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THE TRILOGY OF THE “BOUNTY”

Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall began in 1929 their preliminary work upon an historical novel dealing with the mutiny on board H.M.S. Bounty. It was at first anticipated that one or both of the authors would have to journey to England and elsewhere to collect the necessary source material, but, upon the advice of their publishers, this research was delegated to competent English assistants. With their painstaking help, the archives of the British Museum were searched through, as well as the rare-book shops and the collections of prints and engravings in London, for all procurable material dealing not only with the history of the Bounty, but also with life and discipline in the British Navy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With the generous permission of the British Admiralty, photostat copies were made of Bligh’s correspondence and of the Admiralty records of the court-martial proceedings. Copies of the Bounty’s deck and rigging plans were also secured, with special reference to the alterations made for her breadfruit-tree voyage; and a British naval officer, whose interest in these matters had been aroused, then proceeded to build an exact model of the vessel.

Books, engravings, blueprints, photostats, and photographs were finally assembled and sent to the publishers’ office, where the shipment was checked, supplemented with material collected from American sources, and forwarded to its final destination, Tahiti, the home of Nordhoff and Hall.

The Bounty history divides itself naturally into three parts, and it was the plan of the authors, from the beginning, to deal with each of these in a separate volume, in case sufficient public interest was shown in the first to justify the preparation of the trilogy.

Mutiny on the Bounty, which opens the story, is concerned with the voyage of the vessel from England, the long Tahiti sojourn while the cargo of young breadfruit trees was being assembled, the departure of the homeward-bound ship, the mutiny, and the fate of those of her company who later returned to Tahiti, where they were eventually seized by H.M.S. Pandora and taken back to England for trial.

The authors chose as the narrator of this story a fictitious character, Roger Byam, who tells it as an old man, after his retirement from the Navy. Byam had his actual counterpart in the person of Peter Heywood, whose name was, for this reason, omitted from the roster of the Bounty’s company. Midshipman Byam’s experience follows closely that of Midshipman Heywood. With the license of historical novelists, the authors based the career of Byam upon that of Heywood, but in depicting it they did not, of course, follow the latter in every detail. In the essentials relating to the mutiny and its aftermath, they have adhered to the facts long preserved in the records of the British Admiralty.

Men against the Sea, the second narrative, is the story of Captain Bligh and the eighteen loyal men who, on the morning of the mutiny, were set adrift by the mutineers in the Bounty’s launch, an open boat but twenty-three feet long, in which they made a 3600-mile voyage from the scene of the mutiny to Timor, in the Dutch East Indies. Captain Bligh’s log of this remarkable voyage, a series of brief daily notes, was, of course, the chief literary source of this second novel. The voyage is described in the words of one of those who survived it—Thomas Ledward, acting surgeon of the Bounty, whose medical knowledge and whose experience in reading men’s sufferings would qualify him as a sensitive and reliable observer.

Pitcairn’s Island, the concluding story, is, perhaps, the strangest and most romantic. After two unsuccessful attempts to settle on the island of Tupuai (or Tubuai, as it is more commonly spelled in these days), the mutineers returned to Tahiti, where they parted company. Fletcher Christian, acting lieutenant of the Bounty and instigator of the mutiny, once more embarked in the ship for an unknown destination. With him were eight of his own men and eighteen Polynesians (twelve women and six men). They sailed from Tahiti in September 1789, and for a period of eighteen years nothing more was heard of them. In February 1808, the American sealing vessel Topaz, calling at Pitcairn, discovered on this supposedly uninhabited crumb of land a thriving community of mixed blood: a number of middle-aged Polynesian women and more than a score of children, ruled by a white-haired English seaman, Alexander Smith, the only survivor of the fifteen men who had landed there so long before.

The story of what befell the refugees during the eighteen years before the arrival of the Topaz offers a fitting conclusion to the tale of the Bounty mutiny. As the authors have said, in their Note to Pitcairn’s Island, the only source of information we now have concerning the events of those years is the account—or, more accurately, the several discrepant accounts—handed on to us by the sea captains who visited Pitcairn during Smith’s latter years. It is upon these accounts that their story is based.

Those who are interested in the source material concerning the Bounty mutiny will find an exhaustive bibliography of books, articles, and unpublished manuscripts in the Appendix to Mr. George Mackaness’s splendid Life of Vice-Admiral William Bligh, published by Messrs. Angus and Robertson, of Sydney, Australia. Among the sources consulted by Nordhoff and Hall were the following: “Minutes of the Proceedings of a Court-Martial on Lieutenant William Bligh and certain members of his crew, to investigate the cause of the loss of H.M.S. Bounty”; A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty’s Ship “Bounty,” by William Bligh; A Voyage to the South Sea, by William Bligh; The Life of Vice-Admiral William Bligh, by George Mackaness; Mutineers of the “Bounty” and Their Descendants in Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, by Lady Belcher; The Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. “Bounty,” by Sir John Barrow; Bligh of the “Bounty,” by Geoffrey Rawson; Voyage of H.M.S. “Pandora,” by E. Edwards and G. Hamilton; Cook’s Voyages; Hawkesworth’s Voyages; Beechey’s Voyages; Bougainville’s Voyages; Ellis’s Polynesian Researches; Pitcairn Island and the Islanders, by Walter Brodie; The Story of Pitcairn Island, by Rosalind Young; Descendants of the Bounty Mutineers, by Harry Shapira; Captain Bligh’s Second Voyage to the South Seas, by I. Lee; Sea Life in Nelson’s Time, by John Masefield; Life of a Sea Officer, by Raigersfield; New South Wales Historical Records; Pitcairn Island Register Book; Memoir of Peter Heywood; Adventures of Johnny Newcome, by Mainwaring.