The Naval Pioneers of Australia Part 13

In the summer of 1791 he was promoted commander, given the command of the _Providence_, with an armed tender, the _a.s.sistance_, and sent to carry out the breadfruit transplantation idea, which he satisfactorily accomplished. But the soil of the West Indian islands would not successfully grow the fruit, and the people of the West Indies do not like it.

Meantime the _Pandora_ frigate, Captain Edwards, was sent out to search for the mutineers. At Tahiti she found no _Bounty_, but two midshipmen, Heywood and Stewart, and twelve petty officers and seamen of the ship.

These people gave themselves up as soon as the _Pandora_ entered Matavai Bay, and they informed Captain Edwards that the _Bounty_ had sailed away with the remainder of the people, no one knew whither. Two other seamen had been left behind, but one of these had murdered his comrade and a native man and child, and was himself killed by the natives for these crimes.

Stewart and Heywood, master's mate and midshipman, who were very young--the latter was fifteen at the time of the mutiny--declared to the captain of the _Pandora_ that they had been detained on the _Bounty_ against their wishes; but Captain Edwards believed nothing, listened to no defence. He built a round-house on the quarter deck, and heavily ironing his prisoners locked them up in this.

Stewart while on sh.o.r.e had contracted a native marriage, and after he had left in the _Pandora_ his young wife died broken-hearted, leaving an infant daughter, who was afterwards educated by the missionaries, and lived until quite recent times.

In "Pandora's Box," as Captain Edwards' round-house came to be called, the fourteen prisoners suffered cruel torture, and nothing can justify the manner in which they were treated. The frigate sailed accompanied by a cutter called the _Resolution_, which had been built by, and was taken from, the _Bounty's_ people at Tahiti on May 19th, 1791, and spent till the middle of August in a fruitless search among the islands for the remainder of the mutineers. The _Pandora_ then stood away for Timor, having lost sight of the _Resolution_, which Edwards did not see again until he reached Timor.

On August 28th the ship struck a reef, now marked on the chart as Pandora's Reef, and became a total wreck. All this time the prisoners had been kept in irons in the round-house. The ship lasted until the following morning, when the survivors--for thirty-five of the _Pandora's_ crew and four of the prisoners (among them the unfortunate Stewart) were drowned--got into the boats and began another remarkable boat voyage to Timor. While the vessel was going down, instead of the prisoners being released, by the express order of Captain Edwards eleven of them were actually kept ironed, and if it had not been for the humanity of boatswain's mate James Moulter, who burst open the prison, they would have all been drowned like rats in a cage. This is not the one-sided version of the prisoners only, but is so confirmed by the officers of the _Pandora_ that Sir John Barrow in his book says that the "statement of the brutal and unfeeling behaviour of Edwards is but too true."

There were ninety-nine survivors, divided between four boats, and they had 1000 miles to voyage. They landed at Coupang on September 19th, after undergoing the greatest suffering, aggravated in the case of the prisoners by the most wanton cruelty on the part of Edwards. From here they were sent to England for trial, arriving at Spithead on June 19th, 1792, four years and four months after they had left in the _Bounty_, of which time these poor prisoners had spent fifteen months in irons. In the following September the accused were tried by court-martial at Portsmouth Harbour.

Bligh was away on his second breadfruit voyage, but he had left behind him as much evidence as he could collect that would be likely to secure conviction, and one of the officers so backed up his statements that young Heywood, a boy of fifteen, be it remembered, came near to being hanged.

Bligh's suppression of facts which would have proved that the youngsters Stewart and Heywood were mere spectators at the worst of the mutiny, Sir John Barrow suggests, has "the appearance of a deliberate act of malice."

The result of the trial was the just acquittal of four of the petty officers and seamen, the conviction of Heywood, of Morrison, boatswain's mate (a man of education, who had kept a diary of the whole business), and of four seamen. Three of these last, one of them seventeen years of age at the time of the mutiny, were hanged in Portsmouth [Sidenote: 1807]

Harbour. Heywood, Morrison, and a seaman named Muspratt were pardoned. It was plain that the authorities recognized the innocence of these men, for Heywood made a fresh start in the service, and served with distinction, dying a post-captain in 1831, and Morrison was drowned in the _Blenheim_, of which ship he was gunner when she foundered off the island of Rodriguez in 1807.

What had become of the _Bounty_? In March, 1809, there reached the Admiralty an extract from the log of an American whaler, commanded by Matthew Folger. This extract showed the Pitcairn Island, hitherto scarcely known and supposed to be uninhabited, had been visited by the whaler, which found thereon a white man and several half-caste families. The man was the sole survivor of the _Bounty_ mutineers, and the half-caste families were the descendants of the others by their Tahitian wives. In proof of his statements, Folger brought away with him the chronometer and azimuth compa.s.s of the _Bounty_. War was then going on, and England paid little attention to the news, until in September, 1814, two frigates, the _Briton_ and the _Tagus_, visited Pitcairn, when the end of the _Bounty_ story was told to the commander by the sole survivor.

When the _Bounty_ left Tahiti, Christian took with him Young, a midshipman; Mills, gunner's mate; Brown, one of the two botanists; and Martin, McCoy, Williams, Quintall, and Smith, seamen. These men were accompanied by five male islanders from Tahiti and Tubuai (in which last place they had attempted to form a settlement and failed), three Tahitian women, wives of the Tahitians, and ten other Tahitian women and a child.

The _Bounty_ was beached and burnt, and from her remains and the island timber the mutineers built themselves homes. Soon dissensions arose, murder followed, and within a few years after landing every Englishman save Smith was dead, nearly all of them dying violent deaths. Smith changed his name to John Adams, took a Bible from the _Bounty's_ library as his guide, and set to work to govern and to train his colony of half-caste children.

From 1815 Pitcairn became a pet colony of the English people, and every ship that visited it brought back stories of the piety and beautiful character of its population. Smith or Adams died in 1829. He had long before been pardoned by the English Government, and [Sidenote: 1829]

the good work he began was carried on by Mr. n.o.bbs, one of several persons who from time to time, attracted by the story of life at Pitcairn, had managed to make their way to the island.

In 1856 the greater portion of the Pitcairn families were removed to Norfolk Island, which the English Government had abandoned as a penal settlement, giving up to them all the prison buildings as a new home.

For years after, Norfolk Island, like Pitcairn, was known as the home of the descendants of the _Bounty_ mutineers, and was talked of all over the world in the same strain as that other ideal community at Pitcairn, but civilization has now worked its evil ways. No longer is Norfolk Island governed in patriarchal fashion. It has been handed over by the Imperial Government for administration by the colony of New South Wales, and in a few years longer all that will remain of its _Bounty_ story will be the names of Christian, Young, McCoy, Quintall, and the rest of them--still names which indicate the "best families" of the island.

To this day it is a mystery exactly how and when Christian met his death.

The sole survivor of the mutineers, Smith (_alias_ Adams), when questioned, went into details regarding the desperate quarrels of his comrades, and how they came by violent deaths; but whether his memory, owing to old age, had failed him, or he had something to conceal, it is impossible now to say. However, he gave versions of Christian's death which differed materially. The generally accepted one is that he was shot by one of the Tahitians while working in the garden, but the exact place of his burial has never been revealed.

In this connection there is a curious story. An English paper called _The True Briton_ of September 13th, 1796, contained the following paragraph:--

"CHRISTIAN, CHIEF MUTINEER ON BOARD HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP 'BOUNTY.'

"This extraordinary nautical character has at length transmitted to England an account of his conduct in his mutiny on board the _Bounty_ and a detail also of his subsequent proceedings after he obtained command of the ship, in which, after visiting Juan Fernandez and various islands in South America, he was shipwrecked in rescuing Don Henriques, major-general of the kingdom of Chili, from a similar disaster, an event which, after many perilous circ.u.mstances, led to his present lucrative establishment under the Spanish Government in South America, for which [Sidenote: 1796]

he was about to sail when the last accounts were received from him.

"In his voyage, etc., which he has lately published at Cadiz, we are candidly told by this enterprising mutineer that the revolt which he headed on board His Majesty's ship _Bounty_ was not ascribable to dislike of their commander, Captain Bligh, but to the unconquerable pa.s.sion which he and the major part of the ship's crew entertained for the enjoyments which Otaheite still held out to their voluptuous imaginations. 'It is but justice,'

says he, 'that I should acquit Captain Bligh, in the most unequivocal manner, of having contributed in the smallest degree to the promotion of our conspiracy by any harsh or ungentlemanlike conduct on his part; so far from it, that few officers in the service, I am persuaded, can in this respect be found superior to him, or produce stronger claims upon the grat.i.tude and attachment of the men whom they are appointed to command. Our mutiny is wholly to be ascribed to the strong predilection we had contracted for living at Otaheite, where, exclusive of the happy disposition of the inhabitants, the mildness of the climate, and the fertility of the soil, we had formed certain connexions which banished the remembrance of old England entirely from our b.r.e.a.s.t.s.'"

After describing the seizure and securing of Captain Bligh's person in his cabin, Christian is made to thus conclude his account of the revolt:--

"During the whole of this transaction Captain Bligh exerted himself to the utmost to reduce the people to a sense of their duty by haranguing and expostulating with them, which caused me to a.s.sume a degree of ferocity quite repugnant to my feelings, as I dreaded the effect which his remonstrances might produce. Hence I several times threatened him with instant death unless he desisted; but my menaces were all in vain. He continued to harangue us with so much manly eloquence, that I was fain to call in the dram-bottle to my aid, which I directed to be served round to my a.s.sociates. Thus heartened and encouraged, we went through the business, though, for my own part, I must acknowledge that I suffered more than words can express from the conflict of contending pa.s.sions; but I had gone too far to recede; so, putting the best face on the business, I ordered the boat to be cut adrift, wore ship, and shaped our course back for Otaheite."

In each of the books by Sir John Barrow and Lady Belcher there is the following paragraph, almost word for word:--

"About 1809 a report prevailed in c.u.mberland, in the neighbourhood of his native place, and was current for several years, that Fletcher Christian had returned home, made frequent visits to a relative there, and that he was living in concealment in some part of England--an a.s.sumption improbable, though not impossible. In the same year, however, a singular incident occurred. Captain Heywood, who was fitting out at Plymouth, happened one day to be pa.s.sing down Fore Street, when a man of unusual [Sidenote: 1809]

stature, very much m.u.f.fled, and with his hat drawn close over his eyes, emerged suddenly from a small side street, and walked quickly past him. The height, athletic figure, and gait so impressed Heywood as being those of Christian, that, quickening his pace till he came up with the stranger, he said in a tone of voice only loud enough to be heard by him, 'Fletcher Christian!'

The man turned quickly round, and faced his interrogator, but little of his countenance was visible; and darting up one of the small streets, he vanished from the other's sight. Captain Heywood hesitated for a moment, but decided on giving up the pursuit, and on not inst.i.tuting any inquiries. Recognition would have been painful as well as dangerous to Christian if this were he; and it seemed scarcely within the bounds of probability that he should be in England. Remarkable as was the occurrence, Captain Heywood attached no importance to it, simply considering it a singular coincidence."

It is of course extremely improbable that Christian managed to leave the island before the arrival of the _Topaz_ (Folger's ship), and if Heywood's impression that he had seen Christian had occurred to him anywhere near the date of the _True Briton_ paragraph, one might easily account for it on the ground that the _True Briton_ was a sensation-loving modern daily, born before its time, and Heywood had read the paragraph. But between 1796 and 1809 was a long interval; no news had come to England of the mutineers to revive memory of the event, and the curious ignorance of the Pitcairners of the place of Christian's burial are all circ.u.mstances which leave the manner of the mutineer officer's ending by no means settled.

The Rev. Mr. n.o.bbs, to whom the early Pitcairners are indebted for so much, carried on the work of John Adams so well and so piously that he was sent home to England, ordained a clergyman of the Established Church, returned to Pitcairn, and then accompanied the emigrants to Norfolk Island, where he died about ten years ago.

Mr. n.o.bbs had a very curious history, which we reprint from the Rev. T.B.

Murray's book on Pitcairn:--

"In 1811 he was entered on the books of H.M.S. _Roebuck_; and, through means of Rear-Admiral Murray, he was, in 1813, placed on board the _Indefatigable_, naval storeship, under Captain Bowles.

In this vessel the young sailor visited New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, whence he proceeded to Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope, and thence, after a short stay at St. Helena, he returned to England. He then left the British Navy, but after remaining a short time at home he received a letter from his old commander, offering to procure him a berth on board a ship of 18 guns, designed for the a.s.sistance of the patriots in South America. He accepted this offer, and left England early in 1816 for Valparaiso, but the Royalists having regained possession of that place, he could not enter it until 1817. He afterwards held a commission in the Chilian service, under Lord Cochrane, and was made a lieutenant in it in consequence of his gallantry in the cutting out of the Spanish frigate _Esmeralda_, of 40 guns, from under the batteries of Callao, and during a severe conflict with a Spanish gun brig near Arauco, a fortress in Chili. In the latter encounter Mr. n.o.bbs was in command of a craft which sustained a loss in killed and wounded of 48 men out of 64, and was taken prisoner with the survivors by the troops of the adventurous robber General Benevideis. The 16 captives were all shot with the exception of Lieutenant n.o.bbs and three English seamen; these four saw their fellow prisoners led out from time to time, and heard the reports of the muskets that disposed of them. Ever afterwards he retained a vivid memory of that dreadful fusillade. Having remained for three weeks under sentence of death, he and his countrymen were unexpectedly exchanged for four officers attached to Benevideis' army. Mr. n.o.bbs then left the Chilian service, and in 1822 went to Naples. In his pa.s.sage from that city to Messina in a Neapolitan ship, she foundered off the Lipari Islands; and, with the loss of everything, he reached Messina in one of the ship's boats. In May, 1823, he returned to London in the _Crescent_; and in the same year he sailed to Sierra Leone as chief mate of the _Gambia_, but of 19 persons who went out in that vessel none but the captain, Mr. n.o.bbs, and two men of colour lived to return. In June, 1824, he again went to Sierra Leone, now as commander of the same craft, and was six weeks on sh.o.r.e ill of fever, but it pleased G.o.d to restore him to health in time to return with her; and he resigned command on his reaching England.

Meanwhile the captain of a vessel in which he had once sailed had expatiated so frequently on the happiness of the people at Pitcairn, where he had been, that Mr. n.o.bbs resolved to go thither if his life should be spared; and, with this object in view, he set out on the 12th of November, 1825, in the _Circa.s.sian_, bound for Calcutta, but he was detained there until August, 1827; then, after a narrow escape from shipwreck in the Strait of Sunda, he crossed the Pacific in a New York ship called the _Oceani_, went to Valparaiso, and thence to Callao, where he met a Mr. Bunker, expended 150 in refitting a launch, and made the voyage to Pitcairn."

Bligh, in his version of the _Bounty_ mutiny, says that there was absolutely no cause of discontent on board the ship until the mutineers became demoralized by their long stay at Tahiti, and that he was on the best of terms with everyone on board. In proof of this, says Bligh, Christian, when the boat was drifting astern, was asked by Bligh if this treatment was a proper return for his commander's kindness, to which the mutineer answered, "That, Captain Bligh, that is the thing. I am in h.e.l.l; I am in h.e.l.l." Bligh on being asked by the friends of young Heywood if he thought it possible that this boy of fifteen, who had been detained against his will, could have a guilty knowledge of the mutiny, replied in writing that the lad's "baseness was beyond all description. It would give me great pleasure to hear that his friends can bear the loss of him without much concern."

Bligh's story is contradicted by all of the mutineers--that, of course, goes without saying--but here is the point: the evidence of the mutineers is practically confirmed in every particular, and Bligh's version is contradicted by the people who were with him in the boat, and these people, Bligh himself says, were loyal. One man only, Hallett, had anything to say in confirmation of Bligh's allegations regarding Heywood, and Hallett afterwards recanted and expressed his sorrow at what he had alleged against Heywood--his statements, he admitted, were made when he was not fully responsible for what he said.

Labillardiere, in his _Voyage in Search of La Perouse_, says that one of the officers of the _Pandora_ a.s.sured some of the people of the La Perouse expedition, whom they had met at the Cape, that Bligh's ill-treatment of the _Bounty's_ people was the cause of the mutiny. Fryer, the master of the _Bounty_, who, it was shown during the court-martial, had more than anyone else supported Bligh, confirmed the statement that what Christian did say when the boat was cut adrift was, in answer to the boatswain, "No.

It is too late, Mr. Cole; I have been in h.e.l.l this fortnight, and will bear it no longer. You know that during the whole voyage I have been treated like a dog." Further than this, the evidence given by the mutineers, and supported in all essentials by the people cut adrift in the boat, was to the effect that there had been repeated floggings; that Bligh had continually used violent and abusive language to officers and men; that he was a petty tyrant and was guilty of all sorts of mean forms of aggravation. Here is one instance: he accused officers and men, from the senior officer under him downwards, of being thieves, alleging publicly on the quarter-deck that they stole his coconuts.

Against these allegations we have nothing but Bligh's narrative and the a.s.sertions, perfectly true, that he was a brave officer, who afterwards conducted a remarkable boat voyage and served with distinction under Nelson,[G] and that such a man could not be guilty of [Sidenote: 1830]

tyranny. We are here discussing the mutiny of the _Bounty_, and not the revolt in New South Wales, else against this we might remark that he was the victim of two mutinies against his rule. Bligh was not the only coa.r.s.e, petty tyrant who could fight a ship well; Edwards made a boat voyage scarcely less remarkable than Bligh's, and Edwards unquestionably was a vindictive brute. However, Sir John Barrow, who, from his position as Secretary of the Admiralty, was hardly likely to make rash a.s.sertions, in his book, published about 1830, says very plainly that Bligh, upon the evidence at the court-martial, was responsible for what happened. The mutiny being admitted, the members of the court-martial had no alternative but to convict those who were not with Bligh in the boat, but those who were not proved to have taken actual part in it, who were not seen with arms in their possession, were pardoned and ultimately promoted.

[Footnote G: After the battle of Copenhagen, Bligh, who commanded the _Glatton_, was thanked by Nelson in these words: 'Bligh, I sent for you to thank you; you have supported me n.o.bly.']

There are a dozen other equally important and quite as strong facts as these to justify the view of Bligh's character taken by us; but, unless something better than Bligh's narrative and his subsequent service is quoted in reply to this side of the case, we think that a jury of Bligh's countrymen would find that if the mutineers were seduced by thoughts of Tahiti to take the ship from him three weeks after they had left the island, and were 1500 miles from it, none the less were they driven into that act by their commander's treatment of them. But, nevertheless, the memory of Bligh's heroic courage and forethought in his wonderful boat voyage from the Friendly Islands to Timor--a distance of 3618 miles--is for ever emblazoned upon the naval annals of our country, and the wrong he did in connection with the tragedy of the _Bounty_ cannot dim his l.u.s.tre as a seaman and a navigator.

CHAPTER XI.

BLIGH AS GOVERNOR

Bligh, at the time of his appointment to New South Wales, was in command of the _Warrior_, and in the interval between his second breadfruit voyage and the date of his governor's commission had been behaving in a manner worthy of one of Nelson's captains. In 1794 he commanded the _Alexander_ (74), which, with the _Canada_, was attacked off the Scilly Isles in November by a French squadron of five seventy-fours. The _Alexander_ was cut off from her consort by three Frenchmen, when Bligh sustained their attack for three hours, and was then compelled to strike his flag, having lost only 36 men killed and wounded, while the enemy's loss was 450.

Other splendid service of Bligh is related in the following letter, which was printed in the _Daily Graphic_ under date London, October 28th, 1897.

The letter was signed "Mary Nutting (_nee_ Bligh), widow of the late rector of Chastleton, Oxon., Beausale House, Warwick," and as it is a spirited defence of a naval officer whose personal character has been impugned by these present writers as well as many others, we reprint the letter in full:--

"Sir,--There are special circ.u.mstances relating to the event of the battle of Camperdown, the centenary of which was recently commemorated, which have never been made public. One is the duel fought between the _Director_ and the _Vryheid_, in which the Dutch ship was dismasted and destroyed--a naval duel at which no other ship on either side was present, or within reach or sight.

On the previous day (October 11th, 1797) the English and Dutch fleets had met, fought, and the Dutch ships were dispersed, or, as you stated, 'their line was broken.' The Dutch admiral and his ship, however, escaped, and, no doubt, would have again been seen at sea had it not been that on October 12th, 1797, the _Director_ came up with the _Vryheid_, and having, after a severe struggle, first silenced and then boarded her, the Dutch admiral went on board the English ship, and gave up his sword to the captain. The captain was Captain (afterwards Admiral) W. Bligh. Strange to say, in the despatches sent home by Admiral Duncan Captain Bligh was not mentioned. I have three large water-colour pictures taken from sketches done by an artist on board the _Director_ at the time of the battle, showing the _Director_ coming up and attacking the _Vryheid_, the engagement at its height, and, finally, the _Vryheid_ dismasted and a wreck. Bligh was a man whose service was great, and, although in due course he became an admiral, he received no special reward from his country. In his earlier years, at the age of nineteen, he was selected by Sir Joseph Banks, his friend through life, to serve with Captain Cook as master on board the _Resolution_, in the year 1774, and sailed for four years on three voyages with him. After Captain Cook's death the navigation of the ship devolved on Bligh, who brought her home. After this, for four years, as commander, he traversed unknown seas. He fought under Admiral Parker at the Doggerbank, and under Lord Howe at Gibraltar. After the battle of Copenhagen, where Bligh commanded the _Glatton_, he was sent for by Lord Nelson to receive his thanks publicly on his quarter-deck, and the words of the great hero were--'Bligh, I thank you; you have supported me n.o.bly.' In the time of the mutiny at the Nore, he rendered great services by his courage and energetic efforts, recalling many of the rebellious sailors to their duty and allegiance.

"After the mutiny of the _Bounty_, Bligh, with wonderful skill and courage, brought the 18 men of his crew, who had been forced with him into the _Bounty's_ launch, 23 feet long by 6 feet 9 inches wide--a distance of 6318 miles[H]--safely to Timoa. No words can say too much of the care he took of them and the devotion shown in the effort to save them. On his return to England, he was at once made post-captain as a sign of favour, and he was given two ships, the _Providence_ and another, to be fitted out at his discretion, in which to accomplish the objects for which the _Bounty_ was sent. This he did with perfect success. (In his absence the trial of the mutineers of the _Bounty_ took place.) As to his governorship of New South Wales, let anyone read the fourth chapter of Dr. Lang's history of the colony--Lang was no partisan or connection of Bligh--which shows beyond dispute that Bligh acted, as he always did, with the most scrupulous regard to his duty and instructions, and received from time to time the written approval of the King, through Lord Castlereagh, then Secretary of State.