FOUR THOUSAND MILES IN AN OPEN BOAT
Of all the stories of blue water there is none so romantic and well
remembered as that of the mutineers of the _Bounty_ who sought an
Arcadia in the South Seas, and found it on Pitcairn Island, where their
descendants to-day welcome the occasional ship that stops in passing.
In 1787, ten years after Captain Cook had been slain by the natives of
Hawaii, a group of West India merchants in London, whose interest was
stirred by the glowing reports of the discoverers, urged the Government
to explore the natural resources of those enchanted realms of the
Pacific and particularly to transport the breadfruit tree to Jamaica
and plant it there.
The ship _Bounty_ was accordingly fitted out, and sailed in command of
Lieutenant William Bligh, who had been one of Cook’s officers. After
the long voyage to Tahiti, the ship tarried there five months while the
hold was filled with tropical trees and shrubs. With every prospect
of success, the _Bounty_ hove anchor and sheeted topsails to roll out
homeward bound.
Every sturdy British sailor was leaving a sweetheart on the beach of
languorous Tahiti, where the unspoiled, brown-skinned women were as
kind as they were beautiful, and where every dream of happiness was
attainable. These were the first white men who had ever lingered to
form sentimental attachments in that fortunate isle, and they left
it reluctantly to endure the bitter toil and tyranny that were the
mariner’s lot.
Nor was Lieutenant Bligh a commander to soothe their discontent. His
own narrative would lead you to infer that his conduct was blameless,
but other evidence convicts him of a harsh and inflexible temper and
a lack of tact which helped to bring about the disaster that was
brewing in the forecastle and among the groups of seamen who loafed
and whispered on deck during the dog-watches. The explosive crises
of life are very often touched off by the merest trifles and a few
cocoanuts appear to have played a part in the melodramatic upheaval of
the _Bounty’s_ crew. Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison kept a journal in
which he set down that Lieutenant Bligh missed some of his own personal
cocoanuts, which had been stowed between the guns.
The sailors solemnly denied stealing them, and the irate commander
questioned Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate, who indignantly
protested:
“I do not know who took your cocoanuts, sir, but I hope you do not
think me so mean as to be guilty of pilfering them.”
Lieutenant Bligh, who was red in the face and hot under the collar,
burst out in this most unlucky tirade:
“Yes, you hound, I do; you must have stolen them from me, or you would
be able to give a better account of them. You are all thieves, you
scoundrels, and the officers combine with the men to rob me. I suppose
you will steal my yams next, but I’ll make you sweat for it, you
rascals, if I have to make half of you jump overboard before we get
through Endeavor Straits.”
This is one of the stories told by the boatswain’s mate to extenuate
the mutiny, and it may be taken for what it is worth, though with so
much smoke, there was sure to be flame. At any rate, it was only a
day after the cocoanut episode that Fletcher Christian, the master’s
mate, led the famous rebellion of the _Bounty_. He was a leader of
extraordinary intelligence and character who had always led a godly
life. Commander Bligh had provoked him beyond endurance, and he was
persuaded that he could lead his comrades to a palm-shaded kingdom
where they would be safe against discovery and capture.
No inkling of the conspiracy was conveyed to the quarterdeck, and Bligh
wrote, after the event:
The women of Tahiti are handsome, mild, and cheerful in manners and
conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient
delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much
attached to our people that they rather encouraged their stay
among them than otherwise and even made them promises of large
possessions. Under these circumstances it ought hardly to be the
subject of surprise that a set of sailors, most of them without
home ties, should be led away where they had the power of fixing
themselves in the midst of plenty and where there was no necessity
to labor and where the allurements to dissipation are beyond any
conception that can be formed of it. The utmost, however, that a
commander could have expected was desertions, such as have always
happened more or less in the South Seas, and not this act of open
mutiny, the secrecy of which was beyond belief.
It was a bloodless uprising and conducted with singular neatness and
despatch. At sunrise of April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and an armed
guard entered the commander’s cabin and hauled him out of bed in his
night-shirt. His arms were bound, and he was led on deck, where he
observed that some of his men were hoisting out a boat. Those of the
ship’s company who had remained loyal, seventeen officers and men, were
already clapped under hatches to await their turn in the very orderly
program. A few of the mutineers damned the commander to his face
and growled threats at him, but this was by way of squaring personal
grudges, and he was not otherwise mistreated.
The boat was lowered and outfitted with twine, canvas, cordage, an
eight-and-twenty gallon cask of water, a hundred and fifty pounds of
bread, or ship’s biscuit, a little rum and wine, some salt pork and
beef, a quadrant, a compass, and four cutlasses for arms. The seventeen
loyal mariners were bundled overside, but Lieutenant Bligh hung back to
argue the matter until Fletcher Christian roughly exclaimed:
“Come, Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat and you
must go with them. If you attempt to make the least resistance, you
will be instantly put to death.”
The commander of the _Bounty_ was in no mood to carry it off with a
high hand. He implored the master’s mate to forego the mad enterprise,
and pledged his honor that if the men would return to duty he would
make no report of it in England. He spoke of his own wife and children
and the mercy due on their account, but Fletcher Christian cut him
short and cried:
“I say no, no, Captain Bligh. If you had any honor or manly feeling in
your breast, things had not come to this. Your wife and family! Had
you any regard for them, you would have thought of them before now and
not behaved so like a villain. I have been used like a dog all this
voyage and am determined to bear it no longer. On you must rest the
consequences.”
This ended the argument, and the boat was soon cast adrift, while the
mutineers shouted a cheery farewell, and then roared out “Huzza for
Tahiti!” while the _Bounty_ swung off and filled away with a pleasant
breeze. Lieutenant Bligh assumed that it was the deliberate intent to
leave him to perish, because dead men tell no tales; but if this were
true, the mutineers would not have been so careful to stock the boat
with food and water and stores to last the party at least a fortnight
without severe hardship.
They were within easy sailing distance of peopled islands, on some of
which they might hope to find a friendly reception. By drowning them,
Fletcher Christian could have obliterated all traces of the mutiny, and
the _Bounty_ would have vanished from human ken, gone to the port of
missing ships. So infrequented were the islands of the South Seas that
the mutineers might have lived and died there unmolested and unsought.
Fletcher Christian was too humane a man for such a deed, the most
upright and pious outlaw that ever risked the gallows.
The tale of the _Bounty_ and of the tragic fate which overtook these
rash and childlike wanderers in search of Elysium had been familiar to
later generations, but the wonderful voyage of Lieutenant Bligh and
his exiles in the open boat has been forgotten and unsung. Even to
this day it deserves to be called one of the prodigious adventures of
seafaring history. A man disgraced and humiliated beyond expression by
the ridiculously easy manner in which his ship had been taken from him,
Bligh superbly redeemed himself and wiped the stain from his record by
keeping his open boat afloat and his men alive through a voyage and an
experience unequaled before or since.
The boat was a small, undecked ship’s yawl only twenty-three feet
long, such as one may see hanging from a schooner’s davits. Eighteen
men were crowded upon the thwarts, and their weight sank her almost
to the gunwale. They were adrift in an unknown ocean which teemed
with uncharted reefs and perils, there was only a few days’ supply of
food and water, and four cutlasses were the weapons against hostile
attack. In the boat, besides Commander Bligh, were the master, the
acting surgeon, botanist, gunner, boatswain, carpenter, three mates,
two quartermasters, the sail-maker, two cooks, the ship’s clerk, the
butcher, and a boy.
After watching the faithless _Bounty_ until she gleamed like a bit of
cloud, the refugees shoved out their oars and pulled in the direction
of the nearest island, Tofa, about forty miles distant. A slant of wind
presently favored them, and they hoisted sail, bowling along until
they were able to drop anchor outside the barrier of surf soon after
nightfall of the same day.
Next morning they landed in a cove and found natives who seemed amiable
enough and who supplied them with cocoanuts, plantains, breadfruit,
and water. The humor of these temperamental islanders changed without
warning, however, and in a sudden attack with stones and spears they
killed one of the quartermasters. This dissuaded Bligh from his plan
of cruising from one island to another and so making his way to
civilization. He told his men that he purposed to attempt to make no
more landings, but to steer for the Dutch East Indies and the port of
Timor, almost four thousand miles away. In those wild seas there was
no nearer haven where they might hope to find Europeans and a ship to
carry them home to England.
In the confusion of escaping from Tofa, they lost most of the fruit
which had been taken on there, and so they set sail with just about
the amount of stores with which they had been set adrift from the
_Bounty_, but with one less man to feed. They were so cramped for
space in the yawl that Bligh divided them into watches, and half the
men sat upon the cross-seats while the others lay down in the bottom,
and every two hours they exchanged places. The bread was stowed in
the carpenter’s tool-chest, and all the provisions were scrupulously
guarded by sentries.
There were no symptoms of mutiny in this company. Bligh had found
himself, and he ruled them with a rod of iron. They were willing and
obedient, realizing that this imperious, unshaken commander was their
only hope of winning against the odds which loomed black against them.
Timor was merely a name to them. Some of them did not even know where
it was, but they had implicit faith in Lieutenant William Bligh.
The carpenter whittled for him a pair of scales and some musket-balls
were found in the boat. These were known to weigh twenty-five to the
pound of sixteen ounces. In order to make the provisions last as long
as possible, three meals a day were served, and each consisted of a
musket-ball’s weight of bread, an ounce of pork, and a teaspoonful of
rum in a quarter of a pint of water. If you should be curious enough
to measure out such a repast for yourself and try living on it for a
few days only, I have no doubt that your weight would be reduced more
rapidly than any high-priced specialist in dietetics could possibly
achieve for you. A twenty-fifth of a pound of hard bread would not much
more than satisfy the appetite of a vigorous canary bird. Yet these
seventeen men lived on it and stayed alive for weeks and weeks. Heavy
rains came to give them more water, but thirst was a continual torment,
so sparingly and prudently did Lieutenant Bligh dole out the precious
fluid.
They passed within sight of many islands, green and smiling, and smoke
wreathed skyward from native camps and villages, but Bligh sternly
checked his men when they yearned to seek the land and a respite from
the merciless sea. With him it was Timor or die, and in the lonely
watches he recalled that previous voyage with Captain Cook, when the
great navigator was lured to his death by the soft-voiced, garlanded
people of Oahu. And so the open boat flitted past the mysterious
beaches and lagoons of the New Hebrides and veered farther seaward to
give a wide berth to the savage coast of New Guinea. After one of the
numerous storms which almost swamped them, Bligh noted in his diary:
I found every person complaining and some of them requested extra
allowance. I positively refused. Our situation was miserable,
always wet and suffering extreme cold in the night, without the
least shelter from the weather. Being constantly compelled to bale
the boat to keep her from filling perhaps should not have been
reckoned an evil because it gave us exercise. Our appearance was
shocking and several of my people seemed half-dead. I could look no
way without catching the eye of some one in distress. The little
sleep we got was in the midst of water and we always awoke with
severe cramps and pains in our bones.
This was on May 22, or eighteen days after they had left the island
of Tofa, during most of which time there had been drenching rains and
somber skies and heavy seas, which broke into the boat and almost
swamped her time and again. The seventeen men were still existing
on the morsels of bread and pork carefully weighed out with the
musket-ball, which they said was “little better than starving,” but
Bligh held them in hand, and there was no rebellion even when he
explained that the system of rationing would permit them to exist for
twenty-nine days longer, though he was not at all certain that they
could fetch Timor in that time, and he purposed to make the stores hold
out for six weeks.
In order to do that they would have to omit their supper and get along
on two meals of a twenty-fifth of a pound of bread. “I was apprehensive
that a proposal on this head would be ill received,” Lieutenant Bligh
commented, “and that it would require my utmost resolution to enforce
it. However, on representing to the people the necessity of guarding
against casual delays, from adverse winds, and other causes, they all
cheerfully assented.”
There was never a more methodical man than this Lieutenant William
Bligh. When they caught a couple of boobies, sea-fowl as large as a
duck, the bodies were divided into seventeen portions, and one man
was detailed to turn his back while another pointed at the pieces
and asked, “Who is to have this?” The first sailor named a companion
at random, and drew the fragment designated. In this manner a fair
distribution was assured, and the man who drew the feet of the bird to
chew could have no quarrel with the lucky sailor who got a bit of the
breast.
Bligh was a capable navigator with the quadrant and compass which
the mutineers had given him and he was driving for a passage to the
southward of Endeavor Straits and an offing on the coast of New
Holland, as Australia was then called. His crew was exceedingly
low-spirited, but he diverted them with the hope of finding smoother
water inside the far-flung reefs and a landing where they might eat
fresh fruits and ease their weary bones for a little while.
After three weeks of misery, this speck of an open boat in a trackless
waste of ocean descried the wooded headlands of New Holland and a surf
which beat against the outer ramparts of coral. They found an opening
and rowed into a lagoon, where they hauled the boat out upon the white
sand and feasted luxuriously on oysters. These they roasted in a fire
which Lieutenant Bligh kindled with a lens of his spy-glass. Then
they cooked a stew, and were so mightily refreshed that “all retained
strength and fortitude sufficient to resist what might be expected in
our voyage to Timor.”
Two or three days of assiduous attention to the oysters, and they were
ready to put to sea again, with water-breakers filled. Before they
shoved off, Bligh directed all hands to attend prayers; so they knelt
on the beach with bared heads while he read service from the Church
of England prayer-book. A group of natives, black and naked, came
scampering out of the forest just as the boat took the water, but there
was no clash with them.
As they steered through the mazes of the Malay Archipelago, many small
islands swam in the seas of azure and emerald, and they ventured to
land again. Here Bligh had the first trouble with the tempers of his
sick and weary men. “When ordered to go scouting for food, one of them
went so far as to tell me, with a mutinous look, that he was as good a
man as myself,” relates this inflexible commander who had made such a
sorry mess of things in the _Bounty_. He added:
“It was impossible for me to judge where this might end, therefore
to prevent such disputes in future I determined either to preserve
my authority or die in the attempt. Seizing a cutlass I ordered
him to take hold of another and defend himself; on which he cried
out that I was going to kill him and immediately made concessions.
I did not allow this to interfere further with the harmony of the
boat’s crew and everything soon became quiet.”
For a week they coasted along New Holland in this manner before risking
the open sea again. They caught some turtle and went ashore at night
to hunt the noddies, or sea-birds, and knock them over on their nests.
One of the sailors, Robert Lamb, stole away from his companions,
contrary to orders, and blundered into the birds, which fled away.
Much provoked, Bligh gave the culprit a drubbing and made him confess
that he had eaten nine noddies raw. It goes without saying that greedy
Robert Lamb promised not to do it again.
Much more sanguine of some day reaching the destination of Timor,
the argonauts endured another long stretch of the voyage, almost two
thousand miles more, but it was fast breaking the strength which they
had so amazingly displayed. Surgeon Ledward and Lawrence Lebogue, a
hardy old salt, seemed to have come to the end, and Bligh nursed them
with teaspoonfuls of wine and crumbs of bread that he had been saving
for such emergencies. He now began to fear that the party could not
survive to finish the voyage, and mentioned that
extreme weakness, swelled legs, hollow and ghastly countenances,
with an apparent debility of understanding, seemed to me the
melancholy presages of approaching dissolution. The boatswain very
innocently told me that he really thought I looked worse than any
one in the boat. I was amused by the simplicity with which he
uttered such an opinion and returned him a better compliment.
It was not decreed by destiny that courage and endurance so heroic
should be thwarted in the last gasp. Forty-one days after they had so
boldly set out from Tofa in the South Seas they made a landfall on
the dim and misty shore of the island of Timor. The log recorded a
total distance sailed of 3618 nautical miles, which in round numbers
amounts to four thousand land, or statute, miles. No wonder that the
feat appeared scarcely credible to these castaways themselves whom
the mutineers of the _Bounty_ had turned adrift with no more than a
fortnight’s provisions in a fearfully overcrowded open boat. And every
man of the seventeen was alive and ready to be patched up and set on
his feet again.
Bligh had no idea where the Dutch settlements were, so he held on
along the coast, past very lovely landscapes of mountain, woodland,
and park-like spaces. Coming to a large bay, he tacked in and saw a
little village of thatched huts. Natives paddled out to meet the boat
and told the party where to find the Dutch governor of Timor. In the
next harbor they discovered two square-rigged vessels, so they hoisted
the union jack as a distress-signal, and anchored off the fort and town
of Coupang. This was the end of their troubles. Bligh bought a small
schooner from the courteous Dutch governor, and so carried his men to
Samarang, where they found passage to Batavia, and were sent home in a
Dutch East Indiaman.
It was Commander Bligh himself who took to England the first tidings
of the mutiny of the _Bounty_, which aroused great popular interest
and indignation. In 1790 he published an account of his sufferings
and the heroic voyage to Timor, and in response to the public clamor
the Admiralty speedily fitted out the frigate _Pandora_ to hunt down
Fletcher Christian and his fellow-criminals and fetch them home for
trial and punishment. The voyage of the _Pandora_ resulted in tragic
shipwreck and another sensational episode of open boats. As a sequel
it is inseparable from the strange and unhappy romance of the _Bounty_
and her people.
Captain Edwards of the _Pandora_ frigate was a martinet of a naval
officer, without sympathy or imagination, and the witchery of the South
Seas held no lure for him. His errand was to run down the mutineers as
outlaws who deserved no mercy and to take them home to be hanged.
First touching at Tahiti, the _Pandora_ found that a number of the
sentimental sinners still remained on that island, but that Fletcher
Christian and the rest had sailed away in the _Bounty_ to search for
a retreat elsewhere. With a hundred and fifty bluejackets to rake the
valleys and beaches of Tahiti, Captain Edwards soon rounded up fourteen
fugitives, who were marched aboard the _Pandora_ and clapped into irons.
[Illustration: EARLY AMERICAN SHIP OF THE 18TH CENTURY]
A small house was knocked together on deck to serve as a jail for them,
and was rightly enough dubbed “Pandora’s Box” by the sailors. It was
only eleven feet long, without windows or doors, and was entered by a
scuttle in the roof. In this inhuman little den the fourteen mutineers
were kept with their arms and legs in irons, which were never
removed to permit exercise. Sweltering in a tropical climate, the
wonder is that they did not perish to a man.
There was suffering far worse to endure, however--the anguish of broken
hearts. All of these men were torn from the native wives to whom they
had been faithful and true, and their infants were left fatherless.
Pitiful was the story of “Peggy,” the beautiful Tahitian girl who was
beloved by Midshipman Stewart of the mutineers and to whom she had
borne a child. She was allowed to visit him in the wretched deck-house
of the _Pandora_, but her grief was so violent that she had to be taken
ashore by force, and the young husband begged the officers not to let
her see him again.
The light of her life had gone out, and she died of sorrow a few months
later, leaving her infant son as the first half-caste born in Tahiti.
Six years after this, a band of pioneering English missionaries visited
Tahiti and heard of the boy and his story. They took this orphan of
British blood under their own care and brought him up and educated him.
It is quite evident that Captain Edwards isolated his prisoners and
treated them so harshly because of his fear that the bluejackets of his
frigate might be stirred to a sympathetic mutiny of their own. It must
have wrung the hearts of these honest British tars, who had sweethearts
waiting at the end of the long road home, when, as the story runs:
The families of the captives were allowed to visit them, a
permission which gave rise to the most affecting scenes. Every day
the wives came down with their infants in their arms, the fathers
weeping over their babes who were soon to be bereft of paternal
care and protection, and husband and wife mingling cries and tears
at the prospect of so calamitous a separation.
The fourteen mutineers had built a little schooner only thirty-five
feet long, in which they were hoping to flee to an island more remote,
but the _Pandora_ swooped down before they were quite ready to embark.
Captain Edwards seized this vessel to use as a tender, and manned her
with two petty officers and seven sailors, who sailed away on a cruise
of their own to assist in the search for the rest of the pirates, as
they were called. The voyage of this tiny cock-boat of a schooner is
one of the most remarkable tales in the history of South Sea discovery,
but not even a diary or log remains to relate it in detail.
These adventurers were the first white men to set foot on the great
group of the Fiji Islands, which Tasman and Cook had passed by. The
exploit is sung to this day in one of the poems of the Fijian language
which have handed down the traditions of the race from father to son.
The little schooner was never seen again by the _Pandora_ after they
parted at Tahiti to go their separate ways; but after many months the
master’s mate, the bold midshipman, and the seven handy seamen who
comprised the crew came sailing into the Dutch East Indies.
The _Pandora_ ransacked the South Seas in vain for Fletcher Christian
and his party, and turned homeward after nine months of cruising on
this quest. Having cleared the coast of New Guinea, the frigate crashed
into the Great Barrier Reef while trying to find a passage through, and
foundered after eleven hours of endeavor to keep her afloat by pumping.
The discipline was admirable, and in the ship’s dying flurry four boats
were filled and sent away, besides some rafts and canoes.
During those long hours, however, while the sailors were trying to save
themselves and the frigate, the hapless mutineers were left in the
“Pandora’s Box,” in leg-irons and manacles and utterly helpless. Three
of them were finally allowed to work at the pumps, still wearing their
chains, but Captain Edwards paid no heed to the prayers of the others,
who foresaw they were to drown like rats in a trap. It was inhumanity
almost beyond belief, for these prisoners could not have escaped if
they had been released and allowed to swim for it with the rest of the
crew.
His own officers and men interceded and begged permission to knock
the shackles off the mutineers before the ship went down, but
Captain Edwards threatened to shoot the first man who interfered
with his orders, and to kill any of the captives who attempted to
free themselves. He was the type of officer who is blindly, densely
zealous and regards the letter of the law as to be obeyed under all
circumstances. The Admiralty had told him to bring these fugitives back
to England in chains. This settled the matter for him.
When the _Pandora_ was about to plunge under, a council of officers
formally decided “that nothing more could be done for the preservation
of His Majesty’s ship.” The command was then given to quit her before
she carried the crew to the bottom, but even then two sentries of the
Royal Marines guarded the scuttle of “Pandora’s Box” with instructions
to shoot if the mutineers tried to smash their irons.
The master-at-arms was a man with a heart, as well as a ready wit, and
as he scrambled over the roof of the deck-house with the sea racing
at his heels, he dropped his bunch of keys through the open scuttle.
The frantic prisoners heard the keys fall and knew what they meant. In
semi-darkness, with the water gurgling over the floor of their pen,
they strove to fit the keys to the heavy handcuffs and the chains that
were locked about their legs. It is a scene that requires no more
words to appeal to the emotions a hundred and thirty years after these
unhappy British sailors fought their last fight for life.
Ten of them succeeded in releasing themselves and were washed off into
the sea, where the boats were kind enough to pick them up, but four of
the mutineers were drowned with the ship, still wearing the irons from
which Captain Edwards had refused to free them. It is probable that
with the bunch of keys which the master-at-arms had dropped among them
these four men had died while doing unto others as they would have been
done by. It was almost impossible for a prisoner so heavily manacled
to fit a key in the padlock that bound his own wrists together. One
comrade helped another, perhaps, and so those who awaited their turn
were doomed to die. And thus they redeemed the folly and the crime of
that fantastic adventure in the _Bounty_.
Thirty men of the _Pandora’s_ company were also drowned, but the
survivors made a successful voyage of it in their open boats, across
a thousand miles of the Indian Ocean, and reached the same Dutch port
of Coupang where Lieutenant William Bligh had found refuge. Here they
met the actors in still another thrilling drama of an open boat. A
party of British convicts, including a woman and two small children,
had stolen away from the penal settlement of Port Jackson on the coast
of Australia in a ship’s gig, and had fled by sea all the way to Timor,
living on shell-fish and seabirds and surviving ten weeks of exposure
and peril.
They told the Dutch governor at Coupang that they were castaways from
an English ship, and he believed the tale until the people of the
_Pandora_ came into port. Assuming they were survivors of the same
wreck, a Dutch officer remarked to one of the convicts that the captain
of their ship had reached Coupang. Caught off his guard, the fellow
blurted:
“Dam’ me! We have no captain.”
The cat was out of the bag, and the slip proved fatal. Haled before the
governor, the runaways confessed who they really were. The tale they
told was interwoven with a romance. The leader of the party, William
Bryant, had been transported to Botany Bay for the crime of smuggling,
and with him went his sweetheart, Mary Broad, who was convicted of
helping him to escape from Winchester Gaol. They were married by the
chaplain of Botany Bay, and Bryant was detailed to catch fish for the
table of the governor and other officials of that distressful colony.
It was while employed as a fisherman that he was able to steal a boat
and plan the escape, and they carried their two children with them.
His Excellency, the Dutch governor of Timor, admired their courage,
but he could not be turned from his duty, and the runaway convicts
were therefore sent to England. During the voyage William Bryant, the
two children, and three men of the party died, but the woman lived,
and so rapidly regained her bloom and beauty that before the _Gorgon_,
East Indiaman, sighted the forelands of England, an officer of the
Royal Marines had fallen in love with her. Through his efforts she was
granted a full pardon, and they were wedded and lived happily ever
after, so far as we know. Many a novel has paraded a heroine less
worthy than this smuggler’s sweetheart, Mary Broad of Devonshire and
Botany Bay.
Of the ten _Bounty_ mutineers who survived the wreck of the _Pandora_,
five were acquitted, two received the king’s pardon, and three were
hanged from a yard-arm of H. M. S. _Brunswick_ in Portsmouth Harbor
on October 29, 1792. Of Fletcher Christian and his companions who had
vanished in the _Bounty_ nothing whatever was heard or known, and
England forgot all about them. Twenty-five years passed, and they had
become almost legendary, one of those mysteries which inspire the
conjectures and gossip of idle hours in ship’s forecastles.
In 1813 a fleet of British merchantmen sailed for India convoyed by
the frigate _Briton_, Captain Sir Thomas Staines. While passing the
Marquesas group he discovered a fertile island on which were cultivated
fields and a village and people who eagerly paddled out in their canoes
to hail the frigate. The captain was trying to shout a few words of
the Marquesan language to them when a stalwart youth called out in
perfectly good English:
“What is the ship’s name? And who is the commander, if you please?”
Dumfounded, the bluejackets swarmed to the bulwark to haul the visitors
aboard, and while they wondered, the same young man asked of the
quarter-deck:
“Do you know Captain William Bligh in England, and is he still alive?”
The riddle was solved. Captain Staines replied to the courteous,
fair-skinned stranger:
“Do you know one Fletcher Christian and where is he?”
“Yes, sir. He is dead, but there is his son, Friday Fletcher October
Christian, just coming aboard from the next boat.”
These interesting dwellers on Pitcairn Island were invited to breakfast
in the ward-room, “but before sitting down to table they fell on
their knees and with uplifted hands implored the blessing of Heaven
on the meal of which they were about to partake. At the close of the
repast they resumed the same attitude and breathed a fervent prayer of
thanksgiving for the bounty which they had just experienced.”
Captain Staines went ashore with his guests and found a very beautiful
village, the houses set around a small park, the streets immaculately
clean, the whole aspect of it extraordinarily attractive. There were
forty-eight of these islanders, including seven of the Tahitian wives
who had been brought in the _Bounty_. The others were children, and
fine young men and girls. Of the fathers of the flock only one was
left alive, John Adams, a sturdy, dignified man of sixty, who welcomed
Captain Staines and frankly revealed the whole story of the _Bounty_,
“admitting that by following the fortunes of Fletcher Christian he had
lost every right to his country and that his life was even forfeited
to the laws. He was now at the head of a little community by whom he
was adored and whom he carefully instructed in the duties of religion,
industry, and friendship.”
It was explained by John Adams that the native women had preferred the
British sailors to their own suitors, which inspired a fatal jealousy,
and Fletcher Christian and most of his comrades had been killed in
quarrels and uprisings against them. The few survivors had founded
a new race in this dreamy island of the South Seas, and, as Captain
Staines perceived, “a society bearing no stamp of the guilty origin
from which it sprung.”
John Adams, the admirable counselor and ruler, had taught them to use
the English tongue and to cherish all that was good in the institutions
of their mother country. He had even taught the children to read and
write by means of a slate and a stone pencil. They were a vigorous,
wholesome stock, sheltered from disease and vice, and with a sailor’s
eye for a pretty girl Captain Staines noted that “the young women
had invariable beautiful teeth, fine eyes, and an open expression
of countenance, with an engaging air of simple innocence and sweet
sensibility.”
The captain gave John Adams what books and writing-materials he could
spare, and the crew of the frigate added many a gift of clothing and
useful trinkets from their ditty-boxes. Twelve years passed before
any other word was heard from Pitcairn Island, and then the ship
_Blossom_ made a call. It was found that a wandering whaler had left
a seaman named John Buffet, who felt called to serve as schoolmaster
and clergyman to the grateful islanders. England now became interested
in this idyllic colony, and there was no desire to recall or avenge
the mutiny of the _Bounty_. John Adams had long since atoned for the
misdeeds of himself and his misguided shipmates, and his good works
were to live after him.
In 1830, H. M. S. _Seringapatam_ was sent out by the British Government
to carry a cargo of agricultural implements, tools, live-stock, and
many other things which might increase the happiness and well-being
of the people of Pitcairn Island. John Adams had passed away a little
while before that, full of years and honor, and it may be safely
assumed that he was not logged on the books of the recording angel as a
mutineer. The mantle of his leadership fell upon the broad shoulders of
Friday Fletcher October Christian.
It was only a year or so ago that the generous captain of a freight
steamer bound out across the South Pacific wrote a letter to a New
York newspaper to inform the public that he would be glad to go out of
his course to touch at Pitcairn Island and leave any books or other
gifts which might be sent in his care. It was near the Christmas
season, and the spirit moved him to play Santa Claus to the people of
that happy island whose forefathers were the mutineers of the _Bounty_
in the year of 1789.