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

hundred and twenty-seven of the plants survived. The West Indians hated the taste of breadfruit, though it became an integral part of their diet because no alternative staple food was available.

It took Bligh a year to get back to England after leaving Tahiti. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and given their gold medal for distinguished services to botany and navigation. More generally he was known as Bounty Bastard Bligh. To his chagrin his account of this second voyage was not wanted. The Admiralty told him, ‘At present books of voyages sell so slowly that they do not defray the expence of publishing.’ His Tahitian servant, Maititi, died soon after reaching England and was buried in St Paul’s churchyard in Deptford.

35

While Bligh was at sea, the court martial of the accused men who survived the wreck of the Pandora was held in the captain’s cabin of HMS Duke, anchored at Spithead. It lasted from 12 to 18 September 1792. Presiding over the process was Lord Hood, First Lord of the Admiralty. He and eleven captains were to judge which of the accused should live and which should die.

The defendants were Peter Heywood midshipman, James Morrison boatswain’s mate, Charles Norman carpenter’s mate, Joseph Coleman armourer, Thomas McIntosh carpenter, Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison and John Millward seamen, William Muspratt the cook’s assistant and Michael Byrne the violinist. All were charged with the capital offence of mutiny.

Without Bligh, the Crown was missing its chief witness for the prosecution, but he’d given an emphatic account at his own court martial two years previously. He testified that Coleman, Norman and McIntosh had wanted to leave in the boat with him and had been detained on the Bounty by force. He scathingly indicted Peter Heywood and deemed him as guilty of mutiny as Christian. The six other men he left to defend themselves as best they could.

The fracas of the mutiny had happened three and a half years previously in minutes of confusion and fear. No one seemed clear of its essential cause, nor was this dwelled on. Many of the prisoners were illiterate. All had endured hardship. They were at the mercy of the recollections of their witnesses – the men who’d survived the open boat journey with Bligh. Only Peter Heywood had the benefit of legal guidance.

Witnesses were called singly to testify. They appeared according to rank – warrant officers then midshipmen. From their recall, a picture of that distant morning emerged: of swearing against Bligh – ‘Damn his eyes’, ‘Shoot the bugger’, ‘The boat’s too good for him’; of Christian lamenting that he’d been in hell; of Bligh without his trousers, his hands tied behind him; of a scramble to get things for survival – water, food and clothes.

There were confused accounts of who’d been armed and who hadn’t, but Thomas Ellison and Thomas Burkett were both found guilty of being armed with muskets while aiding Fletcher Christian to take the ship. Ellison was fifteen when he’d signed up with the Bounty as an able seaman. He was living in Deptford at the time, needed employment, and the ship was there. He was five feet three, with dark hair and had his name and 25 October 1788 – the date he’d arrived in Tahiti – tattooed on his right arm. The charge against him was that, at Christian’s bidding, he left the helm of the Bounty, picked up a cutlass, ran towards Bligh and called, ‘Damn him, I’ll be sentinel over him.’ To the court he said:

I hope your honour will take my inexperienced youth into consideration as I never did or meant any harm to anyone, much more to my Commander to whose care I was recommended. He took great pains with me and spoke to Mr Samuel his clerk to teach me writing and arithmetic, and I believe would have taught me further had not this happened. I must have been very ungrateful if I had in any respect assisted in this unhappy affair against my Commander and benefactor, so I hope honorable gentlemen you’ll be so kind as to take my case into consideration, as I was no more than between sixteen and seventeen years of age when this was done.

Burkett was five feet nine with brown hair, many tattoos and a face pitted with smallpox scars. He could read and write and he’d left a son on Tahiti. It was testified that he held a knife over Bligh and helped drag him from his cabin.

John Millward was also indicted for being armed, though evidence against him was confused. He was twenty-two at the time of the mutiny, five feet five, ‘very much Tatowed in Different parts’ and the son of an illiterate sailor. To the judges he said he’d only taken hold of a cutlass and pistols because he was afraid to disobey Christian’s orders. He’d thought Fryer intended to retake the ship. He’d thrown his jacket into the loyalists’ boat for his messmate George Simpson, ‘with my prayers for their protection’. He said he didn’t know how he could have acted differently.

James Morrison’s defence was that Bligh begged him not to get into the boat, because it was so overloaded. He said he’d handed down cutlasses, pork and gourds of water, and Bligh had shaken his hand and promised he’d do him justice in England. John Fryer, the master, praised him as a steady, sober, attentive man and denied he was armed, but another witness swore he saw him with a cutlass. ‘Amidst such Crowd, Tumult and Confusion might not the Arms in the hands of another wedged by my side easily be thought to be in my possession?’ Morrison asked the court. A third witness said that as the boat was veered astern Morrison had called out, ‘If my friends inquire after me, tell them I am somewhere in the South Seas.’

With William Muspratt, too, there was uncertain evidence as to whether he was armed. Two witnesses said he was. And he’d deserted