Mr. Nice Bligh

New 'Mutiny' book claims notorious captain wasn't bad guy after all

Duane Davis, Special To The News

Published September 12, 2003 at midnight

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Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance, a well-received account of Ernest Shackleton's harrowing Antarctic expedition, sets herself a twofold task in her new book detailing the famous mutiny that occurred 200 years ago on the British ship, the Bounty.

First off, she will tell once more this familiar tale of the high seas, and second, she intends to set the record straight about who the good guy is here and who it is that really wears the black hat.

The tale itself is simply told. In late 1787, the Bounty departs England, bound for Tahiti, where it is to take on native plants for cultivation in British colonies in the West Indies.

Leaving Tahiti in early April 1789, Master's Mate and acting Lt. Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny against the captain, William Bligh, while the ship is anchored just off the Friendly Isles. Capt. Bligh, brought up on deck in only his nightshirt, rails and fulminates at his men but to no avail. He finally pleads to the man leading the mutiny, "Consider Mr. Christian, I have a wife and four children in England, and you have danced my children upon your knee."

But Lt. Christian will have none of it, and, holding a bayonet at his captain's chest, cries out, "Captain Bligh... I am in hell - I am in hell."

With that, Bligh, and 18 others who are more, or less, loyal to him (depending on who you choose to believe), are put into a 23- foot launch with enough supplies to last five days. Given how far they are from civilization, this is tantamount to a death sentence.

Four-thousand miles and 43 days later, Capt. Bligh, in a superb exercise of canny navigation and iron-willed discipline that has his men drinking their own urine by the end of the voyage, manages to bring the overloaded and underprovisioned boat to landfall at a Dutch port in Timor. Ironically, though he loses only one man on the small launch, six more will die before reaching England, mostly from tropical fevers while waiting in port for a ship to transport them home.

Lt. Christian and the mutineers, after quickly downing a considerable quantity of rum from the liberated ship's stores, eventually make their way back to Tahiti. Here, some of the men who did not consider themselves as part of the mutiny but who had stayed on board the Bounty because, as they later claimed, they didn't like the look of the chances in the launch with Capt. Bligh, set up housekeeping with the friendly Tahitian people.

After stops here and there, Lt. Christian and the hard-core mutineers instead set off to Pitcairn Island with a few native men (to do the hard work) and a few native women (to, well, you know...). Once there, the men plan to start a new life well hidden from the British Naval authorities, who they know would move heaven and earth to bring them to justice for mutiny, the usual conclusion to which was, in that day and age, a short trial and a long drop from a hemp rope.

What is it, then, about this tale that has so seized the popular imagination that it is still part of our cultural vernacular two centuries later?

One primary reason is the stark contrast between the two protagonists, between the cruel sadism of Capt. Bligh and the easygoing noblesse oblige of his well-mannered and better bred underling, Fletcher Christian. The very mention of Capt. Bligh's name quickly evokes images of the petty tyrant and harsh disciplinarian, of a petulant, carping and vicious authority deaf to all but its own voice and all too eager to resort to force and fury on the slightest pretext of offense. The very name, "Bligh," seems sly, malign, evil.

Bligh's opposite, Fletcher Christian (think Clark Gable in the 1935 film), of course, has a much more fortunate name and a far more winning personality. He is brave, capable, generous, honorable, and self-sacrificing. He knows his duty and he also knows his men and what is right for them. He will sail through hell and high water to accomplish his mission but he will not walk over his men to get there.

That, at least, is how the story is most often told, which brings us to the book's aforementioned second goal .

It is Alexander's contention that Capt. William Bligh, if not exactly a saint, is, to borrow a phrase, a man more sinned against than sinner himself. Alexander grants that conditions in the British Navy of the 18th century were extraordinarily harsh and hazardous. The work and the weather were grueling, the diet monotonous and often rationed to near starvation levels, the quarters dank and close. The crew, many there against their will as conscripts, were away from home and family for great lengths of time, often years.

Given these conditions, it is little wonder that, in a saying often attributed to Winston Churchill, the old British Navy was thought to have been kept going by "rum, sodomy, and the lash."

Carefully examining the many journals, diaries, memoirs, letters, official reports, court records and newspaper accounts of the day, Alexander draws a much different portrait of William Bligh, a portrait that shows us a captain very much concerned about the well-being of his men.

A few weeks into the journey finds Bligh noting in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, a sponsor of the mission, "My Men (are) all active good fellows & what has given me much pleasure is that I have not yet been obliged to punish any one... I am happy to hope I shall bring them all home well."

Bligh, it should be noted, had been to Tahiti before as a navigator with the great explorer, Capt. Cook. Alexander makes a convincing case that Bligh learned a great deal about the merits of humane treatment of men from Cook, and saw firsthand the benefits of maintaining a reasonably happy crew.

Alexander provides several reasons why history has chosen to judge Bligh so harshly and one of the most intriguing has to do with the ship's mission. It turns out that the breadfruit plants to be gathered in Tahiti were to be used to provide a food crop for the slave population in the English colonies in the West Indies. Fletcher Christian's older brother, Edward, a prominent lawyer, put together a panel of reputable and respectable men to issue a report on the mutiny - a report that helped to establish Bligh's reputation for viciousness and Fletcher Christian's for innocence very early on in the game.

Alexander points out that all of the men on Edward Christian's panel were strong abolitionists and that their anti-slavery sentiments might well have contributed to their eagerness to portray Bligh in the blackest tints:

"William Bligh, purveyor of slave provisions, was unlikely to have aroused much natural sympathy among the men Edward had congregated," writes Alexander.

In short, Alexander shows us in compelling detail a far more complex set of characters and situations than we usually encounter in the many tellings of this story: She very successfully demonstrates to us that Bligh and Christian, and the many other players in the tale, cannot be reduced to cardboard cutouts with halos and devil's horns pre- stamped on their brows.

From these pages, Bligh emerges as a masterly commander during times of serious crisis but once the worst is over, he becomes waspish and contentious with the men under him. Christian, amiable and well-liked by the crew in general, is revealed as weak and vacillating in his relation to authority, a man given to currying favor when he can and tending to be morose when he can't.

One finishes this book, however, not completely convinced that Alexander has made all the right choices in what to include here. Understandably, since she wants to persuade the reader of her revisionist position on Bligh and Christian, she heaps up the detail regarding these two. The problem comes in the many digressions on people and events less central to her effort.

In particular, there is a small book's worth of material here on Peter Heywood, a crew member whose ambiguous role in the mutiny is examined in excruciating detail. From a wealthy and well-connected family, Heywood was found guilty of mutiny but then pardoned by royal decree. It almost seems as though Alexander concentrates so much on Heywood's story in order to compensate for the lack of solid material in the historical record on Fletcher Christian (who was never captured or brought to trial for the mutiny).

I have to admit, that when Heywood's effusive and adoring younger sister, Nessy, finally dies, I sighed in relief: If forced to read even one more quote by Alexander from one of Nessy's gushing and self-serving poems in defense of her brother, I would have joined the mutiny myself.

It was at such times, and they occur a little too often in the book, that I longed for Alexander to return to the ships at sea, to the dangers of tempest and storm, and to the men who faced those dangers in tests of mortal courage few of us will ever encounter.

Duane Davis is a freelance writer living in Littleton.

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