Coconut Chaos by Diana Souhami (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📗

passengers to build this fort during the day then return to the ship at sunset. But he couldn’t enforce discipline. The mutineers, armed with pistols, drank, fought and threatened each other’s lives. John Sumner and Matthew Quintal took to staying on shore at night to pursue women. On 5 July Christian had them put in leg irons. Two days later he and Charles Churchill drew up articles of agreement designed to impose rules and put aside past grievances. Each man was ordered to sign under oath. Sumner and Quintal signed then said they were their own masters and would do as they pleased.

Not enough women had been taken from Tahiti for the men to have one each. The mutineers preyed on Tubuaian women. The midshipman George Stewart wrote that the men

began to Murmur and Insisted that Mr Christian would lead them, and bring Women in to live with them by force, and refused to do any more work till every man had a wife, and as Mr Christian’s desire was to perswade rather than force them, He positively refused to have any thing to do with such an absurd demand. Three days were Spent in debate and having nothing to employ themselves in, they demanded more Grog. This he also refused, when they broke the lock of the Spirit room and took it by force.

Mutiny, murder, abduction, rape and drunkenness were all on the agenda now. Scant progress was made in building Fort George. The Tubuaians grew to loathe this marauding gang who came it seemed from an uncivilised place. They suspected that the moat being dug was a communal grave intended for them. They ambushed a group of mutineers collecting coconuts and dragged Alexander Smith from the woman he was raping in the grass and took him, wearing only his shirt, to Chief Tinnarow’s house. Christian’s gang shot their way free, set fire to the house and stole emblems the Tubuaians regarded as gods.

Tinnarow wanted revenge for this arson, rape and pillage and for the slaughter of his people in the Bay of Blood. He plotted with one of the Tahitian men to murder the mutineers and seize the Bounty. News of this was conveyed to Christian by Mauatua, his Tahitian woman. In the fight that followed sixty-six Tubuaians were killed, among them six women, Thomas Burkett was stabbed in the side by a Tubuaian spear and Christian wounded himself on his own bayonet. One of the Tahitians wanted to cut out the jawbones of the murdered men and hang them in the Bounty as trophies.

It occurred to most of the men on the Bounty that British justice might be no worse than the quality of freedom on offer. On 12 September, after less than three months and with not much constructed of Fort George, the ship left Tubuai for good. The intention was to return briefly to Tahiti. Those of the Bounty crew who chose to leave the ship there, could do so and await the consequences. The abducted Tahitian men and women were restrained and compelled to stay with Christian and the ship. His plan was to blow with the wind and colonise the first uninhabited island he chanced on.

The ship arrived back at Tahiti, at Matavai Bay, on the night of 22 September. It anchored a mile out to sea. Sixteen men were rowed ashore in the dark. Each was issued with a musket, pistol, cutlass, bayonet and ammunition. Eight mutineers opted to continue with Christian. The Bounty put out to sea while the women ate their supper. When they realised they’d been tricked they were desperate. One woman leapt overboard about a mile outside the reef and swam for home on a moonless night. Next morning three other women were restrained from venturing to swim ashore as the ship passed the island of Tetiaro. Near Eimo, another of the Society Islands, two more women made such a fuss they were allowed to leave in a passing canoe. The rest sailed on: twelve Polynesian women and a baby girl, six Polynesian men and nine mutineers. They were to be the colonisers of Pitcairn Island.

20

In his journal Bligh wrote forensic descriptions of the wanted men, their scars, colouring and tattoos. Of the nine mutineers who sailed to Pitcairn he wrote:

FLETCHER CHRISTIAN master’s mate aged 24 years, 5 feet 9 inches high, blackish or very dark complexion, dark brown hair, strong made; a star tatowed on his left breast, tatowed on his backside; his knees stand a little out, and he may be called rather bow-legged. He is subject to violent perspirations, and particularly in his hands, so that he soils any thing he handles.

EDWARD YOUNG midshipman aged 27 years, 5 feet 8 inches high, dark complexion and rather a bad look; dark brown hair, strong made, has lost several of his fore teeth and those that remain are all rotten; a small mole on the left side of his throat and on the right arm is tatowed a heart and dart through it with EY underneath and the date of the year 1788 or 1789.

JOHN MILLS gunner’s mate aged 40 years, 5 feet 10 inches high, fair complexion, light brown hair, strong made and raw boned; a scar in his right arm pit occasioned by an abscess.

WILLIAM BROWN assistant botanist aged 27 years, 5 feet 8 inches high, fair complexion, dark brown hair, strong made; a remarkable scar on one of his cheeks which contracts the eye-lid and runs down to his throat, occasioned by the king’s evil;* is tatowed.

JOHN WILLIAMS seaman aged 25 years, 5 feet 5 inches high, dark complexion, black hair, slender made; has a scar on the back part of his head, is tatowed and a native of Guernsey; speaks French.

ALEXANDER SMITH seaman aged 27 years, 5 feet 5 inches high, brown complexion, brown hair, strong made; very much pitted with the small pox and very much tatowed on his body, legs, arms and feet. He has a scar on his right