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This paper began as an attempt to apply Rhys Isaac's theory of Action Statements to the Bounty Mutiny. Action Statements are statements of intent by people whose words & ideas have not been recorded but whose intentions can be reconstructed based upon their actions rather than their words. Isaacs used it to reconstruct the relationships in a particular plantation in Virginia in the middle 1700's. The idea, with its events, individuals & restricted matrix seemed ideal to apply to the mutiny on the Bounty, in conjunction with my own existing EM concept. However, the problem that emerged with the Mutiny was that much of the material in it is words & actions which are rather obvious, there is little of the subtle messages & structures of power that figure large in Isaacs' account. As a result the Action Statements were dropped from this paper. The concepts of restriction, confusion & neglect allowed me to view the matrix as it became more restricted, & to easily watch the interactions. Without these restrictions the feelings of isolation, fear & hate would never have become so dominant. I still do not know how the matrix really works; even at this level there are too many variables & possibilities, especially in times of rapid change & upheaval, to keep track of without supercomputers. The Matrix as I present it has only the most obvious & consequential elements, the others are too numerous & small to be placed here.

It took more than a restricted matrix to produce the mutiny. It took several centuries of maritime tradition. It took intense & instinctual (rather than rational) lobbying by rich men, partly to keep Sir Joseph Banks occupied & out of harm's way.

It took restrictive penny-pinching by the Navy, & neglect of men & winds to delay the ship. It took opportunism & lobbyism & patronage to saddle Bligh with men he could net use & men he could have done without. It took Bligh's ambition to turn a private grocery trip into another of Cook's voyages. It took Bligh's selection of a close friend, & the inadequacies of that friend. It took confinement weather & space & food & the other rigours of 18TH Century shipboard life. It also took "Bligh's extraordinary ability to breed rebellion." It took his radical ideas on flogging, feeding, dancing, & his inadequate ways of expressing these. It took his need for importance & substance & the need to denigrate others to achieve them. It took his ambiguity in disciplining his crew so that harsh conditions became unusual, & reacted against instead of the accepted norm. His normal discipline was ineffectual & confusing in itself. It took his need to let off steam on his men when there was nothing else to tax himself with. Bad weather taxed him & he was magnificent--strong, decisive, vigilant, caring & thoughtful. In good weather there was no danger & no release, no peril against which to set himself & so the supposed--& real--inadequacies of his crew became fodder. The same release from instant death meant the same reversal from magnificence when the launch group reached the Great Barrier Reef, & then Koupang, & in Batavia at the end of their horrendous voyage. They argued, fought, quarrelled over food & rights as soon as they touched shore & no longer depended on Bligh for navigation & rationing.

It took Christian's overweening desire for friendship of a close & rich nature, which blurred the lines of command so badly. It took Christian's inability to take his friend & captain's discipline beyond a certain point. It took his willingness, in a charged situation, to be swayed by a serpent in the tree, whispering, whispering...It took his control of others to stop them killing shipmates. It took that serpent, to plan, & talk, & to take events in hand when they strayed. Young started the mutiny, kept it ticking along when Christian, worn down by guilt & nerves, wavered when Fryer & Cole wanted the launch. Young negotiated with the native men enslaved on Pitcairn, the ones taken or conned from Tahiti & Tubuai, & eventually killed them, when the opportunities were presented to him. He was behind it all, though we cannot say it was his aim to begin with. He had an uncanny ability to keep onside with the people who suited his purposes, even in situations of change & insecurity. The mutiny became possible so he achieved it. The removal of the loyalists to Tahiti became possible so he did that too, ensuring his own safety. Pitcairn became possible after the Tubuai colony failed, & Young protected his investment on Pitcairn too, by playing the sailors & natives off against one another. Perhaps he was prepared to lose most of the other white men, & all the black. Even friend Christian.

Bligh was not solely guilty, nor Young or Christian. Bligh was not sufficient. Nor Christian. Nor Young. Nor the ship, her size, speed, position. All were necessary, contributing to the matrix of events which led people to do what they did. Tahiti was not sufficient. It was necessary in that it provided a respite from the food & the ship after the death of Valentine--unusual in a voyage when no-one else had by the traditional methods. Tahiti gave the men a chance to be apart from Bligh, to widen their horizons again. It also gave Bligh the opportunity to play foreign dignitary with the Tahitians, so much that he neglected his men & his ship & his voyage of exploration, & let them all drift into laziness, sloppiness, & a life different from the sea, so that the break was abrupt & total & very difficult to cope with. The men never adjusted. Bligh quietly went apoplectic at their failings, never admitting they were also his own, as commander. They were not corrupted by the easy life of Tahiti. They were corrupted by the easy life of land, food, open spaces, & innovation, as Bligh was corrupted by his own ambition, his desire for fame & his devotion to achieving it. When his men could not meet his standards he could only scour them. They could not take the change, Christian could not take the abuse, & Young was presented with an opportunity to help Christian & remove Bligh, which he took.

The mutiny, as I have said, was not the calm, symbolic, negotiated meeting of authority & role-figures Dening may present it as. It was a frenzy, a visceral, blurred time of shouts, threats, pleadings & chilling dawning comprehension & fear. All those aboard Bounty had to make choices in an instant, with no warning. Most had little chance to choose again, though some, hanging back, managed it. Some never wanted to choose again, some were too scared by threats to try & change it, others so furious & fearful they did everything short of countermutiny to change the situation, & by that changed the mutiny into a calmer, quieter, more lucid affair whereby their departure & their future resources were carefully won & secured, despite resistance. Some were entirely overtaken by events. The euphoric boy Ellison, who threw in his lot with Christian, left him at Tahiti, got taken by Edwards & ultimately hanged for it. He is one, with his role as steersman that fateful morning, & his begging of a bayonet & then a pistol to guard Bligh, whose action statements are worthy of exploration. I wish there was space here. Peter Heywood, trapped below when the launch was cast off, condemned to the ship, Tahiti, Pandora, & then a terrifying ordeal at his courtmartial, when as Dening puts it so well: "No-one was going to take his life from him but...no-one would say they would not."

What of the Action Statements of that great mystery-man himself, Ned Young, friend & cohort of Christian, midshipman, nephew of a wealthy absentee planter? We have seen of his ambiguity, of his spectral ability to be seen only when needed, or when he deemed it necessary. His actions--when they are known--are obvious enough. We will never know what he planned, when ,or why. Was it a long-standing dislike of Bligh, or was it merely a result of watching what Bligh was doing to Fletcher? Young left no letters or narrative, & if he ever told Adams or the other Pitcairners, in later life, they never said.

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