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

War was unambiguous. ‘If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make or endeavour to make any mutinous assembly upon any pretence whatsoever, every person offending herein and being convicted thereof by the sentence of the court-martial shall suffer DEATH.’

Edwards was also to fulfil the ancillary task that had been assigned to Bligh: ‘To survey the Endeavour Straits to facilitate the passage of vessels to Botany Bay’.

Bligh’s own court martial for the loss of the Bounty was a necessary formality. It was held on board HMS Royal William at Spithead on 22 October before Admiral Samuel Barrington and eleven captains. Asked by the court if he had ‘objection or complaint’ against any of the men who survived the open-boat journey, Bligh said he had none, except minor instances of impudence and non-compliance from Purcell the carpenter. In turn, under cross-examination, all the men swore they’d no objection or complaint concerning Bligh, they’d known nothing of the mutiny before it occurred and they’d done everything in their power to recover the ship. John Fryer, the master, kept quiet about his loathing of Bligh. He said he’d tried to reason with Christian as he held a bayonet over Bligh, whose hands were tied, and that Christian had told him to hold his tongue and said he’d been in hell for a week. Midshipman John Hallett described how Bligh was held at knifepoint, ‘naked all to his shirt and night cap’, and how his servant ‘was ordered to go below for his trowsers and to haul them on for him’.

The testimony was consistent and the court concluded that ‘the Bounty was violently and forcibly seized by the said Fletcher Christian and certain other mutineers’. They honourably acquitted Lieutenant Bligh, and those tried with him, of responsibility for her loss. The only punishment meted out was a reprimand to Purcell for not complying with orders while on Tahiti: refusing to hoist water out of the ship’s hold when instructed to do so and refusing to cut a grinding stone for one of the chiefs.

Cleared of all wrongdoing, Bligh was extolled as a hero and officially promoted. He remained on full pay from the Admiralty from the time of his return until the trial. He was presented to King George the Third who asked how his cheek had come to be scarred. Bligh told him it was from a childhood accident when his father, in their orchard in Plymouth, had thrown a hatchet at a horse to try to make it turn so that he could catch it.

On 7 February 1791 Bligh put in an expenses claim to the Admiralty of £283/1/6d for possessions lost with the Bounty. This included £47/0/6d for his personal books and charts, £121/12/0d for his clothes, and £59/13/6d for liquor. On 15 April he set sail in HMS Providence with another Admiralty commission to take breadfruit from Tahiti to Britain’s starving slaves in the West Indies. This time he had the rank and pay of captain.

26

Rosie stayed at the jetty to help unload the island’s sodden supplies. Smiley took me up the Hill of Difficulty on his quad bike. I gripped the seat and my polythene-covered bag. Red mud splattered as Murray had warned. Beyond the noise of the bike and the swirling rain was the stillness of the land after the turbulent sea. There was a tropical warmth, though this was Pitcairn’s winter.

Smiley had been three months on the island, supervising the building of the prison. He wanted to finish and go home to Christchurch, but now the required wood and materials and the perimeter fence were bound for Panama. ‘Here it is.’ He stopped his bike by what looked like a Swiss chalet. ‘The guys who stand to be holed up in it are building it with me. Now there’s nothing for them to do. It won’t ever be finished on time.’

It was a smart building in tongue-and-groove, with a deck round it and individual front doors to what I supposed were the six cells. ‘It’s really nice,’ Smiley said, with a good workman’s pride. ‘Each unit’s got its own shower, basin, urinal and power points. It’s all built to EEC standards. It’s much better than the Pitcairners’ houses.’

I asked why the defendants had agreed to build it, as if digging their own graves.

‘It’s good money,’ he said. ‘They figure if they don’t get it, some outsider will. The British government pays. Anyway, they won’t ever be banged up in it, they’ll get off on a technicality. And even if they do get sent down, they’ll be allowed out to work the longboats and go fishing and whatever. The island can’t manage without them.’

Prison warders were to be brought from New Zealand to supervise them. ‘It’ll cost,’ he said, ‘they’ll have to charter a ship, and then there’s accommodation for them and food and everything.’

It all seemed bizarre. He then talked about quad bikes – how they were the only transport and the only possible way to get over Pitcairn’s rough terrain. He said they were inherently unstable and going down hill in the rain, with the wheels all caked with mud, was a gas. He knew how to pull a wheelie and loop the loop but he wouldn’t show me right now.

We drove on. ‘That’s October Christian’s house’ – he waved at a derelict shed. ‘He was Fletcher Christian’s son and guess when he was born. That’s the shop’ – he waved again. ‘It’s open Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour. That’s the church, that’s the school, that’s the post office and that’s the courthouse.’ Then we stopped outside a low-built wooden house. ‘And that’s about it really. That’s Pitcairn. You wait here till Rosie arrives. I’ve got to taxi more stuff. Nice to meet you. Bye.’

I stood among ferns and coconut palms. Beyond the house was a tangle of banana trees, passion fruit and yams. Bees buzzed round hives. The sky had changed to blue in an instant. Semi-feral cats scampered to