Mutiny on the Bounty Read online

  Captain Bligh, can I offer you a pint of spit?

  Don’t mind if I don’t, Chief, thank you.

  This pure beverage of the Gods, however, is only for the King and great Chiefs. Those on the lower tiers of society get a lesser, diluted version, ‘mixt with water and again squeezed and strained, it is then delivered to the inferior Chiefs or those of the highest class if they prefer it diluted, and it frequently undergoes a second and third mixture if there is not enough to supply every one’.74

  God help him, Bligh had not liked the drink to begin with, but, now that he knows how it is made, he cannot bear it, and, diplomatic incident or not, outright refuses to drink it.

  As it happens, the Tahitians do not feel the same about what the English drink, and have very quickly become partial to both ale, and wine.

  So much so that, having noticed that when there is a toast to the King of England, the English always fill their glasses first, it soon becomes quite normal practice to have as many as ten Loyal Toasts to His Majesty in the course of any meal together.

  ‘King George Earee no Pretanie!’75 one or other of the Chiefs will shout, quickly joined in by the others. The English pause, fill their glasses, and join in. ‘Gentlemen, the King of England!’

  ‘King George Earee no Pretanie!’ the cry goes up again. ‘Gentlemen, the King of England!’

  And so it goes.

  Loyal?

  Or just royally drunk.

  Mostly the latter, but no-one seems to mind.

  And this is good piss. Not spit.

  3 November 1788, double, double, toil and trouble on the Bounty

  Trouble on the Bounty. Due to the rather thieving nature of the Natives, it has been necessary to place guards on anything and everything they might be able to get their hands on, but on this day, one of those on guard duty – Alec Smith, the Able Seaman with the heavy Cockney accent, notable for his rather stocky pocky-ness and generally lazy disposition – has been found derelict in that very duty. The Cutter had taken Bligh ashore, Smith had been left to guard it, and while he hadn’t been looking, a Native had crept forward and taken the ‘gudgeon’ of the rudder – the key metallic part on which it pivots. It is a problematic loss as it is one of those things that simply cannot be replaced until such time as the Bounty gets back to England.

  This kind of thing can not go on. The point has to be made to the crew that dereliction of duty of any kind is a flogging offence. And Bligh is also of the view that it might be good for the Chiefs to see what a high value the English place on discipline, how seriously they take these troublesome thefts.

  ‘I thought [therefore],’ Bligh would recount, ‘it would have a good effect to punish the boat-keeper in their presence, many of them happening to be then on board; and accordingly I ordered him a dozen lashes.’76

  It goes as before.

  The surly Smith – a miserable presence at the best of times – is strapped to the grating over the hold, now propped up vertically against the rigging, and again it is James Morrison who is ordered by Bligh, ‘under the necessity’77 of punishing inattention, to do the honours for Smith’s dishonour, lashing him a dozen times.

  But, instead of being impressed, the Chiefs, led by Tinah, and the Tahitian women who are also present, are terribly upset by the grisly spectacle, begging Bligh to lessen the punishment.

  Of course, Bligh does not. Merciless, he insists the punishment is carried out, which clearly does not sit well with the Chiefs, Tinah least of all.

  As a matter of fact, Smith himself feels very grim about it, and though he has taken his punishment with barely a whimper – for he is tough all right – there is a look in his eye when it is done, which could peel varnish off the stern. He had done his best to guard the Cutter, had neither been asleep nor drunk, had not been cavorting with a woman. It just so happened that when he was looking one way, a Native had stolen something the other way.

  And for this, he had been lashed?

  You will keep, Captain Bligh, you will keep.

  •

  Now, while many of the ship’s company are making haste slowly to aid their eventual departure – Master Fryer, Mr Cole and above all Mr Nelson – and are looking forward to that day, others take the opposite view and want nothing more than to stay ever longer.

  Young ‘Monkey’, Tom Ellison, is a case in point. He has changed since he has been here – become tanned, put on muscle, perhaps shot up by an inch, known the joys of lying with women. He is a lad from the slums, who can barely fathom that a world like Tahiti existed, and that there is a place in it for such as him – not tugging his forelock, guvnor, as he had to do back in England, and on the Bounty, but enjoying it all as a free man.

  Another is Peter Heywood, who has also matured remarkably in recent months, most particularly on this magic island – becoming ever stronger and taller, and walking now with the swagger of one who has not merely lost his virginity, but just about everything else of his once childish ways. He is now a man, and a proud one. And yet never let it be said that he uses his spare time only for pursuit of Tahitian maidens. For, using his strong education to good effect, he has formed an ambition to create the first dictionary of the Tahitian language. The most obvious words are ones they use every day, like tyo for friend, ae for yes, aima for no, tane for man, vahine for woman.78 Other words come, bit by bit. The hair, for example, of his favourite maiden, is her Airooroo, while her lips are her Aiootoo, her tongue her Aireroo, and her large breasts her dahy aai. When he came to these islands, he was a peerey peerey, virgin, but that had not lasted long.

  Eno means bad, while myty means good.

  Mamu! means stay silent!

  Mattie means death.

  Meari’I, Meari’I means Let me see?

  A towtow is a servant, man of low degree, while it is noted by even the Natives that Bligh, who they call Bry, is frequently very waureddey … angry.

  Christian, on the other hand, Titriano, is always matahiti ‘āpī, happy.

  Ute’ute, red, is the colour of their God of War, Oro – which is the reason their war canoes are adorned with so many feathers of that colour.

  And so it goes. Bit by bit, Heywood’s dictionary has filled out, and he is now among the most proficient in the Tahitian language among the ship’s company.

  Sadly, however …

  E faarue tatou nei aita i maoro roa … We are leaving soon.

  Another man making huge strides in learning the language is Christian, courtesy of the fact that, when not supervising the nurturing of the bread-fruit, he spends all his time with Isabella.

  Now a few weeks since arriving, he is frankly looking, and sounding, more Tahitian by the day, as his skin becomes deeply tanned, much of his once fine uniform is discarded, his muscles glisten, and he lightly talks to Isabella, who is nearly always with him.

  Fletcher’s commitment to this new way of life, and the Tahitians’ embrace of him, is marked by his request, and their acquiescence, to get a Tahitian tattoo, with a specific design, a star on his left breast, just like the Arreoy warriors have. In fact, many of Captain Cook’s crew who had visited here 20 years earlier, including Peckover, have such stylish tattoos, and the other crew-members have all long admired them. Now, Fletcher wants one, too, as do his friends George Stewart and James Morrison – the last of whom, as ever a cut above, is freshly tattooed with the famed dictum of the Order of the Garter, Honi soit qui mal y pense, ‘Shame on him who evil thinks’, soon displayed around his left leg. Soon, quite a few of the Bounty men are at least displaying the star whereby, the sailors’ nascent lore runs, they can identify each other as ‘Knights of Tahiti’.

  Yes, it is mostly fun, but it will also give them the feeling of being part of a secret club.

  Now Fletcher lies down, with his breast bared, and a Tahitian tattooist, who is expert in the field, first marks out the design of the star on his skin using a niho mano, a row of shark teeth.

  ‘These marks were made,’ the account of Able Sea
man John Sumner, who undergoes the same treatment, runs, ‘by striking the teeth of an instrument which resembles a comb just through the skin, and rubbing a sort of paste made of soot and oil into the parts thus struck which leaves thereon an indelible stain.’79

  Soon there is scarce a man on the Bounty without a tattoo, just as there is scarce a man who does not have a Tahitian lover.

  The exception to both, of course, is that eternal disapproving outsider, glowering in the distance, Captain William Bligh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PARADISE FOUND

  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

  But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times,

  In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways

  Of custom, law and statute, took at once

  The attraction of a country in romance!1

  William Wordsworth, a schoolmate of Fletcher Christian’s, ‘The Prelude’

  8 November 1788, Point Venus, the Bounty’s bounty grows

  Captain Bligh is pleased. Two hundred and fifty-two healthy potted plants now sit beneath the awning of the tent made from a spare sail.

  God is smiling on his venture at last.

  On that note, on this balmy evening, Captain Bligh sits as usual with Tinah, who has brought along his Taowah or priest. The leathery elder tells Bligh in a commanding voice that the principal God of the Tahitians is called Oro but that they have ‘many others of less consequence’.

  ‘Do you have a God?’ he asks Captain Bligh, in Tahitian.

  ‘Ae,’ replies Bligh, in kind. Yes.

  ‘Does he have a son? And who was his wife?’

  ‘Yes, our God had a son but no wife.’

  ‘Who was his father and mother?’

  ‘He never had a father or mother.’2

  The priest and Tinah try to be polite, really they do. But they simply cannot help themselves as the very idea of it sends them into new explosions of mirth.

  ‘You have a God then who never had a father or mother and has a child without a wife!’3

  Yes, that is the sum of it.

  The priest and Tinah persist.

  ‘Aymah timoradee huheine arrami no mydidde?’ Did not a God lie with a woman to get him?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who was then before your God and where is he? Is he in the Wind or in the Sun?’4

  There is, of course, no solid answer to be had, and Bligh does not even attempt one.

  •

  Oh, the pleasures of this life to be had on Tahiti, even beyond the lure of the flesh. The ease with which you can have succulent food! Within days of arriving, the younger lads of the Bounty, like ‘the boy’ Tinkler and ‘Monkey’ Ellison, had been shinnying up and down coconut trees as if born to it. The men even begin to stockpile the coconuts in neat pyramids below decks on the Bounty, against that terrible day they will have to leave this earthly paradise.

  Meantime, the bread-fruit plants continue to grow with remarkable vigour, occasioning quite opposite reactions from Captain Bligh, delight, and his men, horror. For while Bligh, of course, is eager to be on his way, the likes of Fletcher Christian can barely bear to contemplate the day they must part from this sweet land and their new sweethearts.

  18 November 1788, Bounty, Bligh gets a good Iddeah about the facts of life

  After all his time in Tahiti, it takes a good deal to shock Captain Bligh, but this evening it happens. He is joined for dinner by Tinah and his brother, Prince Oreepyah. They are accompanied by the ubiquitous Hetee-Hetee, whose name sounds like laughter, which is appropriate under the circumstances, as he tells riotous story after riotous story. Not all of his stories, however, are funny, and this evening, after Tinah departs a little early, Hetee-Hetee divulges a scandalous truth, blithely confirmed by the Prince.

  For you see, Captain Bligh, Iddeah, Tinah’s wife, has a regular lover, a servant, towtow, and that servant is none other than ‘the very person who always fed Tinah at dinner’.5

  What’s more, Hetee-Hetee insists, in the face of Bligh’s stupefaction it is Queen Iddeah’s desire for it to be so.

  Staggering.

  Bligh soon finds out other details. ‘Both men cohabited with the Wife in the same hour, and in the presence of one another’, enjoying what is essentially a threesome.

  ‘The Virtue and chastity of the chief Women,’ writes the scandalised Bligh in his Log, ‘is by no means equal to what it has been represented.’6

  Ah, but Bligh’s education in such matters continues to grow. Three days later, he and some of his men are invited to a Heiva, a particularly ‘lusty dance’ in every sense of the phrase, being put on just for Captain Bligh. For, look there now, as 12 glistening and muscly men are divided into four ranks, with two particularly voluptuous women positioned in front of them. A pause now as a priest makes a stirring oration that lasts ten minutes, the audience hanging on every word.

  For his part, Bligh sits there a little uncomfortably – of course, the ubiquitous portrait of Captain Cook has been placed by his side – wondering what will happen next. When the priest finishes, two pieces of white cloth are brought forth, one of which is wrapped around the painting, and the other around Bligh. And now an old man steps forward, bearing three mats of plaited coconut leaf. The first is placed at the feet of Bry, the second before Tinah, and the final one at the base of the painting. Let the dancing begin!

  First, the men jump high, ‘throwing their legs and arms into violent and odd motions’ as the two women keep time. Bligh can’t help but notice that every time the women throw their legs high, ‘their [nether regions] were generally exposed to full view, frequently standing on one leg and keeping the other up, giving themselves the most wanton and lascivious motions’.7

  At least they are a fair distance away, and it is not all right in his face …

  But now, Iddeah motions for these wildly gyrating, freely perspiring, near-naked women to come closer and they ‘accordingly advanced with their Cloath up, and went through the same Wanton gestures’.8

  While Bligh averts his eyes the best he can, everyone else, including Fletcher Christian – and maybe even the eyes of the hitherto exemplary Captain Cook – is mesmerised.

  Taking the opportunity – sex is in the air – Hetee-Hetee asks Queen Iddeah to confirm to wide-eyed Captain Bligh that she indeed takes her house servant as a lover.

  Laughing, Iddeah indeed confirms exactly that!

  Bligh’s eyes widen further in disbelief when he learns yet more libidinous social mores.

  I find it is not at all uncommon for brothers to have connection with the wives of each other …9

  For their part, the ship’s company of the Bounty are less inclined to reel in horror at the Tahitian sexual mores, and more disposed to throw themselves at the Tahitian women with gusto, who continue to throw themselves right back – which comes with attendant problems. That much is evident from the discreet note that Bligh makes in his Log on 4 December, recording ‘Three Venereals in the List.’10

  The Bounty’s pay book, though, paints a more complete picture, listing the men who, thus far, have had to draw on a part of their salary as payment for medicine to cure the pains and pus in their penises. (Yes, while if you fall on deck or the like and get injured, the medical care of the Royal Navy is at your service, free of charge, Venereal Disease is on your head, and worse.) The list is long:

  Christian, Peter Heywood, Cole, Purcell, Lebogue, Byrn, Hillbrandt, Hall, Skinner, Alex Smith, John Smith, Burkitt, Millward, Norton, Muspratt, Lamb, Quintal, Brown.11

  And these are merely the ones who have paid for treatment. The chaste Captain Bligh gets a daily update on exactly what his officers and men have been up to in their hours of leisure and pleasure, and is not pleased. The sooner they can get all the pots on board, and get on their way, back to disciplined shipboard life, the better it will be. But when will the bread-fruit be ready? At the moment, the best he can hope for is April.

  4 December 1788, Bounty, more trouble at the mill

/>   God damn you, sir, God damn you!

  To Bligh’s infinite outrage, today, for the third time, the Carpenter, William Purcell, refuses to comply with a direct order. As ever, he stands on his dignity, reaches for the highest of his high dudgeon and sniffs that the order lies beyond his duties as Carpenter.

  And it has all come from nowhere.

  This afternoon, Hetee-Hetee brings a particular stone from the shore, begging of Bligh a favour. Can he direct his men to shape the stone, cut the rock with their wondrous tools, to form a proper British carving stone, so it would be smooth enough for them to sharpen their own hatchets on it?

  Of course.

  Mr Purcell, please use your tools to this effect, and so shape the stone.

  Mr Purcell does not hesitate in his response.

  ‘I will not cut the stone for it will spoil my Chisel, and though there is a law to take away my clothes there is none to take away my Tools.’12

  Stupefied, stunned that once again Purcell refuses a direct order, Bligh instantly metes out a heavy-handed punishment, confining the Carpenter to his cabin.

  He would, in truth, like to give the insufferable Purcell a dozen lashes – to go with the dozen lashes that limping rogue Matthew Thompson is also given on this day ‘for insolence and disobedience of orders’13 – but Purcell’s rank as Warrant Officer prevents it. In any case it is as well, for as soon as the next afternoon, when the first storm of the monsoon season bursts upon them – coming from their unprotected nor’west – Bligh realises he will need every bit of skill and energy Purcell can muster, to keep the Bounty safe.

  Again and again waves crash into and over the ship, threatening to break it away from its anchors and hurl it on the shore. All hands on deck! And they all are, at least the best they can, as the ship bucks and rears on the violent, rolling swell.

  In desperation, Bligh personally gives the word to Purcell to leave his cabin, immediately, and busy himself securing the ship, battening down the hatches. Bligh adds only one rider, shouting it above the howling wind and thunderous waves that foam all around them, threatening destruction.