A Personal View from Peter Marsh
A few months ago I wrote a story on the privateer Lynx, and admitted that I can only handle a very limited number of historical replica ships each summer. But no sooner had 2007 rolled around than I found a brief news story on the web about a replica of H.M.S. Bounty. The ship wasn't coming anywhere near the west coast, but I was soon bouncing around the web looking for information about the ship and the event that made it world famous. I couldn't help myself!
I learned that the good ship Bounty, built in 1960 for the film starring Marlon Brando and Leslie Howard, was planning to visit two small ports on the northeast coast of England next summer, before embarking on an a voyage "recreating the Mutiny on The Bounty" 220 years after it happened. From Portsmouth, England it would sail to Tahiti and Pitcairn Island, via Tenerife, Cape Town and New Zealand.
So the villages of Maryport and Whitehaven in west Cumbria were anticipating a tourist bonanza, thanks to their famous local son-none other than Fletcher Christian, who was born on a farmstead near Cockermouth on September 25, 1764. (One of the younger pupils at Christian's school was the poet William Wordsworth.) Why do I find this historical trivia fascinating? Why is it that any culturally literate person knows more about Captain Bligh than Captain Cook? If you've read this far, then you've proved my point! The story of this rebellious crew on an obscure 18th century naval mission is as compelling as ever.
That is why it has been turned into a big-budget movie no less than three times. Nothing else comes close. Other movies about the sea rely on naval battles, storms, shipwrecks or courtrooms; the story of the mutiny combines so many marvelous narrative threads--rivalry, treason, sex, and violence in a tropical paradise just for starters--that a team of Hollywood script writers could never have come up with anything like it. With all our modern understanding of psychology, we are no closer to solving the riddle of whether he was really a tyrant, or merely a poor communicator.
For comparison, I looked at the history of navigation for another sailor you can really care about. We know practically nothing about the men who mapped the world, like Columbus or Cook, beyond the bare facts-their achievements are described in detail, but nothing is even hinted about their characters. So I looked much further back, to the time when sailing heroes really were "legendary."
More than 2,000 years ago, a Greek storyteller created the Odyssey--an epic tale about a short sailing trip that went terribly wrong. The hero circled the eastern Mediterranean for ten years before returning safely home-his crew weren't so lucky! With its unforgettable images of Sirens, Lotus Eaters, the goddess Calypso and her seductive maidens, not to mention giants and monsters, the Odyssey was such a powerful story, it survived the rise and fall of great civilizations, and is alive and well in the 21st century. For my money, that makes Odysseus the "Ultimate Sailing Superstar!"
The Viking era produced produced many fine seamen, but they were generally too busy looting and pillaging to bother to write anything down, so even their discovery of America failed to produce a single memorable character. Similarly, the great navigators of the 15th and 16th centuries were too busy conquering new lands to develop any depth, and my favorite, the English sea dog Francis Drake, is remembered mainly for a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. (He continued playing when told the Armada had been sighted.) Pirate captains were a colorful bunch who undoubtedly lived fascinating lives, but they rarely kept a diary for obvious legal reasons. There were many naval heroes during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, but the public prefers the literary exploits of fictional captains like Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey.
The issue of how much of the mutiny story is fact and how much fiction arose even before Bligh arrived back in England in 1790. By the time the court martial was held, the entire country had taken sides and the Fletcher Christian ironically had become the working-class hero of the affair. It's been the subject of almost non-stop debate ever since. Publishers rushed to get Bounty stories and books into print before the death sentences were carried out, never suspecting that 200 years later books would again be rushed into print to mark the bicentennial of the mutiny!
One was written by Portland author and boatman Sam McKinney, who I interviewed at the time. (He died in December at the age of 79.) A bibliography lists over 200 books on the subject, including the newest by Caroline Alexander, first printed in 2004. She dug deep into the British Admiralty archives and contemporary documents to shed new light on the mutiny. Alexander is best known for her popular biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton, who like Bligh, was a brilliant seaman who lost his ship but personally redeemed himself and saved his crew by a long dangerous open-boat voyage. (Shackleton has been gaining acceptance as a sailing hero himself lately, thanks to some excellent public relations work. His story makes a good documentary, but I can't imagine a Hollywood version!)
The HMS Bounty that will be re-creating the voyage has appeared in many films, so is a film star in its own right. In 1960, when the MGM studios set out to film Mutiny on the Bounty, it commissioned the construction of a wooden replica ship from the traditional schooner builder Smith and Ruhland in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. It is still said that "the Bounty II was built from the original ship's drawings," but the fact that all the dimensions were increased by approximately one third to accommodate the cameras and film crew was rarely mentioned. The length on deck is 120'.
The film starred Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard, who attempted to bring the characters inner motives to the screen. The film was not a critical success, and is best known for Brando's antics. He married a Tahitian actress he met on the set and bought an atoll where he created one of the earliest "environmental" resorts. Most importantly, he saved the Bounty from being burned at the end of the film, saying he would quit unless the ship was spared. Later, MGM berthed the ship in St. Petersburg as a tourist attraction until1986, when America's Cup sailor and media mogul Ted Turner acquired the MGM film library and the Bounty with it. He used the ship to promote his enterprises, and filmed Treasure Island with Charleton Heston in 1989.
He donated the ship to The Tall Ship Bounty Foundation in 1993. And it began a new career as an educational vessel. In 2001, the ship was purchased by the HMS Bounty Organization LLC-a group dedicated to keeping the ship sailing and using her as a vehicle for teaching the art of square rigged sailing.
The Bounty returned to the sea in 2002 after getting new bottom planking and over $1.5 million in renovations in Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, Maine. After a couple of years sailing the east coast, the ship returned to Boothbay for the final phase of the restoration, including replacing the topsides and changes to the interior to better accommodate sail trainees and private functions. The ship's conversion to the notorious Black Pearl (sometimes) under the command of the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow for the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy has undoubtedly helped pay the bills.
Hollywood Goes to Sea
The first depiction of the Mutiny on the Bounty was an Australian film called "In the Wake of the Bounty" shot in 1933. It is noteworthy as the film debut of Errol Flynn, playing Fletcher Christian. (Flynn was born in Tasmania.) A few years later, when he became famous in the US, he told people about this film, and no one believed him.
The 1935 MGM film of "Mutiny on the Bounty" starred Charles Laughton, who won an Oscar for his memorable if exaggerated portrayal of a cruel and arrogant Captain Bligh. Clark Gable, who had made his stage debut in Astoria in 1922, was the good-natured Christian. The two ships in the film were real working sailing schooners that had been laid up in southern California. They were cheap and could be disguised as 18th century ships with some work. The 'Lily, built by Dickie Bros. at San Francisco in 1882, was too narrow. To remedy this, new ribs were fastened around the hull and planked over. Around the keel, the space between the two skins was filled with concrete for ballast. A full working square rig was designed, built and fitted to create the H.M.S. Bounty. The second schooner, the Nanuk built at Fairhaven, Calif. in 1892, became the H.M.S. Pandora, which was sent out from England to find the mutineers.
1985's "The Bounty" was a real epic, produced by Dino de Laurentiis. The big cast was led by Anthony Hopkins as Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. It appeared close to the bicentennial of mutiny and was the most historically accurate, although the ship was built of steel, then sheathed with wood, and has modern conveniences. This film suggests that the motives behind the mutiny might not have been as noble as suggested in the previous versions. It also portrays the natives mostly nude as they would have appeared at that time. Today, the ship is based in Sydney, Australia, where it works in the tourist excursion market.
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The Real Voyage of the Bounty
The voyage of HMS Bounty was prompted by a proposal to introduce the Tahitian breadfruit to the West Indian plantations as a convenient food for the slaves on the sugar plantations. In May 1787, after a consultation with Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, King George III issued an order to the Admiralty to pursue the challenge of transporting breadfruit seedlings to the Caribbean.
The Admiralty didn't want to spend too much on the task and after the inspection of several vessels, a merchant ship named the Bethia was purchased for £1,950. In June 1787 and re-named Bounty. It was refitted at the Deptford naval shipyard, close to my boyhood home, where the Golden Hinde was also prepared for Francis Drake 200 years before. The great cabin was converted to house the potted breadfruit plants, and gratings fitted to the upper deck. There was even less room than usual to house the 46 officers and men.
In August 1787, 33-year-old Lieutenant William Bligh was appointed to command the ship. Bligh had been the sailing master of the HMS Resolution on Capt. Cook's last voyage of discovery from 1775 to 1779. It was unusual for a mere lieutenant to be given such a responsibility, and was the second of many small details that would turn the crew into mutineers.
Bligh was concerned for the welfare of his crew and he introduced measures to ensure their health, including a new watch system, He promoted Christian to Acting Lieutenant effectively making him the second in command, which caused the ship's Master, John Fryer, to become resentful towards Bligh.
Christian came from an influential and aristocratic family and had sailed with Bligh on two previous voyages. They were said to have been firm friends.
After stopping in the Canary Islands, HMS Bounty sailed towards Cape Horn, only to be faced with violent headwinds. After 30 days, Bligh took the decision to turn around and head east around the Cape of Good Hope. Many crew members were unable to appreciate the health regime of nutrition and exercise that Bligh had encouraged or the fact that he was now serving as the ship's doctor, after the discovery of the surgeon's alcoholism.
Bligh dealt with a heated quarrel between Fryer and a seaman Matthew Quintal by sentencing the latter to twenty-four lashes, which built more hostility towards him. After a l0-month voyage, they dropped anchor at Matavai Bay, Tahiti. The loading of breadfruit seedlings only took six weeks, but the departure of the Bounty was delayed for five months when the season changed and the winds were no longer fair for their route home.
Bligh allowed a number of the crew to live ashore, to care for the potted breadfruit plants. Without the discipline and rigid schedule of the sea, the men went native. Three crewmen deserted, hoping to spend their days in this tropical paradise; but were recaptured and flogged. Bligh became engrossed in his study of the island, its people and their culture, while the crew succumbed to the hospitality of the native people: "In the midst of plenty in the finest Island in the World where they need not labour, and where the alurements of disipation are more than equal to anything that can be conceived." --A Narrative of the Mutiny, etc., by Lieut. W. Bligh, 1790,
When the ship finally departed, tension quickly built up. The humidity, the cramped conditions with over 1,000 breadfruit plants filling every spare foot of space, and the need to water them regularly caused a breakdown of order among. Bligh was already becoming enraged by the growing indifference of some of the crew to their duties. Christian in particular, was becoming increasingly agitated from receiving the brunt of Bligh's verbal attacks. The mutiny was reported to have been provoked when Bligh publicly accused Christian of stealing some coconuts from the ship's store. Christian decided to escape from the ship to a nearby island.
After learning of the sympathy of other discontented crew members, they decided it was Bligh who should leave the Bounty. On the morning of 28 April 1789, the mutineers dragged Bligh up to the deck of the ship. Despite his pleas to Christian for mutual forgiveness, he was cast adrift in the launch with nineteen other crew members who remained loyal.
Under the command of Christian, HMS Bounty returned to Tahiti to collect livestock and native men and women. Christian had intended to start a settlement on Tubuai but after finding himself involved in the local conflicts there, he sailed back to Tahiti. Sixteen of the mutineers deserted him, but with eight loyal followers and a group of Tahitian men and women, he departed Tahiti on the Bounty, for the last time on 23 September 1789. Realizing that the populated islands could not guarantee safety, Christian placed his attention on a remote uninhabited island that he had found from studying Bligh's charts, known as Pitcairn's Island. Christian displayed his own qualities of navigation and leadership in taking the Bounty over nearly 2000 miles to the incorrectly chartered territory.
HMS
Bounty reached Pitcairn's Island on 15 January 1790 and her crew began to build a settlement once it was clear that the land was habitable. The Bounty was stripped of all that could be put to use, and then set on fire and destroyed. The optimism surrounding the Pitcairn settlement did not last long. In 1793, conflict erupted from the resentment of the Tahitian men towards the white mutineers' assumptions of supremacy and privilege. Many were killed in the resulting violence including Christian himself.After being cast off HMS Bounty, Bligh and his nineteen loyalists began their epic journey to the nearby Dutch colony of Timor in an overcrowded 23' launch for nearly forty-seven days and 3,600 miles. Bligh's great achievement in this predicament was that he navigated the launch using only a sextant and a pocket watch without the aid of a chart or any means of obtaining the longitude. Whilst struggling to survive, Bligh produced highly accurate charts and surveys of the seas and of the terrain, such as the Fijian Islands and the north east coast of Australia.
On 17 June 1789, the launch finally reached Coupang in Timor. On the 14th March 1790, Bligh returned to Portsmouth and he went on to publish his account of the mutiny and of his voyage to Timor in the July of that year. Only one man died on the voyage - stoned to death by angry natives on the first island they tried to land on. Bligh was hailed as a hero and the voyage is a feat of navigation unparalleled to this day. The Admiralty was determined to make an example of the mutineers and sent out HMS Pandora, under the command of Captain Edwards, to apprehend them.
HMS
Pandora reached Matavai Bay on 23 March 1791 and fourteen of the sixteen mutineers there were arrested (the other two had been killed earlier). Unable to find Christian and his eight followers, Edwards departed from Tahiti. Unfortunately, the Pandora struck rocks on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and four more mutineers lost their lives. Finally returning to England on 19 June 1792, the surviving mutineers began their trial in the following September on the HMS Duke. Three were publicly hanged on board HMS Brunswick whilst the remainders were acquitted.The remaining mutineers, notably Peter Heywood and James Morrison, attracted much publicity during the court-martial and subsequently published their own accounts of the mutiny, which portrayed William Bligh as an appalling commander, whose abuse of power had driven the crew to revolt. Edward Christian, a Professor of Law at Cambridge, sought to protect the reputation of his brother Fletcher, and he produced a damning account of Bligh's leadership in an appendix of the published minutes of the court-martial. When the newly promoted Captain Bligh returned to England in August 1793 after a successful second attempt in transporting the breadfruit to the Caribbean, he found a less enthusiastic reception.
In February 1808, nearly twenty years after the mutiny, Captain Folger of the American vessel, the Topaz, landed at Pitcairn's Island, and was surprised to find it inhabited. He met Alexander Smith (who was also known by the alias John Adams) the sole survivor of the mutineers, who was now the head of a community of women on the remote island. The remote settlement has continued to eke out a living on less than two square miles of land.
The descendants clung to their tiny rock, struggling to survive. The island, which has no harbor, became a New Zealand protectorate and survived into the 21st century with a population of about 50 people professing a strong faith in the bible. Their economy was based on agricultural self-sufficiency and sales of stamps to collectors. To pick up supplies from passing ships and trade their carvings, all the men of the island were needed to launch a longboat into the surf from a single ramp wedged into a gulley in the cliffs that surround the island.
Sadly, life on this tropical paradise was shown to have a dark side when a sex scandal became public around 2000. It involved the leading men of the community and young girls. Some women who had left the island finally spoke up, a legal case was begun, and policemen were sent to the island on the annual supply ship. Eight accused men were arrested and taken to New Zealand where they were tried and eventually found guilty.
They appealed to Britain's Privy Council on the grounds that were exercising a "traditional privilege" and were not subject to British law. The council rejected their arguments that British law did not apply.
This may mean the end of this historic community, for the inter-dependence that was essential for life there has broken down, and the thorny issue of how the men would serve their sentences on the island and be allowed to perform farm work and boat launching has not been settled.