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HMS Bounty

Maritime History

HMS Bounty

0f all the numerous mutinies at sea, that which took place in HMS Bounty on 28th April 1789 is probably the most widely known. Unfortunately, the actual details have been obscured by a welter of foolish romanticism in poetry (such as Byron's The Island), in stories and in films and even as recently as 1985, in a musical play on stage. But the proper truth of the matter has long been sadly neglected, and, as may be seen from a sober examination of Navy records, fact and fiction are worlds apart; the line between hero and villain is not easily drawn.



Until she was chosen for the mission which made her famous, HMS Bounty was a small and unimportant merchantman of only 220 tons with a length from stem to stern of 90 feet and a beam of 24. Built privately and launched as the Bethia, she was sold to the Royal Navy by none other than the uncle of her future captain, and re-named HMS Bounty when first she was commissioned. Although she cost the Navy more to rebuild and refit than the price originally paid for her, she remained a three-masted transport square-rigged on the fore and the main, and with a lateen sail on her mizzen.





Bligh

When she sailed out of Bristol under Royal Navy colours in the wintry December of 1787, her commander William Bligh was thirty-three years old and already well embarked upon a distinguished naval career. He had been sailing master under Captain Cook of HMS Resolution during the celebrated explorer's second voyage of discovery 1772 -74, and it was indeed this same experience with Cook which prompted his appointment three years later as commander of the ill-fated voyage which made his name, and that of his ship, a byword of seafaring history. In his official 1874 report to the Admiralty, Cook had described the staple diet of the Otaheite islanders as a natural "bread-fruit", growing abundantly, simple to prepare, and extremely nourishing.' To the sugar planters of the newly founded West Indies, this sounded like a veritable gift from heaven; a very cheap and easy means by which to feed their growing numbers of African slaves. So, Captain Bligh's orders could hardly have been more straightforward: he was to sail directly to Otaheite (Tahiti), take on board several hundreds of pot-planted breadfruit saplings, transport the healthy young trees to Jamaica, and then return to home port.



All apparently quite simple, but trouble developed fast. Heavy storms south-west of the Canary Islands battered Bounty off course, and a subversive element in the crew 0f 44 officers and men was responsible for endless mischief. Food lockers were broken into and reserve supplies wantonly pillaged, and Bligh, a strict though not unduly harsh disciplinarian, was moved to dole out punishment. Then having brought his ship safely to a landfall at Tenerife, where she lay for five days, Bligh was determined to make up for lost time by heading direct for the Pacific islands via the perilous Cape Horn route. His men wanted a longer stay at Tenerife, and to go on then via the much longer but infinitely safer and more comfortable passage around the Cape of Good Hope, but Bligh, a master seaman of the highest order, knew that if Bounty was to avoid the worst of the South Atlantic storm season he must press on without delay. He set a course for South America and after crossing the Line on to February 1788 he promoted the 25-year-old Fletcher Christian, who had sailed with him on two previous voyages, to the rank of lieutenant. This act might now be seen as an attempt to pre-empt his junior officer's loyalty, but such would be taking advantage of hindsight. Fletcher Christian greatly admired his captain's masterly knowledge of ships and the sea, but being himself of a free and easy disposition, he was resentful of Bligh's rigid adherence to the rules of navy conduct.



Their differences of opinion constituted a recipe for a disaster which first began to manifest itself when Bounty, beaten off from Cape Horn by gales and mountainous seas, was forced to put up helm and turn back east to make the long and weary passage by the Cape of Good Hope. But the map-maker Bligh, knowing exactly where he was and so being aware of all the hazards ahead, ordered every man on board (not excluding himself) to go on short rations. As he beat eastwards, the storms continued and conditions on board grew worse. In brief periods of calm, the crew fished for any and everything they could catch, and even went so far as to trap and cat that bird of ill omen, the albatross. It was a stormy passage in more ways than one, but Bligh eventually brought his ship to anchor under Table Mountain in the third week of May, 1788. Knowing full well that his crew was in ferment, he stayed at the cape until all were refreshed and his small ship completely reprovisioned before setting sail yet again for Tahiti, still almost three thousand miles away across the Indian Ocean. With no shortage this time of essential victuals, he fetched Tasmania (then known as Van Dieman's Land) on 13 August. He rested there for two weeks, and finally sighted Tahiti towards the end of October, ten months after leaving England.



Having at last reached her first destination, Bounty lay at anchor off the idyllic island for almost six months whilst Mr Nelson, the botanist, collected several hundred breadfruit saplings and established their growth in small wooden casks. In the long meantime, the seamen were permitted to desport themselves ashore with the free-loving female natives, and looking back over a distance of time it seems obvious that this, more than any other factor, brought about the mutiny which followed. The puritanical Bligh did not permit himself that licence which he gave to his crew - a licence indulged especially by Christian Fletcher - and wanted only to fulfill his assignment: to take on the saplings and proceed with all dispatch to Jamaica. It must, for the conscientious Bligh, have been a period of extreme frustration. The native islanders, knowing nothing of property or theft, stole any and every item of chandlery left lying around by the careless crew, and Bligh was driven almost to distraction. The last straw came when the boatswain, Mr Cole, heedlessly 'lost' a gudgeon. Bligh had Cole flogged, and ordered that he be kept in irons for the rest of Bounty's stay in Tahiti which, unfortunately for the bosun, turned out to be a further three months. The ship's surgeon, a fat and lazy drunken profligate named Huggan died in Tahiti from his excesses and some of the crew, beginning now to show symptoms of social disease, vented their frustrations in endless brawling. Some of them, wanting to stay forever in Tahiti, cut Bounty's anchor cable during a storm, hoping that the ship would be wrecked. Bligh foiled the plot, and sailed out of Tahiti on 4 April, 1789.



Three weeks later, Bligh put in at the Friendly Islands in order to top up his extra-large, fresh water facility with which Bounty had been specially fitted out, and to build up maximum supplies of fresh food. So laden, Bounty left the islands on 27 April, and as the mutiny took place when she was barely one day out, the facts make a nonsense of the widely-believed myth that it was sparked off by men driven mad by thirst. The truth is, Christian seized the ship following a trivial incident involving the theft of a few coconuts. He and three accomplices, Charles Churchill, Alex Smith and Thomas Burkitt, burst into Bligh's cabin shortly before sunrise on the 28th and dragged the captain up top. The other twelve active mutineers had raided the arms locker and taken possession of the ship's weapons. After clearing the lower deck, Christian announced to the ship's company that he was taking over command. The launch was hoist out and provisioned with 150 pounds of bread, a little pork, 28 gallons of water, a compass and a quadrant, and several cutlasses. When Bligh was forced to step down into the launch, far too many of the crew than the boat could possibly accommodate opted to take their slim chances with the captain rather than stay in Bounty with the mutineers. Most significantly, Mr Cole the boatswain. Those permitted to throw in their lots with Bligh included Cole, the ship's chief carpenter, Mr Nelson the botanist, assistant surgeon Fryer Ledward, and two midshipmen, Hayward and Hallet. 18 people cast adrift in a 23 foot open boat intended for no more than 12. It must have seemed to Christian that none could possibly survive, but he reckoned without the superhuman grit and determination of Captain William Bligh.



Bligh had the boat's small sail hoisted and set a course for the volcanic island of Tofoa, thirty miles away. As they were gathering coconuts there, his men were attacked by natives and one of them was killed. This incident decided Bligh to head directly for the Dutch settlement on Timor, over 3,ooo miles away. They had normal rations for seven days, and in order to make them last seven weeks, each man was allocated one ounce of bread, one tiny piece of pork, and a quarter of a pint of water per day. So provisioned, Bligh set out on 2 May 1789 to cross a vast expanse of ocean equivalent in distance to that of the North Atlantic. With little or no shelter from a blazing tropical sun, the men suffered agonies of thirst, but even when violent rainstorms permitted a gathering in sailcloth of sweet fresh water, Bligh insisted upon maintaining strict rations. Attempts to catch fish resulted in total failure, although four seabirds were caught and eaten on 22 and 23 May, two of them with fish in their stomachs. Then, after almost a month on storm-lashed open sea, they came upon salvation in the form of a tiny uncharted islet.



They explored the three-miles wide strip of land which Bligh named Resolution Island, finding fruits, berries, oysters and fresh water. There were native huts, but no inhabitants. Bligh forbade his men to cat from any unfamiliar tree or bush, but three of them defied the order and became violently ill. And it was here, with food of sorts in fair abundance, Bligh was furious to find that someone was stealing from their tiny reserve of pork. He made a stew of that which remained and, dividing it equally, said: 'Better that we eat it now than the despicable thief amongst us steal it all.' Then, fearful that those who had built the huts might return, he ordered a departure from the island. The men were reluctant to leave their haven, but Bligh insisted and it was as well that he did. On embarking, they narrowly escaped a sudden attack by a fleet of native canoes and on 3 June, and thanks to Bligh's superb navigation, made a landfall at Cape York on the northern tip of Australia.



But there was still another 1,200 miles to go, and this huge remaining expanse of ocean proved the roughest of all to cross. Miraculously, the survivors endured a further seven weeks of near-constant bailing before finally reaching the Dutch settlement at Coupang in Timor after sailing their tiny open boat a total of more than 3,6oo miles. The 17 living skeletons who staggered ashore at Coupang towards the end of July, all skin and bone and covered in sores, were treated by the Dutch with the utmost kindness, but Mr Nelson the botanist succumbed and died. All were suffering from exposure and extreme malnutrition, but the indomitable Bligh would allow only a minimum of rest. The Dutch lent him a ship, and he and his remaining men set sail on 20 August bound at first for Java. Here, Bligh himself fell seriously ill, and two more of his men died from the after effects of their terrible deprivations. Still, however, Bligh would not properly rest. He and those who were left with him took passage on 2 October in a Dutch ship bound for Europe. Yet another two of the original eighteen castaways died on the voyage home, but Bligh returned to a hero's welcome in England, still enormously determined to see Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers sought out and brought to justice.



That which actually happened to Fletcher Christian and his fellow conspirators is a separate and far from happy story, but William Bligh went on to pursue a highly-successful career during which he became Captain General and Governor of New South Wales and which culminated, in 1814, with his appointment to the rank of Vice Admiral.