insubordination; no matter. Once his master logged the event and brought it to Bligh’s attention, Bligh was compelled to administer punishment, and his perfect record was now spoiled.

While the small crew stood formally mustered to witness the punishment in the damp, hazy weather, Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison – the literate diarist, with his smattering of classical education – administered the flogging. For Bligh, whose humane principles had forbidden men’s being ducked when crossing the line, the familiar ritual must have been a singularly unpleasant landmark on his voyage. The natural coarseness of men’s habits – their dirty clothes and fingernails, his surgeon’s ‘beastly’ drunkenness, their cruel and brutal pranks – all offended him. He had chosen a profession infamous for poor conditions and dirty habits, in which men counted on taking brutal poundings from their fellow men and from the sea. Yet Bligh expected his ship to be ‘perfectly sweet’ and scented with vinegar, hardened seamen to wear clean clothes and scrub their hands, cheerfulness to be seen on every countenance and merry dancing in the evening. There was no dirt or disease in Bligh’s vision of the perfect voyage, and no punishment. Busily intent on his many burdensome responsibilities, Bligh was unlikely to have taken note of his men’s practised and scrutinizing gazes. Did they perceive that it was their fastidious, bustling captain who avoided the lash?

The damp, hazy weather closed in and by the following day had become dense fog. The temperature continued to drop, and when the fog cleared the air was felt to be cold. In the afternoon, one of the men shot an albatross that fell dying into the ocean, and a boat was sent out to collect it. On board its wingspan was gravely measured. The superstition that the killing of an albatross brought bad luck was not yet prevalent; Coleridge had not yet written ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – this would follow later.

The Bounty was now as far south as the fortieth latitude, the ‘roaring forties’, and was drawing parallel with the coast of Patagonia. A wet, dense fog forbade sight of land, although south of Puerto Deseado the men ‘saw what was supposed to be the looming of it.’ Whales appeared in great numbers and seemed to enjoy lying in groups of two and three windward of the ship, expelling great blasts of spray over the men.

A strong gale arose on 20 March as the Bounty approached the Jasons, the northwesternmost of the Falkland Islands. Albatross, petrels and snowbirds flocked and hovered around the rigging, as if wishing to perch. The wind and sea became violent and Bligh was anxious to get south of the islands; he had by now given up his earlier plan of stopping here for wood and water. The weather was fast deteriorating and he could afford no delays.

Before dawn on 23 March, the goats and single dog on board began to agitate, and the men declared that the animals could smell land. Soon, in the moonlight, hills could be made out to the west, and when daylight broke the mountains of Tierra del Fuego could be seen, mostly free of snow.

‘I realy look upon the bad or Winter Weather not yet to be set in,’ Bligh wrote. ‘But as I must expect it hourly I have no right to loose a Moment…’

Skirting Le Maire Strait, they passed the desolate, mountainous country of Staten Island to the east. Now, at nearly the 55° latitude south, the Bounty was fast approaching the Horn. A hint of the weather they were in for hit the ship on 27 March, with the arrival of a strong gale and an ‘exceedingly High’ sea.

‘It would not be possible for a laboursome Ship to keep her Masts,’ Bligh observed. His ship, as he had often proudly noted, was not ‘laboursome’, but well behaved. Her hatches were all battened down, and although towering seas broke over her, so far the men kept ‘tolerably dry’. The temperature was now in the upper thirties, and the weather wet and raw.

‘I Ordered the People to have Wheat [porridge] served every day with Sugar & Butter to enable them to have a comfortable hot breakfast,’ Bligh logged. Hour after hour, his men were required to reef and hand the sails; then reset them; then reef again, up and down the perilous, pitching rigging in the menacing cold. The sea, Bligh wrote wonderingly, ‘exceeds any I have seen.’

When the gale moderated, Bligh ordered the belowdecks cleaned and dried. The sea was still so huge that he had difficulty taking sightings, as the mountainous waves swamped his horizon. Over the next few days the gales moderated, then increased, moderated, then ‘blew a Storm of Wind and the Snow fell so heavy that it was scarce possible to haul the sails up and furl them from the Weight and Stiffness.’ With the great sea running confused and contrary, sleet and hail began to fall.

‘At 6 In the Morning the Storm exceeded anything I had met with and a Sea higher than I had ever seen before,’ Bligh entered in his log. The ship was carrying only her staysails, all the canvas that could be risked.

‘My next business was to see after my People who had undergone some fatigue,’ Bligh wrote, his ship safe for the time being. A fire blazed continuously in the galley and someone was set to dry clothes around the clock. Bligh ordered large quantities of the ‘Portable Soup’ of which he was very proud, added to the men’s ‘Pease’, or pea pudding, ‘which made a Valuable and good dinner for them.’

Incredibly, the gales increased, carrying blasts of snow and sleet, the sharp winds piling the sea to windward ‘like a Wall’. Still, Bligh could note that blue petrels and pintados, ‘two beautiful kinds of birds,’ followed their wake. The Bounty was losing ground, being driven back the hard-won miles. At the close of 3 April, she was farther north than she had been six days before.

‘All I have to do now is to Nurse my people with care and attention,’ wrote Bligh, ‘and like Seamen look forward to a New Moon for a Change of Wind and Weather.’ The gale moderated in the early hours of the following morning, and although a cold rain fell, the men were able to check and service rigging as well as clean up and dry below. With fresh gales and mere squalls, the Bounty made headway, and over the next few days, under close-reefed sails, clawed her way to 60° 14’ south; this was to be the extreme limit of her southing. For ten days, Bligh pushed the Bounty and her men through squalls of sleet and hail, ‘dark wet nights’ and strong gales, through fog and high confused seas. At midnight on the thirteenth, the ship was hit by so severe a gale that the decks were ‘twice filled with the Sea.’ Now all pumps were worked every hour. Although the hatches were closed – and had been for close to three months – the belowdecks was awash and Bligh turned over his great cabin ‘to the Use of those poor fellows who had Wet Births.’ It is not noted if Bligh himself slept at all.

Despite all exertions – the constant fires, dry clothes, dry berths and hot food at every meal – the weeks since passing Staten Island had begun to take their toll. Huggan had his shoulder thrown out when the ship lurched, and in the midst of a ‘Very Severe’ gale and ‘a high breaking sea’, Thomas Hall, the cook, fell and broke a rib. William Peckover, the gunner, and Charles Norman, carpenter’s mate, were laid up with rheumatic complaints. Every man out of commission increased the burden of the remaining small crew.

‘I have now every reason to find Men and Ship Complaining, which Will the soonest determine this point,’ Bligh confided to his log.

That point soon came, and on 17 April, Bligh determined to abandon the Horn. Only shortly before his departure from England, almost as an afterthought, he had received (through the intercession of Joseph Banks) discretionary orders from the Admiralty to make for the Cape of Good Hope if the Horn proved impossible. This Bligh now determined to do. From there, he would approach the South Seas from the opposite side of the globe. The detour would add some ten thousand miles to the voyage, but there was nothing to be done. After twenty-five days of battle with the sea, the Bounty was, at 59° 05’ south, more or less where she had begun.

At eleven in the morning of the seventeenth, Bligh summoned all hands aft and publicly thanked them for attending to their duties throughout the trials of the last month. He then announced that he had decided to bear away for southern Africa. The General Joy in the Ship was very great on this Account,’ Bligh noted. His announcement was received with three hearty cheers.

It was, for Bligh, a bitter, difficult decision – so difficult that only days later when the weather took a moderate turn he was induced to make one last attempt, but this was quickly abandoned. Eight men were now on the sick list, mostly with ‘Rheumatick complaints’. This, as Bligh ruefully noted, was ‘much felt in the Watches, the Ropes being now Worked with much difficulty, from the Wet and Snow.’ The men aloft on whom fell the monstrous task of handling the sails were at times incapable of getting below in the face of the storm blasts, and when they did return they ‘sometimes for a While lost their Speech.’ Reconciling himself to defeat, Bligh ‘ordered the Helm to be put a Weather,’ and the Bounty headed for the Cape of Good Hope.

She arrived in False Bay, the preferred anchorage across the spit from Cape Town, on 24 May, after an uneventful passage. The sick men had recovered during the intervening four weeks, and refurbishment of the ship began almost at once. The day after mooring, Bligh administered a second punishment: six lashes for John Williams, a seaman from Guernsey, for neglect of duty ‘in heaving the lead’. In this case there was no expression of regret from Bligh.

The Bounty remained in False Bay for thirty-eight days, during which time she was overhauled from top to bottom, from her rigging to new ballast in her hold, as well as resupplied. Fresh meat, celery, leeks, onions, cabbages and – as a luxury – soft bread were brought on board for storage, while Bligh’s log daily notes ‘Fresh Meat & Greens’ served at dinner. This sojourn also allowed some pleasant diversions. In Colonel Robert Gordon, the half-Dutch, half-Scottish commander of the now considerable Dutch forces at this Dutch settlement, Bligh found an entertaining companion who shared a fondness for natural history and amateur exploration. Needless to say, Sir Joseph Banks had an associate out this way, botanizing at his behest. Francis Masson, once an under-gardener at Kew, had been at the Cape for a number of years, sending back specimens and seeds to Banks. From Masson’s collections would come plants familiar to generations of British gardeners – gladioli, geraniums and freesias.

A few days after mooring, Bligh set out for Cape Town proper to pay his respects to the governor. The twenty-five-mile journey was made by carriage along a partly treated, mostly sandy road that led across a central tableland skirted by mountains. Bligh was greeted warmly by Governor van der Graaff, who most gratifyingly expressed his wonderment that ‘any ship would have ventured to persist in a passage’ around Cape Horn.

Bligh’s record of his visit to Cape Town speaks only of his own impressions and it is not clear whether he made this short trip alone; but it is very possible that Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian accompanied him, for it was here at the Cape that Bligh advanced Christian money. Bligh’s attitude towards his personal finances was, and would be throughout most of his life, one of incessant anxiety and concern. Although securely a ‘gentleman’, William Bligh had from an early age been forced to make his own way in the world and, like many an officer on half pay, he had become accustomed to count and turn every penny. The road ahead offered no immediate source of improvement, and Bligh, as fastidious in his personal economy as in the running of his ship, was reconciled to a life of calculation, self-discipline and sacrifice; to the slow accumulation of security and comfort that would come only through a steady career. Unlike the Christians and Heywoods, whose anciently established sense of entitlement allowed them unblushingly to pile up debts amounting to thousands of pounds beyond any possibility of repayment, Bligh expected to balance his books. Worries about money had beset him as he departed Spithead, since, as he had noted to everyone, taking the commission had resulted in a calamitous drop in pay. Bligh’s loan to Christian, then, amounted to a significant act of friendship – one wonders whether Christian fully appreciated the compromise and anxiety this must have entailed. For his part, although freely given, this was not a gift that Bligh allowed himself or Christian to forget.

Some three weeks after the Bounty came to anchor, the Dublin, an East Indiaman, arrived in False Bay carrying part of the Seventy-seventh Regiment, under Colonel Balfour, saluting Bounty with eleven guns, she was returned with nine. A few days later, Bligh, Colonel Gordon, botanist Masson and a Mr Van Carman were invited on board for dinner.

‘We had a very merry Day of it and a great deal of dancing with the Ladies in the Evening to fine Moon light,’ one officer who was present recorded in his diary; it is gratifying to imagine Lieutenant Bligh indulging in a little social levity. Colonel Gordon entertained the company with stories of his remarkable travels into the interior and, to the astonishment of his fellow diners, even managed a Gaelic song.

In these agreeable circumstances, amidst the sympathetic company of fellow seamen from around the world who well knew the dangers of the southern ocean, Bligh reflected on what he had accomplished. ‘A Dutch Ship came in to day having buried 30 Men & many are sent to the Hospital,’ he wrote to Campbell, ‘altho they have only been out since the last of January.’ He, Bligh, had been out since the end of December. This is a credit I hope will be given to me,’ Bligh continued, confessional as always to Campbell. ‘Indeed had I not been very conversant in these matters I believe poor Fellows they would scarce ever have got here’; Bligh was referring to his own men, for whose lives he took full credit.

‘Upon the whole no People could live better,’ he exclaimed to Campbell, embarking on a description of his nutritious hot breakfasts and portable soups. ‘I assure you I have not acted the Purser with them,’ he let Campbell know, ‘for profits was trifling to me while I had so much at Stake.’

It was not only in his private correspondence that Bligh enlarged upon this flattering theme of his own successful man-management. His official log offered a short dissertation on the subject: ‘Perhaps a Voyage of five Months which I have now performed without touching at any one place but at Tenarif, has never been accomplished with so few accidents, and such health among Seamen in a like continuance of bad Weather,’ he began, not mincing words. ‘And as such a fortunate event may be supposed to have been derived from some peculiar Mode of Management it is proper I should point out what I think has been the cause of it.’

The mode of management was, needless to say, hot breakfasts, clean dry clothes, clean hammocks and a clean ship (‘in cleaning Ship all dark holes and Corners the common receptacles of all filth were the first places attended to’), dancing, infusions of malt, portable soup and sauerkraut. Once again, it is evident that in Bligh’s eyes, his small ship and forty-six-member company were embarked upon a historic enterprise.

‘Seamen will seldom attend to themselves in any particular and simply to give directions…is of little avail,’ Bligh added, echoing the sentiments of many a captain. ‘They must be watched like Children.’

Bligh was not the only man to take advantage of the layover to send reports to England. Thomas Ledward, the assistant surgeon who had joined the Bounty at the eleventh hour, wrote to his uncle describing ‘a continual series of the most violent and distressing weather that ever was experienced.’ The ship was in danger of becoming unfit from her exertions, he reported, continuing that he had no doubt the captain ‘will gain much credit by his resolution & perseverance & by the extreme care he took of the Ship’s company.’

Ledward had been in the habit of keeping a diary, but had just learned that all such private documents would have to be turned over to the Admiralty at journey’s end. While Ledward might not have known it, this had become standard practice since Cook’s first voyage, the purpose being to ensure that any officially sanctioned publication was not undercut by a private, competing work. Once the official account was out – in this case, to be written by Lieutenant Bligh – other accounts were usually permitted.

In the face of this new knowledge, Ledward determined, as he informed his uncle, to drop his diary. Other of his shipmates, however, were less circumspect. Someone, probably Charles Churchill, the master-at-arms, wrote an elegant memoir to the Reverend John Hampson, with the hint that he was ‘very desirous to have [it] publish’d and beg you will cause it to be inserted in the Public Papers as soon as possible.’ The report commenced with a brief essay on the breadfruit and references to Cook’s voyages and then briefly sketched the tempestuous voyage to Tenerife, the crossing of the ‘Equinoctial Line’, which he stated was celebrated with ‘the usual Ceremonies of Shaving and Ablution’ – no self-respecting seaman would confess that ducking, or ‘ablution’, had been prohibited.

Meanwhile, in the north of England, there appeared in the Cumberland Pacquet an ‘extract of a letter from a midshipman (aged sixteen) on board his Majesty’s ship “Bounty”’; this could only be from Peter Heywood. Either he too had requested publication, or his proud family felt the letter relating his adventures must be shared; they had already sent copies to various relations. Heywood’s report was mostly concerned with the attempted passage around Cape Horn, which had been ‘one continued gale as it seldom ceased for four hours together.’ But, echoing his captain’s sentiments, Heywood allowed that ‘the Bounty is as fine a sea boat as ever swam.’

All known firsthand contemporary accounts of the first five months of the Bounty’s outward voyage, then, indicate that after a passage of unprecedented severity, the Bounty’s crew were in good health, good spirits, forward-looking and, if anything, proud of what had so far been accomplished. There were not, judging from these letters, complaints worth writing home about.

The Bounty dropped anchor in Adventure Bay off the southern coast of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, seven weeks after departing the Cape. The passage had seen ferocious weather and much severe lightning; once the Bounty had been pitched almost on her beam ends, but as Bligh logged, ‘no damage was done but the overturning [of] some Tubs with Plants I had brought from the Cape.’ The plants were intended as useful gifts for the Tahitians.

With his ship safely anchored, Bligh set out by boat to scout the surroundings. The largely mountainous land appeared unchanged from when he, along with Nelson, Peckover and Coleman, had been here with Cook. Among the stands of massive trees that overlooked the island-studded bay, Bligh examined stumps that had been cut for the Resolution, eleven years previously. Later, Thomas Hayward pointed out to Bligh a tree trunk carved with a date from Cook’s second expedition, ‘as distinct as if it had not been cut a Month, even the very slips of the Knife were as discernable as at the first Moment.’ There was much Bligh encountered at Adventure Bay to put him in mind of his own voyage with Cook; ‘I cannot therefore help paying this humble tribute to Captn. Cook’s memory,’ he reflected in his log, ‘as his remarkable circumspection in many other things has shown how little he has been wrong.’

The following morning, Bligh divided his men into different parties, and sent them out on various duties. He had determined to work from Cook’s old base, where a gully disgorged water conveniently close to the chosen landing. One man was detailed to wash all dirty linen, while Nelson and his assistant, William Brown, set out to explore the country. Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian and William Peckover, the experienced and reliable gunner, were put in charge of the parties detailed to cask water and fell wood.

The weather blew squally, then fair, then squally with rain and rapid, racing clouds throughout the following days. The watering party rolled casks of water along the beach, loading them with difficulty into the waiting boats. The surf was troublesome enough to require the wood party, under Christian, to raft the timber out in bundles. In off-hours, some of the men went shooting and fishing with mostly disappointing results, although two black oystercatchers, largish black-and-white birds with long red bills, were shot by Mr Christian. All the men kept an inquisitive lookout for local people, but it was some days before any turned up. Dressed in little but kangaroo skins and with painted faces, they appeared to the Bounty men as ‘the most miserable creatures on the face of the Earth,’ as James Morrison bluntly put it.

On 23 August, there was the first unequivocal sign of trouble. Going onshore to inspect the various work parties, Bligh found William Purcell, the carpenter, cutting crude, unwieldy billets of wood. When Bligh complained that the billets were too long, Purcell accused his captain of coming onshore ‘on purpose to find fault’. Words were exchanged, Purcell became insolent and Bligh lost his temper and sent the carpenter back to the ship.

Now Bligh was made to feel the consequences of his inconveniently small company. He had no commissioned officer to turn to for authority and moral support – and no marines to back him up. Under the Articles of War, Purcell’s refusal to obey Bligh’s commands – let alone insolently talk back to him – was an offence punishable by court-martial. Yet, the prospect of holding a court-martial was well over a year away.

‘I could not bear the loss of an able Working and healthy Man,’ Bligh logged; ‘otherwise I should have committed him to close confinement untill I could have tryed him.’ As a warrant officer, the carpenter could not be flogged, and Bligh could find no recourse but to order him back to the ship to assist Fryer in other duties. Purcell seems to have had a keen appreciation of Bligh’s dilemma, for three days later Bligh was forced to log a second, lengthy complaint against him for disobeying Fryer’s orders to help load water.

Fryer informed Bligh of Purcell’s disobedience when Bligh returned to the ship with other members of the shore parties, who would have watched the encounter closely. Facing the broad Pacific and backed by a mountainous land so remote that only four ships from the outside world had ever previously touched it, Bligh had only his own authority with which to confront the carpenter.

‘My directions and presence had as little effect,’ Bligh recorded ominously. Purcell had refused to back down. Confinement of Purcell until such time as he could be brought to court-martial would rob Bligh of the carpenter’s skills and, in theory, other able-bodied work. Or so Bligh himself reasoned as he matter-of-factly devised a novel form of punishment: ‘I therefore Ordered the different Persons evidence to be drawn out and attested, and then gave Orders that untill he Worked he should have no provisions, and promised faithfully a severe Punishment to any Man that dared to Assist him.’

Bligh was satisfied with the result of this action, ‘which immediatly brought [him] to his senses…It was for the good of the Voyage that I should not make him or any Man a prisoner,’ Bligh concluded his account of the event. ‘The few I have even in the good State of health I keep them, are but barely sufficient to carry on the duty of the Ship.’

James Morrison gives an oblique, deliberately evasive reference to the confrontation, from which it is impossible to cull hard facts. But a single statement is unambiguous: here, says Morrison, in Adventure Bay ‘were sown seeds of eternal discord between Lieut. Bligh & the Carpenter, and it will be no more than true to say, with all the Officers in general.’ Fryer was probably one of these other officers; Bligh’s observation that he had to repeat his orders to the master (‘I repeated my injunctions to the Comm’g Officer Mr. Fryer’) is subtly troubling. Christian was in charge of the wood party, whose task of rafting timber through heavy surf seems to have been particularly difficult; now under personal obligation to Bligh, had he too been found lacking?

Bligh’s log ticked on, with descriptions of native encounters, lists of shrubs and herbaceous plants, and careful surveys of adjacent land. For him, the crisis with the carpenter had been satisfactorily addressed and the incident was closed.

The Bounty left the wooded shores of Adventure Bay on 5 September and headed into more wet, misty weather. A few days out, the southern lights, ‘as Red as blood’, inflamed the clouded sky. At night, phosphorescent medusae, long-tentacled jellyfish, glowed from beneath the sea. South of New Zealand, the ship unexpectedly came upon ‘a parcell of Rocky Islands’, devoid of all greenery, but patched with late snow – a discovery. Their position was duly laid down by Bligh and logged. ‘I have called them the Bountys Isles,’ he recorded solemnly.

The Bounty ploughed onward through often dark, cloudy weather and thick fogs, punctuated with gales of rain. Bligh’s log checked off each day’s consumed miles: 177, 175, 141. From England to Tahiti, the Bounty would eventually log 28,086 miles. Between his duties on deck, Bligh retired amid the pots to his cabin, and there, while his ship thrummed through the Pacific swells, carefully wrote up his log, made his natural history observations, and refined his charts and sketches. The odds and ends of plants he had collected at the Cape for Tahiti held majestic sway over the great cabin, where he checked them approvingly from time to time. There are few more touching images in his ship’s saga than this, the industrious lieutenant conscientiously acting the role of Captain Cook in his own miniature ship.

Crowded in their own quarters, the Bounty’s men stoked the galley stove that both dried their wet clothing and filled the air with choking smoke. The entire company was again on two-thirds rations of bread, or unpalatable hardtack, sensibly so, as the remainder of the voyage was unpredictable. In accordance with naval regulations, the men would receive monetary compensation for such reductions on return to England.

Now nine months out, friendships and factions had been formed. Among the young gentlemen, Peter Heywood and George Stewart had become firm friends. Fletcher Christian and young Heywood also had so much in common it was natural they too sought each other out, and Christian appears to have taken Heywood under his wing, helping him, Heywood claimed, with his mathematical and classical studies. Heywood was greatly admiring of his older friend, who had impressed the entire company with his athletic feats: Christian could balance a musket on the palm of his outstretched arm and could make a standing jump from inside one barrel to another. Of the first ship on which he had served, the Eurydice, it had been reported to Christian’s family that the young man had ruled over his inferiors ‘in a superior pleasant Manner’, that he had made ‘Toil a pleasure’; Christian’s stint before the mast under Bligh in the West Indies may have enhanced his instinctive, easy dealings with the lower deck, and all evidence suggests he was well liked on the Bounty.

In accordance with naval custom, and as Cook had done in turn for him, Bligh had his young gentlemen and other officers join him in rotation at his table. The habit was to be somewhat revised on this last leg.

‘During this passage Mr. Bligh and His Mess mates the Master & Surgeon fell out, and seperated,’ wrote Morrison, with his infallible eye for trouble, ‘each taking his part of the stock, & retiring to live in their own Cabbins, after which they had several disputes & seldom spoke but on duty; and even then with much apperant reserve.’ When Bligh invited his young gentlemen to dine, they joined his solitude.

The causes of the disputes with Fryer and the disagreeable Huggan are described at length by Bligh in his private and official logs. On the morning of 9 October, as the Bounty cut through a rare smooth sea, Bligh sent the ship’s several expense books to Fryer for the master’s usual bimonthly inspection and signature. The books were shortly returned to Bligh accompanied by a certificate drafted by Fryer, ‘the Purport of which,’ Bligh recorded, ‘was that he had done nothing amiss during his time on board.’ Unless Bligh signed the certificate, Fryer would not sign the books.

Summoning the master, Bligh informed him that he ‘did not approve of his doing his duty conditionally,’ at which Fryer abruptly left. This time, Bligh’s instincts were sure and his reaction swift. Ordering all hands on deck, he read the Articles of War, ‘with particular parts of the Instructions relative to the Matter.’ Fryer was instructed to sign the books or ‘express his reasons [for not complying] at full length at the bottom of the Page.’

‘I sign in obedience to your Orders, but this may be Cancelled hereafter,’ Morrison reported that Fryer intoned as he signed. Morrison’s sly suggestion was that Bligh had been caught fiddling the books, which if true would have cost him his career. But his very public actions defy this interpretation: Bligh was not about to countenance a furtive quid pro quo with his Master. ‘This troublesome Man saw his error & before the whole Ships Company signed the Books’ was Bligh’s report.

There are indications that Fryer might have had reason for concern about his performance as master – Bligh’s glancing reference to his need to repeat orders about Purcell at Adventure Bay being one. More immediately, Fryer may have had in mind the events of just three days earlier – events Bligh described with shock and anger in his private log but omitted in the official log he presented to the Admiralty.

On this day, William Elphinstone, one of the master’s mates, came to Bligh with wholly unexpected news: James Valentine, a twenty-eight-year-old able seaman, had incurred a bad infection after being bled by surgeon Huggan for an ailment contracted at Adventure Bay. Bligh was informed that Valentine was delirious ‘and had every appearance of being in a dying state.’

‘This shock was scarce equal to my astonishment,’ Bligh almost gasped, ‘as the Surgeon had told me he was getting better, and had never expressed the least uneasyness about him.’ When summoned, Huggan explained that, oh yes – he had meant to tell Bligh the night before at dinner, only Bligh had a guest (the officer of the watch) and he had not thought it proper to say anything at the time, but, yes, it was true: James Valentine had only hours to live.

Where was the ship’s master? Where was the acting lieutenant? Above all, where was the assistant surgeon? How had it transpired that Bligh had only learned, belatedly and almost by happenstance, of so serious a development? Bligh immediately visited the stricken man, who was ‘seized with a violent hollow Cough and spit much.’ He had been treated by Huggan with blisters, applied to his breast, for what the surgeon had diagnosed as an asthmatic complaint.

On 10 October, the day after the altercation with Master Fryer, Bligh recorded the death of Seaman Valentine in his official log.

‘This poor man was one of the most robust People on board,’ he reflected, ‘and therefore the Surprize and shock was the greater to me.’ Forgoing the customary auction of the deceased man’s effects, Bligh directed that his meagre possessions be given to the two men who had cared for him on his deathbed ‘with great care and Affection.’ On the following day, as the ship progressed under light breezes and fine rain, Valentine’s remains were committed to the deep.

Bligh’s perfect record of health was now irrevocably spoiled, and it had been spoiled by his beastly sot of a surgeon, aided by the apparent indifference of his officers. Four days after Valentine’s death, three of the older seamen who had formerly complained of ‘the Rheumatism’ were diagnosed with symptoms of scurvy. Bligh was beside himself with frustration and disbelief; had he himself not written in his dissertation on the healthful ‘Mode of Management’ that ‘the Scurvy is realy a disgrace to a ship’?

Bligh embarked upon a frantic application of his most trusted defences – portable soup and essence of malt, the latter served at a ratio of three tablespoons to a quart of water, ‘this being the Surgeons opinion was sufficient’; despite his misgivings and distaste for Huggan, Bligh was still dependent on his professional opinion, such as it was.

Was it scurvy, or was it something else? Throughout the rest of the voyage, all the way to Tahiti, the question hounded Bligh, who returned to it again and again in his log. On 17 October, he dosed up the three men who had complained of rheumatism with malt, sauerkraut, and less usefully, vinegar and mustard – everything, it would seem, that he could think of. The next day he examined other men ‘who the Doctor supposed had a taint of the Scurvy’ but found only the symptoms of prickly heat. The Bounty was now back up to the twenty-fifth parallel, after all, and temperatures had risen well into the seventies.

On the afternoon of the nineteenth, as the ship ambled along in fair but windless weather, John Mills, the forty-year-old gunner’s mate from Aberdeen, and William Brown, the assistant gardener, refused to participate in the mandatory evening dancing. Perhaps the higher temperature was taking a toll, or perhaps the men were just fed up with what they regarded as tedious nonsense. On being informed, Bligh’s response was to stop the offenders’ grog, ‘with a promise of further punishment on a Second Refusal’; the stopping of grog had been one of Cook’s stratagems.

‘I have always directed the Evenings from 5 to 8’ O’Clock to be spent in dancing,’ Bligh registered with a tone of aggrieved self-righteousness in his log, ‘& that every Man should be Obliged to dance as I considered it conducive to their Health.’

Only hours later, Bligh had to log a second entry about the incident: ‘Wm Brown complaining of some Rheumatic Complaints which he has had these three Weeks past, the Doctor insists upon it that it is Scurvey.’ So Brown, it seems, had turned to the doctor for moral support. Bligh himself, however, could discover no such symptoms. Determinedly, he pushed forward with his ‘decoctions’ of essence of malt, noting, ‘I have Ordered the Doctor to issue it himself.’

‘If able,’ he had added in the original entry of his private log, which also noted that Huggan had been ‘constantly drunk these last four days.’ Towards the end of this frustrating Sunday, all hands were mustered for the usual inspection.

‘I think I never saw a more healthy set of Men and so decent looking in my life,’ Bligh exclaimed in exasperation to his log. Bligh knew what scurvy looked like and could find no symptoms – no ‘eruptions or swellings’, no bleeding gums or loose teeth. Yet the real interest in this protracted incident, of course, has less to do with whether or not there was scurvy on the Bounty than whether or not Bligh was being toyed with. Was Huggan getting back at Bligh for his anger over Valentine’s death with a vindictive but unassailable diagnosis of the disease Bligh most feared – a gambit instantly appreciated and exploited by the appreciative and all-knowing seamen?

On 23 October, Huggan sent Bligh an updated sick list, with his own name on it under the complaint ‘Rheumatism’. Twenty-four hours later, he issued a revised list that gave his complaint as ‘Paralytic Affection’. Later in the same day, however, as Bligh noted, Huggan was ‘discovered to be able to get out of bed and look for liquor,’ his paralysis notwithstanding. With this, Bligh’s patience snapped and he gave orders for the surgeon’s filthy cabin to be searched and all liquor removed, an ‘operation that was not only troublesome but offensive in the highest degree.’ Successfully deprived of alcohol, Huggan made a shaky appearance on deck the next day, tenuously sober. The timing of his recovery was excellent, as the Bounty was less than a day away from Matavai Bay and only hours away from sighting land. Bligh urgently wished his surgeon to perform one important medical office before landfall. Ever since the first European ship had arrived at Tahiti, sailors had infected the islanders with ‘the venereals’; the French claimed the English were responsible for the devastation the disease had wrought, while the English pointed out that the Tahitians themselves had implicated the French. Bligh wanted Huggan ‘to examine very particularly every Man and Officer’ for any sign of the disease before arriving at the island. Huggan did so and, to the universal joy of the company, declared ‘every person totally free from the Venereal complaint.’

The next day brought the Bounty to Tahiti.