Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas [Hardcover]

On the morning of 14 February 1779 Captain James Cook of the HMS Resolution went ashore at Ka'awoloa in the ship's pinnace intending to invite Kalani'opu'u, the high chief of Hawaii, to accompany him to the ship and to hold him hostage pending the return of the Resolution's cutter which had been stolen the previous night. As Cook and Kalani'opu'u moved towards the pinnace, a rumour spread among the Hawaiians that an officer from the Resolution's sister ship had shot a chief on the eastern side of the bay, and the large crowd Hawaiian males that had gathered on the beach began to threaten Cook's party. His family pulled Kalani'opu'u away from Cook, and the latter, realising that `we can never think of compelling him to go aboard without killing a number of these people' began to withdraw towards the pinnace, having ordered a party of marines under Lieutenant Molesworth Philips to secure the line of retreat. Personally threatened and insulted, Cook fired a shot, injuring one chief with bird shot, and then killing another using ball. When the Hawaiians discharged a volley of slingshot, the sailors in the two boats, and the marines on the shore began firing without permission, and, when Cook angrily ordered them to stop, the marines dropped their muskets and fled to the boats, and Molesworth Philips, who had meanwhile been stabbed in the shoulder with an iron dagger, joined them. Cook was now left alone on the beach, and as he turned his back to wade out to the pinnace he was knocked down by a club, stabbed at the base of the neck, and beaten to death with a stone. Meanwhile the pinnace, which had moved inshore in an attempt to rescue the captain ran aground, and the sailors on board were prevented from using their muskets by the panic stricken marines who were trying to scramble aboard. One of four marines who were wading into the sea called on accompanying launch to rescue them, but the boat's officer, Lieutenant Williamson, refused to allow it, and the marines were duly struck down. As he was pulled aboard, Lieutenant Phillips, who had dived from the overcrowded pinnace and swum over to the launch, accused Williamson of cowardice, and later said that he had thought of shooting him on the spot. When the launch returned to the Resolution, it was noted by the ship's sailors that the muskets had barely been fired, and that the boat's cartridge boxes were still full. A movement developed to have the new commander, Captain Clerke, arrest Williamson, but the lieutenant was a notorious bully, and no one, not even his fellow officers at the scene, was prepared to testify against him. Many years later Phillips wrote that `Williamson would most certainly have been broke had Captain Clerke lived, depositions were taken, but when Clerke died, Williamson broke open the Captain's Bureau, and procured the papers.'

Watching the events as they unfolded on that day was the Resolution's 22 year old master, William Bligh, who wrote up a full account of the events the same evening. That account has not survived, but Professor Salmond, on whose detailed but succinct narrative the above summary is based, takes the reader to Bligh's manuscript notes on the account published by Lieutenant King. From these notes, several of which seem to have been expressed with unusual vehemence, and it is clear that Bligh felt that Cook's death owed to the fact that `the marines... were ill-disciplined and badly led, and that their cowardice was largely responsible for the death of their commander; and that King's account of Cook's death was inaccurate and self-serving.' Bligh had himself suffered from what he considered to be King's own amateurism and dereliction of duty, but had, on the other hand, been unusually close to Cook. Cook's death, writes Professor Salmond, left Bligh `with a burning sense of injustice. Cook had given Bligh his first great chance, and during this voyage of discovery they had worked closely together. Like Bligh... Cook was a skilled hydrographer and cartographer, who had struggled for advancement in the Royal Navy. By sheer competence and courage, Cook had risen to command the Endeavour and the Resolution, winning a reputation as one of the Navy's greatest commanders'. Professor Salmond suggests that Cook's death, the circumstances in which it took place, and it's immediate effects cast a long shadow over the development of Bligh's character and career. It seems, for example, that Bligh's own position as something of a favourite with Cook, and his inability to keep his views as to the cowardice and the incompetence that had, in his view caused Cook's death, alienated a number of people who were no doubt well enough aware already of the difficulties in which it placed them. There is, indeed, a feeling that the ranks closed tightly against Bligh. Whilst promoting King and Williamson, Clerke passed over Bligh, and in the promotions that followed Clerke's death, Bligh was passed over again. When the Resolution and the Discovery returned to England, Phillips, King and Williamson were all promoted, and Bligh, almost alone among Cooke's officers was not. When King was given the work of writing the official account of the Third Voyage, he not only used Bligh's charts, but attributed them to Henry Roberts, Bligh's mate, who had worked under Bligh's supervision - and was now promoted to lieutenant.

In 'Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty' (CUP, 1992) Greg Denning suggested that the reason for the Bounty Mutiny lay in Captain Bligh's vituperative language. In this book, Professor Salmond suggests that while Bligh was certainly given to such outbursts, they cannot be seen in isolation, and that whilst Bligh had significant defects of temperament and judgment, he was also the victim of an unusual set of circumstances in the nature of his command. Even before the Bounty left England, Lord Selkirk, a connection of Bligh's wife's family, was writing Joseph Banks noting that `An Officer of the Navy who happens to be here just now on a visit, tells me that this Establishment of Bligh's vessel is that of a Cutter, and says it is highly improper for so long a Voyage; only 24 able Seamen, & 21 of all others, without a lieutenant, or any Marines, with only a Surgeon without a Surgeon's Mate... This is the good of adhering without judgment to the Etiquette of an Establishment, without following the common sense of what is requisite for the particular circumstances'. It is one of the great virtues of this excellent book that its author is minutely aware, not only of the complex range of unusual circumstances that came together to allow the mutiny (see especially, p.443ff) but also how favourably Bligh's of care for his men and the avoidance of severe punishment contrasts with the records of his contemporaries in the South Pacific, such as Vancouver, Edwards, and even Cooke himself. Even Mr.Bligh's `bad language' was the kind of thing not uncommon in the service, though it appears to have been considerably more fluent. Those who were to sail subsequently with Bligh, and who felt the lash of his tongue, varied in their responses, but there were several, like George Tobin, who thought the man's bark was worse than his bite: `there was', said Tobin' `no settled system of tyranny by him likely to cause dissatisfaction. It was in those violent Tornadoes of temper whenh he lost himself, yet when all, in his opinion, went right, when could a man be more placid or interesting? ...Once or twice indeed I felt the Unbridled licence of his power of speech yet never without receiving something like an emollient plaister to heal the wound'. Professor Salmond further demonstrates that the mutiny, when it happened, was not the fruit of premeditation, but occurred almost by hazard: Fletcher Christian, who appears to have been in a state close to nervous breakdown, originally intended to escape from the ship on an improvised raft, and the mutiny was in fact conceived by George Stewart, who told Christian that his scheme to leave the ship was suicidal, and that `the People are ripe for anything'. The mutiny crystallised around a small group who appropriated the weaponry, who took care to isolate and eject those on whom they felt they could not rely, and who intimidated the others, several of whom would have left the ship with Bligh if they could.

Why then has Bligh, who went on to serve with courage and distinction under Duncan at Camperdown, and as second to Nelson at Copenhagen, and who ended his career as a Vice Admiral of the Blue such miserable a reputation? The answer seems to lie partly in the cultural tide that has for many years flowed so strongly against the authority of the institutions, the admiration of conscientiousness, and a respect for discipline and self-discipline, while glamourising individualism, self-expression and the romance of anarchy.

But whilst this current may seem to flow most strongly from mythology of American popular democracy and its complacent adoption by Hollywood, the story retains a peculiarly English dimension. Both Christian and Peter Heywood (who seems to have been under the former's powerful influence) had powerful patrons and articulate friends. Fletcher's brother, Edward Christian, who was well connected, and held a chair in Common Law at Cambridge, conducted a long and not unsuccessful campaign to vindicate his mutinous brother and to suggest, quite unreasonably, that `Bligh himself was responsible for the mutiny on the Bounty, having subjected Fletcher Christian and his fellow officers to insults and humiliations that no true gentleman could endure. Read more ›