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Bounty arrived at Tahiti on the morning of Sunday the 26th of October 1788, over ten months since leaving Spithead. She would remain there for five months & changes would occur to & between the crew which directly affected them in the short weeks after departure & during the mutiny, only 24 days after leaving Tahiti. From a life of cramp, celibacy & unrelenting restriction of the Matrix, the five months in paradisal Tahiti not only meant they lived together as men (not sailors) aboard ship & on land, they also grew slack with women, the food, no routines. Space & time apart from each other where the bonds forced by food, confinement, confusing discipline & danger no longer existed meant they needed to relearn all these relationships back aboard Bounty. This is what they failed to do. Back to Restriction, Neglect & Confusion, the evolved systems of coping they had were no longer present. The salve of maintenance & exploration Bligh could have put them on would have kept them in practice & used to Navy life. Instead there was an abrupt shock of separation. Back in a tight matrix with absolute limits on their lives, forced by the sea & its dangers rather than by Bligh & his ideas, they writhed, without any release. On Tahiti they could roam, copulate, eat widely. Once back on Bounty they could not. [40]

In the weeks after leaving Tahiti Bligh was horrified by the decay of his crew, forgetting his own laxity in not keeping them up to scratch & his own confusing style which denied them the safety of flogging & other rituals of normal maritime behaviour. Bligh lurched toward overdiscipline & this made things even worse. Christian he came down most upon, as his executive, & as his friend who had deserted him for women & space on Tahiti. Their old quarrel over money at CapeTown flared as the issue for the slightest debates, & Christian came off worse, unable to understand why Bligh was different (as he himself had been changed by Tahiti) & why Bligh picked upon him. Christian could take only so much. [41]

Quite apart from the personalities grating against each other & the change from the air & open spaces & licentiousness of Tahiti to the squalor & cramp of Bounty, there is at the root of the mutiny the people-mismanagement, the inability (by others as well as Bligh) to talk to people in a way that helps rather than hinders. Fletcher had this interpersonal skill, Bosun Cole had it. That was why Bligh picked Christian, because he had that easy way with his men, they worked for him because he could do anything they could, & his "superior pleasant manner" made his authority comfortable to be under. Bligh knew, & liked a man who could run a watch so smoothly. After a year & a half aboard the men must have known each other well enough to soften the hard edges, to know what or what not to say, & to whom.

Purcell was always niggling (so far as we know, given his bad press), Fryer a pain to most. Bligh always had a supreme, unshaken faith in his own intellectual, moral, professional superiority. Not only that, he was always sure of the incompetence & lesser qualities of others, in his command or outside it. He always trumpeted this, Fryer's cowardice; Purcell's wingeing & insubordination, the childlike qualities of his seamen, the incompetence of Edward Edwards, sent to find the mutineers. That Bligh was right in the latter case, & was the best navigator & Pacific sailor in the world, Cook's natural successor, need not make him Pontiff & thus infallible. [42]

While he could care for his men physically, especially in bad weather, he neglected them mentally. Both his lack of knowledge about body language & his inability to handle people confused his crew. They were used to insensitivity, expected it at sea where there was cruelty & violence on a day-to-day basis. Bligh's was of a different type. He was not cruel & vicious like most captains, he cared. He was concerned for his men's health, took steps to feed them well, keep them clean, get rid of their "bad vibes", the buildup of negative energy when people are confined physically & mentally as on a ship. Usually this release was accomplished by mistakes, insults, fights & the inevitable punishment in an essentially uncaring, violent world. You did something wrong--fell asleep on watch, got drunk, insulted an officer--& were publically & openly punished for it. Your testosterone & adrenaline were released, your feelings & attitudes toward shipmates, officers & the Navy were reinforced & everyone else's were as well, by this demonstration of the norm, the violation, the sanction & the power of authority. [43]

Bligh did not do this. He humiliated them publically. He had power but not authority, could rule with one but not the other. While he treated his men as children, stating that they needed to be watched & supervised to keep themselves healthy & fit, he did not punish them as they expected. He swore at them, amplified insults for minor mistakes, ignored or under-punished major ones, depending on his mood. There was a drastic lack of floggings aboard during the whole voyage. There were many occasions where it would have happened but did not. Insignificant faults could be blown up & used by Bligh for releasing his own tension, working himself up into a state. After, he would be calm & collected & pleasant again, firm & fair. Most learned to deal with this, to pick his moods, as Fletcher put it before the voyage "I have learned how to humour him." Fletcher had not, or let it slip, eventually. When he did, his ability to cope dropped off. He was pushed too far & did something irrational & very consequential. [44]

Bligh's need to put others down to boost his own self-esteem & to let off steam upset the normal order of shipboard life. They were all volunteers, & all but the midshipmen had sailed before, knew the rules, how things operated at sea & in His Majesty's Navy. Bligh's emerging problems must have come as a shock, especially when they realised how far they had yet to travel with this man, & into what dangers & risks. Bligh was a good commander, a great navigator & hydrographer. He should not, however, have been in a situation where he could not get away from other people, or them from him. In a land command, with relief from other people, (& them from him), where you can escape such restrictions, where the matrix can be widened, Bligh would have been fine. At sea, with no escape, his & other's personalities grated & ground till they reached a point of no return.

It wasn't Bligh's language, it was the way it was used, what it was used for. Wounding others for personal growth, letting off steam, controlling & bullying because he knew he could, knew he could get away with it & his crew could not. It was the way Bligh held power, exercised it, that was so confusingly different to that of other captains. He could not rule with both power & authority. The crew expected abuse, bad treatment, violence. They didn't expect to be mollycoddled with sauerkraut & lime juice & dancing & then blasted at, attacked personally in front of their mates; least of all the officers. Discomfort, unrest & even despair was the result. Bligh's great failing was rage & release. He would get het up, lash out at whomever & whatever went wrong next, & then, spent & relaxed, carry on as normal, transgressions & mistakes forgotten, as they had served their purpose. The purpose was not to mend or correct his men's failings or mistakes but merely to relieve his own nervous tension. Today this would be controlled with Valium or a mobile gym, so that testosterone & adrenaline could be burned off safely; then the only way was to let fly at today's cock-up. The problem for the crew was that they did not realise this, & reacted to such attacks on themselves & their profession. [45]

Bligh perhaps should have taken his own advice on exercise & danced with his men. Apart from being seen to do what his subordinates did it would have removed his own aggro safely. Instead only the men, not the officers, were treated like children & fostered throughout their time, & this rankled. Another case of officer's privilege, a case where the officers got something the men did not, in this case they were treated as responsible adults. Bligh of course, was a gentleman, he had no need of such exercise or control like the seamen did. If AIDS tests had been the issue he would have been the last to be tested...he was always right, of course, he never had his faith shaken or his conclusions disproven. He did not need the exercise to prevent the "destructive & lethargic melancholy men can sink into on long sea-voyages"...[46]

Bligh distrusted Huggan from the very start, later Fryer, Purcell, probably most of his Warrant & Petty Officers, even Fletcher, at the last. It must have been disturbing from Bligh's point of view to see his happy ship eroding, that "splendid ship fit to go round a score of worlds" [47] decay into a group of men increasingly hostile, intolerant, & uncomfortable. Distrust is a part of the Right Stuff, one of its bad elements. In any area; rockclimbing, flying, sailing, board meeting, where the chips are down & it is time to produce the goods, irrespective of whether lives are at stake, trust in a companions personality & capabilities is essential. Mistrust in a confined environment, where the matrix is restricted, is a very dangerous thing. You cannot escape the other person, you cannot hide your mistrust & your unwillingness to do something hazardous with that person, no matter how important it might be, & it infects everything you do & everyone else, who cannot help being aware of it. [48]

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