The Naval Pioneers of Australia Part 14

[Footnote H: Mrs. Nutting has here made a mistake in the distance traversed. Timoa is, of course, meant for Timor. (See page 246.)]

"It has been the pleasure of this generation to malign and misrepresent this good man and brave, not once, but continually.

It originated in false statements made in the defence of two of the mutineers, Christian and Heywood, representing Bligh's severity and cruelty as being the cause of the mutiny. Yet it can be proved from the minutes of the court-martial that Heywood on his trial defended himself by swearing that he was kept on board the _Bounty_ by force, and that it was 'impossible he could ever willingly have done anything to injure Captain Bligh, who had always been a father to him.' As to Christian, it can be shown that this was the third voyage he had sailed with Captain Bligh.

Would a man go three times with a commander such as Bligh has been described by his enemies?

"I have no object in writing this account but love for the memory of a man who was my mother's father, and so beloved of her and his other daughters (for he had no son), that the same love and feeling were instilled into the minds of her children. It was quite recently a.s.serted in a newspaper that 'Bligh was dismissed his ship for ill-conduct after the mutiny of the _Bounty_,' and these attacks and false statements are frequent. I know that I am asking what you may deem unusual and inconvenient, and yet I have faith in your love of justice, and desire to clear the memory of one who served his king and country as Bligh did."

Some years ago, an accomplished young lady, well known and much respected in Norfolk Island, and one of the (two or three generations removed) descendants by one side of her family from the mutineers, visited England.

An anecdote of this visit was told by the lady herself to one of these authors. This lady's husband, proud of his wife, took her to England and to his home in a certain English county, where, in her honour, her husband's relatives had invited many friends, among them a dear old lady who they knew was a descendant of Bligh. "What an interesting meeting this will be!" thought they, not taking into account all the circ.u.mstances. The old lady and the young lady were duly introduced. "Dear me!" said the young lady, "and so you are the----" (mentioning the relationship) "of the tyrant Bligh!" "How dare you, the----" (again emphasising the relationship) "descendant of a base mutineer, thus speak of a distinguished officer," indignantly exclaimed the old lady. Which little anecdote shows how very emphatically there are two sides to this story.

Bligh owed his appointment as governor to Sir Joseph Banks, and a letter from Banks, dated April 19th, 1805, says that he was empowered by Lord Camden to offer the government of the colony to Bligh at a salary of 2000 a year. Bligh's "Instructions" from the Crown contained a clause which has an important bearing on his administration. It was as follows:--

"And whereas it has been represented to us that great evils have arisen from the unrestrained importation of spirits into our said settlement from vessels touching there, whereby both the settlers and convicts have been induced to barter and exchange their live stock and other necessary articles for the said spirits, to their particular loss and detriment, as well as to that of our said settlement at large, we do, therefore, strictly enjoin you, on pain of our utmost displeasure, to order and direct that no spirits shall be landed from any vessel coming to our said settlement without your consent or that of our governor-in-chief for the time being previously obtained for that purpose, which orders and directions you are to signify to all captains or masters of ships immediately on their arrival at our said settlement, and you are, at the same time, to take the most effective measures that the said orders and directions shall be strictly obey'd and complied with."

Why Bligh should have been selected to govern the colony at this particular period it is difficult to understand, unless it was that, as appears from official correspondence, Sir Joseph Banks pretty well controlled the making of Australian history at this [Sidenote: 1807]

time--nearly always, if not invariably, to the advantage of Australia.

The condition of affairs ought to have been well understood at home.

Hunter and King had both harped upon it in their despatches, and lamented their inability to remedy the abuses that had grown up. They had made it no less plain that the New South Wales Regiment, so far from being a force with which to back authority, was one of the most dangerous elements in the rum-trading community of the settlement.

Letters from the Home Office indicate that this was in a measure understood, but the tenor of the despatches also shows that it was thought the evils arose less from viciousness of the governed than from want of backbone in the governors.

Bligh's character for courage and resolution may have led to his selection as a proper person to lick things into shape. It never seems to have occurred to his superiors that a man whose ship was taken from him by a dozen mutinous British seamen, if he were more forceful, resolute, tyrannical, what you will, than diplomatic in his methods, might lose a colony in which the colonists were not British sailors, but criminals and mutinous soldiers.

When Bligh landed, the princ.i.p.al agricultural settlements were on the banks of the rivers Hawkesbury and Nepean, and the settlers were just suffering from one of the most disastrous floods that have occurred in a country where floods are more severe than in most others. There was very little money in the colony, and the settlers carried on a legitimate system of barter by which they exchanged with each other their grain and herds. But the floods, of course, threw this system somewhat out of gear, and he who after the floods had escaped without much damage to his property had a pretty good pull upon his neighbour whose worldly belongings had been carried away by the swollen waters.

Bligh, there is no doubt, did the right thing at this time. He slaughtered a number of the Government cattle, dividing them among the more distressed colonists; and, to encourage them to go cheerfully to work to cultivate their land again and to become independent of their fellow-settlers, he promised to buy for the King's stores all the wheat they could dispose of after the next harvest, and to pay for it at a reasonable price.

Dr. Lang, in his _History of New South Wales_, published [Sidenote: 1834]

about 1834, relates how an old settler said to him, "Them were the days, sir, for the poor settler; he had only to tell the governor what he wanted, and he was sure to get it from the stores, whatever it was, from a needle to an anchor, from a penn'orth o' pack-thread to a ship's cable."

This arrangement was not conducive to the interests of the rum traders, who had been in the habit of purchasing grain and compelling the growers to accept spirits in payment for it. It operated still further against them when Bligh made a tour of the colony, took a note of each settler's requirements and of what the settler was likely to be able to produce from his land; then, according to what the governor thought the farmer was likely to be able to supply, Bligh gave an order for what was most needed by the man from the King's stores.

Of course this was taking a heavy responsibility upon himself. Even colonial governments nowadays, elected by "one-man-one-vote," scarcely go so far, but the state of the settlement must be remembered. There were no shops then, and the general public of the colony, with very few exceptions, was made up of Government officials and prisoners of the Crown. But the step was a serious interference with trade--that is, the rum trade; in consequence those in "the ring" were exasperated, and its members only wanted Bligh to give them an opportunity to retaliate upon and ruin him.

MacArthur, now a landed proprietor and merchant, soon after Bligh landed, paid him a visit, and reminded the new governor of an instruction sent to King that he (MacArthur) was to be given every encouragement in his endeavour to develop the pastoral resources of the colony. "Would Governor Bligh visit his estate on the Cowpasture river" (now Camden), "and see what had been done in this direction?" to which Governor Bligh, according to the report of Major Johnston's trial, replied, and with oaths: "What have I to do with your sheep and cattle? You have such flocks and herds as no man ever had before, and 10,000 acres of the best land in the country; but you shall not keep it." Here then was a declaration of war--MacArthur, too much of a trader to be a soldier, and politician enough to have enlisted on his side the English Government--which had announced its will that he should be encouraged as a valuable pioneer colonist--_versus_ Bligh, so much of a warrior as to have fought beside Nelson with honour and so impolitic as to have lost his ship to a body of [Sidenote: 1807]

mutineers, some of them officers, of whose discontent, according to his own showing, he was unaware until the moment of the outbreak.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN BLIGH. From an engraving after J. Russell, R.A., in Hugh's "Voyage to the South Sea" [London, 1792]. _To face p. 256._]

The fight began in this fashion. MacArthur had taken a promissory note from a man named Thompson. When the note became due, a fixed quant.i.ty of wheat was to be paid for its redemption; but, subsequent to the drawing of the note, came the great flood before mentioned; wheat went to ten times its former value, and MacArthur demanded payment on the higher scale.

Thompson refused payment at the current rate, alleging that he was only bound to pay for grain at the rate he received it, although his crops had not suffered by the floods. The matter came before Bligh to decide, and he gave judgment against MacArthur, who forthwith ceased to visit Government House. Then MacArthur was taken ill, Bligh called upon him, and a peaceful aspect of affairs came over the land, which lasted until early in 1807.

Bligh, in accordance with his special instructions, had issued an order by which the distillation of spirits was prohibited, and the seizure of any apparatus employed in such process enjoined. Just about this time Captain Abbott, of the New South Wales Corps, had sent orders to his London agent to send him a still. MacArthur happened to employ the same agent, who thought it a good idea to also send his other patron a still.

In due time the two stills arrived, and were shown in the manifest of the ship that brought them. Bligh instructed the naval officer of the port to lodge them in the King's store, and send them back to England by the first returning ship. The still boilers were, however, packed full of medicine, and the naval officer, thinking no harm would come of it, allowed the boilers to go to MacArthur's house, lodging only the worms in the store.

This happened in March. In the following October a ship was sailing for England, and the proper official set about putting the distilling apparatus on board of her, when he discovered that the coppers were still in the possession of MacArthur, who was asked to give them up. MacArthur replied that, with regard to one boiler, that was Captain Abbott's, who could do as he liked about it; but, with regard to the other, he (MacArthur) intended to send the apparatus to India or China, where it could be disposed of. However, if the governor thought proper, the governor could keep the worm and head of the still, and the copper he (MacArthur) intended to apply to domestic purposes. The [Sidenote: 1808]

governor thereupon, after the exchange of numerous letters between MacArthur and himself, caused the stills complete to be seized; and then MacArthur brought an action for an alleged illegal seizure of his property.

MacArthur was right enough on one detail of this dispute. Bligh had demanded that he should accept from an official a receipt for "two stills with worms and heads complete." As MacArthur had never had in his possession anything but two copper boilers, he naturally refused to commit himself in this fashion, and would only accept a receipt for the coppers.

The naval officer accordingly took the coppers, and MacArthur took no receipt for them.

Then happened a more serious affair. MacArthur partly owned a schooner which was employed trading to Tahiti; in this vessel a convict had stowed away, and the master of the vessel had left him at the island. The missionaries wrote to Bligh complaining of this, and proceedings were begun against MacArthur by the Government to recover the penalty incurred under the settlement regulations for carrying away a prisoner of the Crown, and a bond of 900, which had been given by the owners of the vessel, was declared forfeit.

MacArthur appealed from the court to Bligh, and Bligh upheld the court's decision. MacArthur and his partners still refused to pay, and the court officials seized the vessel. MacArthur promptly announced that her owners had abandoned her, and the crew, having no masters, walked ash.o.r.e. For sailors to remain ash.o.r.e in a penal settlement was another breach of regulations, chargeable against the owners of the ship from which the sailors landed, provided the sailors had left the ship with the consent of the owners; and the sailors declared that the owners had ordered them to leave the schooner.

MacArthur was summoned to attend the Judge-Advocate's office to "show cause." He refused to come, on the ground that the vessel was not his property, but now belonged to the Government. One Francis Oakes, an ex-Tahitian missionary, who, having disagreed with his colleagues in the islands, had turned constable, was then given a warrant to bring MacArthur from his house at Parramatta to Sydney. Oakes came back and reported that MacArthur refused to submit, and had threatened that if he (Oakes) came a second time he had better come well armed; and much more to the same purpose. Accordingly certain well-armed civil officials [Sidenote: 1808]

went back and executed the warrant, and MacArthur was brought before a bench of magistrates, over whom Atkins, the Judge-Advocate, presided, and was committed for trial.

Atkins did not know anything of law, but he had as legal adviser an attorney who had been transported, and whose character, Bligh himself said, was that of an untrustworthy, ignorant drunkard.

The court opened on January 25th, 1808. It was formed from six officers of the New South Wales Corps, presided over by the Judge-Advocate, and the court-house was crowded with soldiers of the regiment, wearing their side arms. The indictment charged MacArthur with the contravention of the governor's express orders in detaining two stills; with the offence of inducing the crew of his vessel to leave her and come on sh.o.r.e, in direct violation of the regulations; and with seditious words and an intent to raise dissatisfaction and discontent in the colony by his speeches to the Crown officials and by a speech he had made in the court of inquiry over the seizure of the stills. The speech complained of was to the following effect:--

"It would therefore appear that a British subject in a British settlement, in which the British laws are established by the royal patent, has had his property wrested from him by a non-accredited individual, without any authority being produced or any other reason being a.s.signed than that it was the governor's order; it is therefore for you, gentlemen, to determine whether this be the tenure by which Englishmen hold their property in New South Wales."

MacArthur objected in a letter to Bligh, written before the trial, to the Judge-Advocate presiding, on the ground that this official was really a prosecutor, and had animus against him. Bligh overruled the objection, on the ground that the Criminal Court of the colony, by the terms of the King's patent, could not be const.i.tuted without the Judge-Advocate.

MacArthur renewed his objection when the court met; Captain Kemp, one of the officers sitting as a member of the court, supported MacArthur's view; and the Judge-Advocate was compelled to leave his seat as president.

MacArthur then made a speech, in which he denounced the Judge-Advocate in very strong language, and that official called out from the back of the court that he would commit MacArthur for his conduct. Then Captain Kemp told the Judge-Advocate to be silent, and threatened [Sidenote: 1808]

to send him to gaol, whereupon Atkins ordered that the court should adjourn, but Kemp ordered it to continue sitting. The Judge-Advocate then left the court, and MacArthur called out: "Am I to be cast forth to the mercy of these ruffians?"--meaning the civil police--and added that he had received private information from his friends that he was to be attacked and ill-treated by the civilians; whereupon the military officers undertook his protection and told the soldiers in the court to escort him to the guard-room.

Then the Provost-Marshal said this was an attempt to rescue his prisoner, went at once and swore an affidavit to this effect before Judge-Advocate Atkins and three other justices of the peace, and procured their warrant for the arrest of MacArthur. This was shown to the military officers; they surrendered MacArthur, who was lodged in the gaol. The court broke up, and the officers then wrote to Bligh, accusing the Provost-Marshal of perjury in stating that they contemplated a rescue.

This business had lasted from the opening of the court in the morning until two o'clock in the afternoon.

Bligh, in accordance with his legal right, had all along refused to interfere with the const.i.tution of the court. At the same time, there was no doubt that MacArthur could not have a fair trial if Judge-Advocate Atkins was to try him, for it was notorious that the two men had been at enmity for several years. Bligh demanded all the papers in the case from the officers, who, in his opinion, had illegally formed themselves into a court. They refused to give them up unless the governor appointed a new Judge-Advocate, and Bligh replied with a final demand that they should obey or refuse in writing. Then he wrote to Major Johnston, who commanded the regiment, and who lived some distance from Sydney, to come into town at once, as he wanted to see him over the "peculiar circ.u.mstances."

Johnston sent a verbal message to the effect that he was too ill to come, or even to write. This was mere trickery.

The next morning, January 26th (the anniversary of the founding of the colony), the officers a.s.sembled in the court-room, and as no prisoner was forthcoming for them to try, they wrote a protest to the governor, in which they set forth that, having been sworn in to try MacArthur, they conceived they could not break up the court until he was tried; that the accused had been arrested and removed from the court; [Sidenote: 1808]

and that, in effect, the sooner the governor appointed a new Judge-Advocate the better for all parties.

No notice was taken of this letter, but Bligh issued a summons to the officers to appear before him at Government House to answer for their conduct, and at the same time he wrote a second letter to Johnston, asking him to come to town, and got a second reply from that officer, to the effect that he was still too ill. But he was well enough to continue plotting against Bligh.

Soon after sending this second letter Johnston rode into town, arriving at the barracks at five o'clock in the evening. He held a consultation with his officers, and the upshot of this was that Johnston, as lieutenant-governor of the colony, demanded the instant release of MacArthur from gaol. The gaoler complied, and MacArthur went straight to the barracks, where a requisition to Johnston to place Bligh under arrest was arranged, at the suggestion of MacArthur, on the ground "that the present alarming state of the colony, in which every man's property, liberty, and life are endangered, induces us most earnestly to implore you instantly to a.s.sume the command of the colony. We pledge ourselves at a moment of less agitation to come forward to support the measure with our lives and fortunes." This was signed by several of the princ.i.p.al Sydney inhabitants, and then Johnston proceeded to carry out their and his own and the other rum-traffickers' designs.

The drums beat to arms; the New South Wales Corps--most of the men primed with the original cause of the trouble--formed in the barrack square, and with fixed bayonets, colours flying, and band playing, marched to Government House, led by Johnston. It was about half-past six on an Australian summer evening, and broad daylight. The Government House guard waited to prime and load, then joined their drunken comrades, and the house was surrounded.

Mrs. Putland, the governor's brave daughter (widow of a lieutenant in the navy, who had only been buried a week before), stood at the door, and endeavoured to prevent the soldiers from entering. She was pushed aside, and the house was soon full of soldiers, who, according to what some of them said, found Bligh hiding under his bed--a statement which, there is not the slightest doubt, was an infamous lie, suggested by the position in which the governor really was found, viz., standing behind a cot in a back room, where he was endeavouring to conceal some [Sidenote: 1808]

private papers.

Bligh surrendered to Johnston, who announced that he intended to a.s.sume the government "by the advice of all my officers and the most respectable of the inhabitants." Johnston caused Bligh's commission and all his papers to be sealed up, informed the governor that he would be kept a prisoner in his own house, and leaving a strong guard of soldiers, marched the rest of his inebriated command back to barracks, with the same parade of band-playing and pretence of dignity.

The colony was now practically under martial law, and Johnston appointed a new batch of civil officials, dismissing from office the others, including the Judge-Advocate, Atkins. MacArthur was then--humorously enough--tried by the court as newly constructed, and, of course, unanimously acquitted, Johnston then appointing him a magistrate and secretary of the colony. To complete the business, the court then took it upon themselves to try the Provost-Marshal, and gave him four months' gaol for having "falsely sworn that the officers of the New South Wales Corps intended to rescue his prisoner" (MacArthur), and at the same time the court sentenced the attorney who drew the indictment, and managed the legal business for Atkins, to a long term of imprisonment.

In July, Lieutenant-Colonel Foveaux arrived from England, and was surprised to find the existing state of affairs. By virtue of seniority, he succeeded Johnston as lieutenant-governor, and appointed another man in place of MacArthur, but did not interfere in any other way, contenting himself with sending to England a full report of the affair. Foveaux was in turn succeeded by Colonel Paterson, who arrived at the beginning of 1809, and who also declined to interfere in the business, but he granted Johnston leave of absence to proceed to England, MacArthur and two other officers accompanying him.

Meanwhile some of the free settlers had begun to show indications of a desire to help Bligh, who, to prevent accidents, was taken by the rebels from his house and lodged with his daughter a close prisoner in the barracks. Later on, he signed an agreement with Paterson to leave the colony for England in a sloop of war then bound home.

Bligh and his daughter embarked on the vessel, but on the way she put into the Derwent river, in Van Diemen's Land, where the [Sidenote: 1809]