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On Bounty as later on Pitcairn & throughout the whole voyage, restriction is the key to all the events. To begin with, the idea of the voyage was restricted. Unlike earlier voyages to the Pacific it was not a Government venture but a private one. There was a lack of the stability, thought & planning, which went into earlier voyages.

Even though James Cook had been dead for a decade, there were plenty of other experts around who could- perhaps did-advise how best to go about this kind of operation. The idea behind it all was to transport the famous breadfruit from Tahiti to the British slave colonies in the West Indies, because the local banana crop was fragile & the victim of frequent storms, & were becoming too expensive, & supply from the USA was now difficult in the aftermath of its revolution. As a result of Cook's & other's voyages, it was known that in the Society Islands that there was a wondrous plant that grew openly & freely & did not even have to be coaxed & cared for like grain or potatoes. Once mature this fruit, like a green cantaloupe but larger, could be roasted, boiled, fried or otherwise treated, producing (without any stones or bad core) a soft pasty substance, tastier than potato, richer than bread, perhaps like mashed potato mixed with cream, butter, & aerated to make it fluffy. Not only was this plant growing everywhere, ten trees worth could feed a man all his life, without any ploughing, sewing, reaping. The stuff grew ten months a year, being preserved as a paste when it wasn't active. Paradise! Bread that literally grew on trees! Without any of the labour that European cultivation (civilisation) entailed. [23]

If, rich West Indian planters (most of whom lived in England) reasoned, this tropical plant could be taken to Jamaica, all their supply problems would be over, quickly, easily, simply. Did they sent out well-equipped ships of their own, with their own crews & botanists to bring back this marvel? No, they petitioned the King (we all know of his state of mind) to do it for them! The greatest irony of all about Bounty is that any one of a dozen wealthy entrepreneurs who asked the nation & the Navy to fund & carry out this operation, could have paid for it each a dozen times. None of them needed the Navy & Bligh: what they wanted was a free lunch--literally.

Having got the Government & the Navy to pay for the mission, & provide the ship & men, these incredibly powerful, influential men largely washed their hands of the whole affair, allowing critical mistakes to be made which meant that in 1792, after the Mutiny, they had to send a second complete mission, better equipped (including Captain Bligh...) to Tahiti to do it all over again! What more scathing indictment could there be than the fact that it needed to be done twice to get it right once? The old axiom: only rush it if you have time to do it all again properly. [24]

One of the remaining bits of influence used was for Duncan Campbell, one of the planter-slavers involved, to get Lieutenant William Bligh, RN, appointed as Captain. Bligh, after having a heady rise in the Navy (due to pure capability, not connections) to become Cook's sailing master on his last voyage, had gone to work for Campbell, through a reference from his wife's family. Bligh was in any case Cook's greatest student & his natural successor, the Chuck Yeager of the 1780's. More about Chuck & applying The Right Stuff, later on. [25]

It was the Navy, however, that chose & bought a 230-ton fully rigged ship, only two years old, for somewhat more than she was worth. Bethia was brought to the Navy Dockyards at Chatham on the Thames, & the great Botanist Joseph Banks (another of Cook's cohorts) set about her conversion into a floating greenhouse. To ensure enough plants survived the 27,000 nautical mile journey from Tahiti to Jamaica, at least 600 specimen would be needed. Therefore the entire aft great cabin would be converted into a heatproof box, equipped with potholders & a woodstove for cold Southern Ocean sailing. This meant also that the officers accommodation would be limited, & encroach on that of the crew. The whole ship, tiny in any case, would be dedicated wholly to bringing back the breadfruit safely, as well as other interesting plants & Tahitian cultural specimens. Tahiti was still very much flavour of the month then, the Noble Savage had yet to be worn away by genocide & missionary societies. [26]

Once selected, the experienced & extremely capable Lieutenant Bligh set about converting the ship for Pacific sailing & acquiring the million & one things any ship needs before it can sail. He had her hull encased in copper to deter the lethal Teredo Navalis or Shipworm, which did to wooden hulls in the tropics what rust does to steel ones. He had her masts reduced, to counter Pacific weather, & that of Cape Horn. He had her ballast reduced. All these drastically reduced Bounty's speed in anything other than a strong stern wind, to between 2-4 knots, or 3-5 land mph. Most of us can swim that fast (if not for 27,000 miles). Tons of stores were brought aboard, not only enough preserved iron rations for two years, but also Bligh's babies, the newfangled soups & preparations, which, as Cook had proved, prevented scurvy & other traditional maritime diseases. Lime juice & sauerkraut, portable soup & malt extract. Bligh had vowed that he would not lose a single man on this voyage, & he would only lose two, one to surgeon's inattention & the other the surgeon himself, whom everyone gave up on & allowed to drink himself to death at Tahiti. [27]

Salt pork & beef & the thrice-baked & ground back to powder & baked again "ships biscuit" ("laughingly called `bread'" [28] as Richard Hough puts it), that was so hard it needed soaking before it could be eaten, that was so hard it was used for armour against cannon balls & grapeshot in battle. Nails & timber & tools & tar & sails & water & beer & coal & food for livestock & all the other items & stores ships need. They must carry the world around with them, everything they require must be aboard, for there are no hardware shops & supermarkets at sea, & ports are few & far between. Except for the Canary islands & CapeTown on the way out, & Koupang & Jamaica on the way home, ports for Bounty were nonexistent. Even CapeTown was an accidental port.

Bligh also had to select the crew, & here too he had both help & hindrance. Joseph Banks picked David Nelson as Botanist, who had already been round the world with Cook & Bligh; a director at Kew, the world's most travelled gardener, even more so than Banks himself. To him was appended William Brown, a bright, careful young expert. To Bligh was appointed one John Fryer, 35, newly married, not a spectacular man, as sailing master. This position is a curious one. It dates from the time when warships were sailed by seamen but carried soldiers, who did the actual hand-to- hand combat before cannon were invented. The master ran the ship & the Captain commanded the soldiers. As gunnery develloped & warships grew into floating artillery batteries, the two jobs intermingled, became stages in seniority, dialectics on command, separated by rank but doing the same things, & at times confusingly. [29]

Underneath Captain & Master were several equal positions, thus confusing the issue somewhat more. To assist the Master were a number of mates, depending on the size of the ship. To control the crew was a boatswain, or bosun. To keep the wooden ship in good order was a carpenter. Because she was armed, Bounty needed a Gunner, a gunner's mate & an armourer & master-at-arms. Bounty needed a surgeon to keep the men fit during a long voyage. Life was shorter, more uncomfortable & better equipped with pathogens then. Most ships today need only a nurse, or a man who doubles as doctor. Warships only need them to treat VD & for the unlikely event of battle casualties, very unusual these days.

Beneath these men were a selection of proper sailors & staff officers, concerned with manning & maintaining departments & gear aboard. There were two Quartermasters, a Quartermaster's mate, a bosun's mate, gunner's & carpenter's mates & crew, & a sailmaker. Also, for Bligh's rank, a steward to serve him, & a clerk to tally the goods bought & sold. Bligh, perhaps unfortunately, was Purser as well; the accountant of the ship, & a role much maligned by sailors as he determines what they receive: rotten food, trinkets from natives, floggings, & their hard-earned money at the end of the voyage, if they survive. Up till Cook & Bligh less than half did, to malnutrition, disease & accident. [30]

To do the practical work of sailing were assigned twenty-five A.B.'s, or able-bodied seamen. These are the rank & file of the ship, who haul on ropes, go up the masts to set sails or reef them in, who winch buckets & boats around, steer, keep watch & all the other basic vital tasks of any ship. The captain commands, the officers order, navigate & discipline, & the AB's sail. The rest of the crew are essential but not real sailors, & there is & was always a dichotomy between who can sail & who cannot, who has the Right Stuff to be really useful aboard a ship & who does not. Ships, since they are isolated from the world & are total institutions ruled by autocracy have stronger rules & laws, stronger norms, which if violated hold tougher & more direct punishments. Not only that, those who can sail are always above those who cannot, regardless of land rank or station. An AB on a pearling lugger outranks a Rockerfeller or a Guggenheim at sea, because he or she has what it takes, & the rich heir does not. Everyone aboard knows that & acts accordingly, including & excluding; showing respect, or not. [31]

Lastly & least, there were the Midshipmen, the apprentice officers, ranked below even the cabinboys because they dined like officers & were not treated as AB's, they had more to learn & started off better, most being of noble or near- noble birth. Unlike the Army you could not buy your way into a commission in the Navy, you had to show at least some talent for navigation, command, courage, skill. You had to pass exams on seamanship & navigation & do time at sea. The Navy, which did have its share of incompetents (arguably Bligh was one of them), could weed most of them out, seeing as ships were expensive, complex, & needed more than just luck & good subordinates to operate them.

Bounty had space for two midshipmen. Bligh, having at last a powerful patron, Banks, was repaying this heady position by extending patronage of his own, giving not two but six positions away, taking the other four from vital AB positions. To all those he was indebted to he felt obliged to respond. Or more properly, he was unable to say no, on an occasion when no really did mean no! From Duncan Campbell came one, Thomas Ellison, re-rated down to AB when more suitable Midshipmen became available, from another Planter came another, Ned Young, from his wife's family a third, Thomas Hayward, from a family he'd stayed with in the Orkney's came George Stewart, etc. Several of these really were worth taking, & worked brilliantly aboard Bounty & had faultless careers after, others were not so able or lucky. Apart from anything else the number of AB's was being whittled down, from 25 to 13, if you took out the cook, the butcher & the cooper (another vital position on a ship where all water & food were stored in barrels). Because the Surgeon, Dr. Huggan, was already showing signs of the drunkenness that would kill him, an assistant had to be appointed, which took another's AB position. One more was taken by a three-quarter-blind Irish fiddler, to keep the men fit & healthy by dancing. This exercise burned off their excess testosterone & adrenaline, especially in calm, slow weather, when build-ups of stress & tension could be dangerous. [32]

There, then, was Bounty's crew, unbalanced or not as it was. Perhaps it was. Perhaps 13 A.B's instead of 25 was dangerously undermanned, especially in rough weather when they would be the core of every watch & always needed. Perhaps, on the other hand, 25 really was too many, from the days before Bligh & Cook when most of the crew were always sick & at least a half died before home. Perhaps with a fitter, healthy crew, that reserve was not needed after all. Perhaps. Six midshipmen was too many by any reckoning. It was only Bligh's inability to refuse friends & patrons & friends of friends that allowed this to occur. Apart from anything else fewer midshipmen could have meant different personalities, & that would have affected the eventual outcome.

There were other, more serious instances of neglect. For one thing a single ship was probably not enough. In any case another would have done no harm. A larger vessel, with an escort, could have made all the difference. We know this because that is what the Admiralty did in 1792 when they had to repeat the whole job.

Bligh should have been promoted to Captain for such an important & influential job. He certainly had the skills, the leadership, the ability, the experience. If, as will be demonstrated, his personal & psychological problems were a reason for not promoting him, why was he chosen at all? Either he had the Stuff or he didn't. If he had the Stuff why was he not promoted? If he didn't have the Stuff psychologically & socially that he ably demonstrated physically, technically & practically, why was he given the job? [33]

The reasons are several. For one, he was chosen partially by favouritism, in that Duncan Campbell, West Indian absentee Planter & powerbroker, had him selected, not only because of Bligh's skills, experience & position as Cook's actual Caliph (successor). Due to the accidents at Kealakakooa Bay, Hawaii, where Cook was killed, & the fact that Cook's First Lieutenant & not Bligh wrote up the dispatches, Bligh lost out in favour to other officers who gained the most recognition, promotion & fame. It was more than just a case of Bligh, oversensitive to his own position & ability, harping on about being passed over, overlooked, & neglected. There really was a case of Bligh being left behind because he was different, an outsider, compared to the other officers after Kealakakooa Bay. Partially this was of his own making, because he always took a high moral ground, emphasising his own ability & restraint while thundering against the morals & actions of others. As we will see, he was seriously insensitive, but worse still, Bligh was insensitive to his own insensitivity, he simply had no idea that he rubbed people the wrong way, ignored their subtle unspoken signals, & did not treat them the way they expected. It is this confusion about roles & expectations in the minds of crew & officers that sets the scene for the mutiny, as much as the neglect. It is also a lack of recognition by the Admiralty of his psychological problems, his inability to handle people, that caused his selection. His skills, & their ignorance, & Campbell's weight on the selectors combined to get him the position, for better or worse. [34]

Bligh was neglected by his superiors, in that he was not promoted. This would have meant a bigger ship, more men, better equipment. He would have had a second vessel as escort. He would have had Lieutenants under him, separating him from the crew, allowing some distance & unfamiliarity for the lonely position of commander. He would have had a Corporal & a dozen marines to enforce his will, if need be. This would have been important in maintaining the crew's ideas of command & authority as much as his own. Bligh sent ambiguous signals about how he worked; in his changes of mood, his need to let out his frustrations & fears by swearing at & emotionally wounding his officers & men, by his obviously humanitarian approach to sailing evinced by the foods he took, the dancing he enforced, the 3-watch, 4 hours-on- eight-hours-off system, by the way he looked after his men. He was physically over-protective in a way that disturbed them, did not treat them like grown, responsible men. Bligh sent ambiguous messages in that he flogged the fewest men of any voyage of the age anywhere, an average of 1.5%! Twenty percent would have been normal, & 45% entirely usual. [35]

"Cook was typically cruel to his men, flogging some of them till their ribs were exposed", but at least they knew why, & how, & what for. Cook was never ambiguous, never hot then cold. Never unusual or unpredictable. He was always bad-tempered & always caring & always utterly in command in ways that everyone knew & expected & understood & looked for. With Bligh, the normal routine of mistakes & stupidity & insult & violence & punishment was upset; the whole system whereby sailors expected to do wrong, be openly punished for it & then respected for it again, was gone. This was scary, & uncomfortable, & led to dangerous problems that did not occur elsewhere. [36]

Bligh was neglected in that the Admiralty, in its infinite wisdom, delayed him at Spithead & then Portsmouth waiting for the official orders to sail, which led to Bounty arriving at Cape Horn too late, & wasting 31 days battling impossible weather, at the most inhospitable place on Earth. This led to a longer, delayed voyage back across the Atlantic, & sickness & death to AB James Valentine which finally ruined the relationship between Bligh & Dr.Huggan, & also two other causes of the mutiny.

Number one was the visit to Cape Town. Fletcher had to borrow money from Bligh, to enable him to live at his normal (ie gentleman) status, at least in port. Though this did not matter at the time, Bligh was later to bring this obligation up at argument after argument, until it was one of the things which made Fletcher's honour & resolve snap, catalysing the mutiny. [37]

Number two was the visit to Adventure Bay, Southern Tasmania. It may occur to you that both events happen while Bounty is in port, not at sea. This is because ships are creatures of the sea. They are not intended (despite the inactivity & attitude suggested by some W.W.2. Battleships) to live in port, nor be connected to the rest of the planet for most of the time. Ships are pelagic creatures, beings of the deep; the "hills of water & the whale's country" as one 8TH Century Saxon poet put it. By definition a total institution such as a ship cannot be total if its crew can escape, get away from one another, extend their worldview to encompass not only other people off the ship but also other things & occurrences. Thus ships, as Greg Dening said, are out of the water, figuratively, when they are in port. They do not belong. The graduated, planned, predictable course of the maritime day, with its watches, duties, tasks, & jobs, are not in place. The very regulation of the sailor's world is not active. This, like officers who do not flog & food that is actually good for you, is unusual, confusing, uncomfortable, hazardous. That ambiguity & confusion would prove fatal at Tahiti & elsewhere, in setting up the conditions of expectations & occurrences; the Matrix of Events which led to the Mutiny. [38]

At Adventure Bay, in addition to the accepted problems of being in port & ashore, there were a number of arguments & fights which worsened relations between crewmembers & officers & commander. Bligh fought with Christian about leadership of water & wooding parties. Bligh fought with Fryer, the Master, about a number of duties carried out, & about how & why they should be done. Bligh fought with William Purcell, the wheedling, oversensitive, generally disliked Carpenter, about what the Carpenter was allowed, obligated, & supposed to do. Purcell always worried about how much he was getting, what he was being asked to do. He was one of that sort of worker who will always quote the rulebook to maintain themselves, who always quote the bits about "Job Description" & its boundaries & responsibilities as they see them. Purcell is another example of miss-selection of crewmembers that was to prove vital to the composition of the Event Matrix. Though not as vital to what happened as others, he certainly contributed more than most. [39]

So in addition to the confusion of roles, expectations, behaviour, symbols, nonverbal communication, which unsettled Bligh's men, there was a large portion of neglect. Underfunding & Admiralty penny-pinching, the lack of interest by the Planters responsible for it all (who should have done it themselves), no marines, no second ship, no Lieutenants under Bligh, no promotion, too many midshipmen. Negligence, culpable negligence.

The operation was restricted by the men & the ship, the size of the single ship & the stresses on its space & shape caused by the potroom. The men were confused by Bligh's attitude & command style, by the Sauerkraut & the lack of flogging & the role Christian played as captain's friend & popular leader of the sailors. They were all neglected by the Admiralty, by the cheap solution of one ship & Bligh & no promotion or marines. The orders & the lack of thought about how best to do it, & the lobbyist, absentee landlord ideology of the planters at the source of it all. It could have been different. There were alternatives at the beginning, to change the long-term causes.

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