To Lareau Web Parlour To Mutiny on the HMS Bounty To Contents

The men harked back to the freedom of Tahiti after departure, it is why they did not support Bligh early on in the mutiny when it could have made a difference. They seemed to accept their fate after a time & work with it, gathering stores, instead of fighting to keep their ship. It was Bligh's confusing & lately stiff discipline they couldn't stand. It was not the joys of Tahiti they wanted back, it was an end to the restriction they were under after the release of Tahiti. Anywhere on Earth would have sufficed, with open spaces & land & innovation. Tahiti was not the reason, anywhere would have had that effect. It was the sudden reinstatement of Restriction, Neglect, Confusion that made them want rid of Bligh. Not rationally, but then no-one was rational on the morning of the mutiny, early on. To get rid of Bligh was the thing. Rationally they knew the only way was the ship, sea, & discharge at home. Irrationally on the morning of the mutiny, they decided to get rid of Bligh & be free of his confusion. When they became rational again, most of them did what rational men would do: stay with the commander & the rational way: ship, sea, discharge at home. If that meant the longboat & horrible risk, then so be it. Most of them made it, which means they chose well. Disease & natives could have killed them anywhere. Drowning & thirst didn't kill any of them except those that Edwards captured, when they no longer had any other choices anyway. [49]

Bligh had pushed too hard, Fletcher recoiled, & the others were already so strained they did not want to stop Fletcher from beginning the mutiny, or fight to prevent it continuing. They must have sympathised to some extent. It was not the food & the girls of Tahiti that the men huzzah'd for (if indeed they huzza'd at all), it was the space & peace & quiet & the distance from their commander. Before Tahiti this was not such a problem; after it, with all of them feeling the confinement, squalor & Bligh's decaying temperament, it became a very potent symbol. For most of the crew on the fateful morning of 28th April, the chance to rid themselves of what Bligh had been doing & saying, of his onerous & confusing presence, must have seemed heavenly, a paracetamol to their migraines. Past the initial euphoria, when rationality returned, they realised the full implications of their actions & swung back to Bligh again, realising he offered safety from the Law & plainly a better chance than Fletcher & his men, the bloodiest & most violent aboard. Otherwise they never would have flocked back to Bligh so convincingly. [50]

Restriction brought them together & kept them there till they exploded. Neglect created the conditions for the explosion, emphasising the Restriction. Confusion also created the conditions, from the very beginning; confusion of the ship's role as greengrocery trip & as Navy vessel, Bligh's confusing rule & authority.

Restriction is the Catalyst, the Initial Point where events turn on the relationship between Bligh & Christian. Fletcher cannot escape William & tries to get away.

Restriction is the Terminal Event, the whispers of nervous crewmembers that turn Fletcher away from suicide to mutiny. It is the Vital Event after that Terminal Event, once the matrix is set irrevocably on Mutiny, the restriction that forces Bligh & his growing number of supporters into steadily larger boats, until again restriction makes them split, some with Bligh in the longboat, some left with Fletcher & the mutineers aboard Bounty.

Confusion between allows this ridiculous situation to occur, that none of them stir themselves to try to remove Christian or his ringleaders. Confusion later kills most of them in Edward Edwards' care, as he inexpertly navigates his way onto an Australian reef & into the history books.

At no point were all of these things inevitable, they all became individually inevitable due to their place in the matrix related to all the others. Had Edwards missed that reef & brought the men home, or hit another reef & killed everyone, history would have been dramatically different.

The men harked back to the freedom of Tahiti after departure, it is why they did not support Bligh early on in the mutiny when it could have made a difference. They seemed to accept their fate after a time & work with it, gathering stores, instead of fighting to keep their ship. It was Bligh's confusing & lately stiff discipline they couldn't stand. It was not the joys of Tahiti they wanted back, it was an end to the restriction they were under after the release of Tahiti. Anywhere on Earth would have sufficed, with open spaces & land & innovation. Tahiti was not the reason, anywhere would have had that effect. It was the sudden reinstatement of Restriction, Neglect, Confusion that made them want rid of Bligh. Not rationally, but then no-one was rational on the morning of the mutiny, early on. To get rid of Bligh was the thing. Rationally they knew the only way was the ship, sea, & discharge at home. Irrationally on the morning of the mutiny, they decided to get rid of Bligh & be free of his confusion. When they became rational again, most of them did what rational men would do: stay with the commander & the rational way: ship, sea, discharge at home. If that meant the longboat & horrible risk, then so be it. Most of them made it, which means they chose well. Disease & natives could have killed them anywhere. Drowning & thirst didn't kill any of them except those that Edwards captured, when they no longer had any other choices anyway. [49]

Bligh had pushed too hard, Fletcher recoiled, & the others were already so strained they did not want to stop Fletcher from beginning the mutiny, or fight to prevent it continuing. They must have sympathised to some extent. It was not the food & the girls of Tahiti that the men huzzah'd for (if indeed they huzza'd at all), it was the space & peace & quiet & the distance from their commander. Before Tahiti this was not such a problem; after it, with all of them feeling the confinement, squalor & Bligh's decaying temperament, it became a very potent symbol. For most of the crew on the fateful morning of 28th April, the chance to rid themselves of what Bligh had been doing & saying, of his onerous & confusing presence, must have seemed heavenly, a paracetamol to their migraines. Past the initial euphoria, when rationality returned, they realised the full implications of their actions & swung back to Bligh again, realising he offered safety from the Law & plainly a better chance than Fletcher & his men, the bloodiest & most violent aboard. Otherwise they never would have flocked back to Bligh so convincingly. [50]

Restriction brought them together & kept them there till they exploded. Neglect created the conditions for the explosion, emphasising the Restriction. Confusion also created the conditions, from the very beginning; confusion of the ship's role as greengrocery trip & as Navy vessel, Bligh's confusing rule & authority.

Restriction is the Catalyst, the Initial Point where events turn on the relationship between Bligh & Christian. Fletcher cannot escape William & tries to get away.

Restriction is the Terminal Event, the whispers of nervous crewmembers that turn Fletcher away from suicide to mutiny. It is the Vital Event after that Terminal Event, once the matrix is set irrevocably on Mutiny, the restriction that forces Bligh & his growing number of supporters into steadily larger boats, until again restriction makes them split, some with Bligh in the longboat, some left with Fletcher & the mutineers aboard Bounty.

Confusion between allows this ridiculous situation to occur, that none of them stir themselves to try to remove Christian or his ringleaders. Confusion later kills most of them in Edward Edwards' care, as he inexpertly navigates his way onto an Australian reef & into the history books.

At no point were all of these things inevitable, they all became individually inevitable due to their place in the matrix related to all the others. Had Edwards missed that reef & brought the men home, or hit another reef & killed everyone, history would have been dramatically different.

For Fletcher there was a moment between 04:30 & 04:50. In that time of brooding there was some point when he finally realised that Bligh should go & not himself, that there was no need for his honourable, communicative suicide to announce to the world what had gone wrong between him & Bligh. The way forward was clear. Bligh, Hayward, Smith & Hallet would be set adrift in the rotten jolly-boat & left to die or be marooned on a desert island. If the crew did not follow Fletcher he would jump over the side with (or without) Bligh & kill himself, solving the problem of their relationship one way or the other. Remember not one of the crew ever blamed Fletcher for what he did, what he put them all through. They must have understood how he felt & sympathised, at least a bit. Fryer during the mutiny said "Sir, we know why you are doing this, but drop it, for God's sake." [51]

What Fletcher did not bank on was so many of the crew not wanting rid of Bligh so badly. He did not bank on the jollyboat being so rotten it was useless (tho' he must have been aware of this). He did not bank on so many crew electing to stay with Bligh when there was sufficient (& eventually insufficient) space in the other two boats. Fletcher had not expected such loyalty, or that so many would change sides given the chance. He did not expect so many to try to save themselves by going with Bligh, even if they were caught up in the momentary madness of the mutiny, the euphoric first hour when everyone (save Churchill & Young) was more than a little crazy. When they came down with a bump, the euphoric realised they were doomed, & chose accordingly, trying to save themselves from the Navy & ruining Fletcher's plans. Quite how he would have ruled the rest of the ship with only four men gone, with obvious loyalists like Bosun Cole, plus the lesser timebombs of Fryer & Purcell, is anyone's guess. It is unlikely Fletcher thought this through either. He would have realised it was unworkable & that he had to face half the crew countermutinying & doing without them, or holding some prisoner for the rest of their lives. The plan simply did not work in its early simple form. What happened after was a poor compromise, & one with tragic consequences. Once the plan was changed, Fletcher's scheme fell apart. He had not examined all the variables, or did not want to consider them rationally, & without this the Matrix can play tricks on those who neglect all their options. Had he thought it through he may not have moved at all & life aboard would have gone on. Perhaps Fletcher would have killed himself, or Bligh, or both. Perhaps Churchill or Young, or even Fletcher, would have had another mutiny later. Perhaps no mutiny at all, & Bounty would have "returned safe home", to be remembered like Shakespeare's Henry V, rather than Macbeth..."I am so far stepp'd in blood it were as tedious to retreat as to go o'er". Either way, it would have been better than what Fletcher's initial poorly conceived ideas did achieve. [52]

It is inaccurate to portray either of the two main opponents as flawed & the other perfect. Even quite recent writers have done so, or placed themselves distinctly to one side or the other, mostly pro-Bligh & anti-Christian. Homosexuality, paranoid delusion, or plain incompetence have been applied, even by Glynn Christian. He, however, states that the reason for his ancestor's delusions & breakdown was Bligh's treatment. Both in my view were guilty & it is pointless to attempt to assign greater or lesser guilt to either. It took both of them to cause the mutiny, & others as well. It took Churchill & Young's command & control once the mutiny began, to keep it going, & Fletcher to prevent them & Quintal, Adams, etc from changing it by killing Bligh & his supporters. For all Christian's incompetence & poor thinking before & during the mutiny, his ability to constrain the other mutineers deserves praise. There would probably have been greater loss of life & none of the later events without that constraint. [53]

At no point before 0450 on the 28th was the mutiny inevitable. Pitcairn did not become inevitable till the Tubuai experiment failed & Fletcher found references to it. Even then it could have been radically different if Bounty was not burned when she was--if Edwards had sighted her as he passed, for instance, or if the Tahitian & Tubuian men had been better treated. For all that has been said in praise of Pitcairn since, its founders were no Utopians, no egalitarians. They were typical Britons of their day, with all their racist & prejudicial limitations.

Strangely, those with the least initial chance, with Bligh in the longboat, survived the best, & all deaths were after the open boat journey. Chances are many would have died of disease had Bounty come safe to Koupang. Cook's first voyage was fatality-free till Batavia. Those who remained with Bounty throughout had the worst luck, 2 of 9 remaining in 1793. Even the loyalists captured by Edwards fared better, in Bounty, Tubuai, Tahiti & the horrors of Pandora & their own open-boat voyage. [54]

The deeper & deeper you go into it, the less reason you find for a mutiny at all. Certainly Fletcher wanted to be rid of William & probably left to his own devices he most likely would have got onto his raft & quietly committed suicide by paddling away to die of thirst, shark or native attack. It took Stewart, & Young to convince him to stay, remove Bligh instead, take the ship. It takes their (perhaps) hatred of Bligh, & the persistence of Churchill & Adams & Young to keep the mutiny going. It takes their wish to save Christian from his own depression & commitment to cause the mutiny. Fletcher by himself never would have. He did not have the reason to do such a serious thing. He wanted to do it quietly & honourably & pointedly, what the others wanted was not honourable, nor was it quiet, nor was it what he had in mind, eventually. Perhaps he never even would have used his raft. Perhaps it was after all just a psychological rather than a physical escape mechanism, a way of relieving tension. There was tension there, in his eroding relationship with Bligh, in the sudden, total, enforced celibacy & separation from paradisal Tahiti, open spaces & his beloved Mautaea. In his inability to get away from Bligh.

He was trapped on a ship, 13,000 miles from home, a year's sailing time & 27,000 sea miles journey away, with no prospect of relief. His position in the EM, already dramatically narrowed by 18 months on a ship 90'x24'x12', was now even more narrow. He could never be more than a hundred feet from Bligh--never out of earshot! On a ship as small as Bounty you could always hear anyone's voice, day or night, if you concentrated. Undoubtedly, in the calm smooth weather of late April, in the Tuamotu's, especially with Bligh always shouting at someone or something, how could you avoid him, visually, audibly, physically? No wonder Fletcher was in hell...hell is, after all, an eternity trapped in a room with your friends...

THE RUDOLF HESS OF THE BOUNTY

Ned Young was nephew of Sir George Young, a prominent West Indian absentee Planter, 5'8", 22, had rotten teeth & a grim look, tattooed. A close friend of Fletcher, not as close as Heywood or Stewart. One of those on the early morning of 28th of April who said to Fletcher "The men are ready for anything. If I were you I'd take the ship."

"What are you saying? Are you inciting me to mutiny, Ned?"

"All I'm saying is if I were you I'd take the ship."

"Why don't you then?"

"I said if I were you. I'm not." [55]

He was invisible on the day of the mutiny, between 0430 & 0715, invisible, on a ship 90'x24'x10"! He only reappeared at 0715, armed with a musket, when Fletcher seemed to be wavering under the onslaught of Bligh's vituperation & the crazy pleading & arguing of the mutineers & loyalists. When the change between the cutter, the second boat, & the largest boat, the launch was necessary he appeared, & assented to Bosun Cole. Fletcher almost delegated the decision to him, according to eyewitnesses! The enervated, exasperated, wired Christian was revitalised by this, & made decisions about who to keep & who to put into the boat. They had to keep the tools & other equipment aboard, to repair the ship & prevent the loyalists from building their own vessel. No-one even considered keeping Purcell, but his mate, Charles Norman, was held aboard, with precious tools. [56]

Was Young running the mutiny from behind the scenes, or even running Fletcher without him being aware of it by giving him the incentive & idea & only taking an active role when things diverted from his plans? So long as things went the way he needed there was no reason to interfere in the chaos. Was he keeping a minor role after merely putting Fletcher up to it, not having the charisma & the status with the men that he needed to carry it off?

Had he been just trying to save Fletcher from himself by saying "take the ship", or did he already want it & needed to prompt Christian the right way to keep things on track? While keeping out of the way till things reached an incontrovertible stage, he then came onstage as part of the hostile group & spoke only one sentence--to Bligh--the whole morning: "Yes, it is a serious thing to be starved. I hope today you get a bellyful." [57]

Go to Next Page Back to Contents Page