The Naval Pioneers of Australia

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 1829 the good work he began was carried on by Mr. Nobbs, 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 circumstances, led to his present lucrative establishment under the Spanish Government in South America, for which    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 passion 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 gratitude 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 breasts.'"

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 assume 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 associates. 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 passions; 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 Cumberland, 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 assumption 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 passing down Fore Street, when a man of unusual 1809 stature, very much muffled, 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 instituting 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 circumstances which leave the manner of the mutineer officer's ending by no means settled.

The Rev. Mr. Nobbs, 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. Nobbs 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 assistance 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. Nobbs 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 Nobbs 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. Nobbs then left the Chilian service, and in 1822 went to Naples. In his passage 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. Nobbs, 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 shore ill of fever, but it pleased God 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. Nobbs 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 Circassian, 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 hell; I am in hell." 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 Pérouse, says that one of the officers of the Pandora assured some of the people of the La Pérouse 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 hell 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 assertions, perfectly true, that he was a brave officer, who afterwards conducted a remarkable boat voyage and served with distinction under Nelson,⁶ and that such a man could not be guilty of 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 coarse, 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 assertions, 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.

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 lustre 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 (née 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 circumstances 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 nobly.' 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 miles⁷—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.

"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 asserted 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 circumstances. 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 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 principal 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 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 1807 mutineers, some of them officers, of whose discontent, according to his own showing, he was unaware until the moment of the outbreak.