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

while on Tahiti. He was tattooed, had a scarred chin and a black beard. His father had hung himself from an apple tree the year before the Bounty sailed and an inquest had ruled the cause to be lunacy. Muspratt, like Morrison, claimed Bligh asked him not to get into the overcrowded boat. He tried to discredit all the evidence as too contradictory to be reliable, and said it was a great misfortune no one had tried to rescue the ship. ‘It might have been done,’ he claimed. ‘Thompson was the only Centinel upon the Arms Chest.’

Michael Byrne pleaded that he was almost blind and that he’d wanted to leave with Bligh but Churchill had threatened to lock him up if he did. And Christian had said, ‘We must not part with our fiddler.’

Much of the trial centred on midshipman Peter Heywood. A whole day was accorded to his cross-examination. He had the advantage of being educated and articulate with influential friends. Not for the last time the law favoured the well-to-do. His lawyer, Aaron Graham, wasn’t averse to paying witnesses to give the desired evidence. Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, was a friend both of Heywood’s family and of one of the judges. Bligh, his most emphatic detractor, was at sea.

The charges against him were that he helped hoist the launch, was armed with a cutlass and, when asked by Bligh to accompany him, laughed and remained in the ship. In mitigation Purcell the carpenter said he saw him drop the cutlass and go below and that he seemed confused by what was going on.

Heywood swore before the court and the ‘tribunal of Almighty God’ that he was innocent. He said he was sleeping in his hammock and hadn’t the slightest intimation of what was going on. His ‘faculties were benumbed’ when he saw Bligh bound and pushed into a boat. He helped haul out the launch in order to assist Bligh, not Christian. He put provisions into it and ‘in doing this it was that my hand touched the cutlass’, his intention was innocent, he was in a state of stupor. His extreme youth and inexperience influenced his conduct. He thought that to go in the boat would mean ‘inevitable destruction’. He thought he’d be starved to death or drowned. He was at the time only sixteen, there was no one to advise him, he was ignorant of naval discipline, he hadn’t known he was committing a crime.

He admitted he put saving his own life above other considerations but he’d never have betrayed Bligh. Only a ‘monster of depravity’ would have done that. He went below because he didn’t want to be identified with the mutineers … He hadn’t wanted to go to Tubuai, but Christian forced him in case he gave intelligence information when a ship arrived. He’d welcomed the arrival of the Pandora and had immediately given himself up. ‘Before God,’ he said, he was ‘innocent of plotting abetting or assisting either by word or deed in the taking of the ship’, All witnesses said he was of good and amiable character and that when the Pandora arrived on Tahiti he offered himself up voluntarily and gave all information on the whereabouts of the mutineers.

Accounts of the mutineers’ trial in the daily papers were eclipsed by breaking news from France of the massacre of aristocrats and royalists. On 18 September the court acquitted Charles Norman, Joseph Coleman, Thomas McIntosh and Michael Byrne. All were released immediately. Charges were declared proven against Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Thomas Ellison, Thomas Burkett, John Millward and William Muspratt. They were condemned to die by being hanged by the neck on board a naval ship of war. The court gave the right to appeal for the king’s pardon to Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt.

‘We are in an Agony of Suspense – I can scarcely support my own misery, much less keep up poor Mama’s dejected spirits,’ Nessy, Heywood’s sister, wrote. Aaron Graham was quick to reassure them both. The king’s Attorney General, who’d attended the trial, told him that his friend Peter was ‘as safe as if he had not been condemned’.

Two days later, on 27 October 1792, Heywood and Morrison were read the king’s pardon and recommended to atone for their evil conduct by future good behaviour. Heywood read a statement of gratitude for his sovereign’s mercy and gave an assurance that his future life would be faithfully devoted to his service. Morrison’s response was not recorded.

On the morning of 29 October, a Monday, a crowd gathered in Portsmouth Harbour. At eleven o’clock Thomas Ellison, John Millward and Thomas Burkett were taken to the fo’c’sle of the ship Brunswick. Bags were put over their heads and nooses round their necks. At eleven twenty-six a gun was fired. ‘Thomas Burkett was Run up to the Starboard Fore Yard Arm, Millward and Ellison to the Larboard and There Hung Agreeable to their Sentence.’

Muspratt didn’t receive his pardon until 11 February 1793. The stress of waiting and the execution of his three friends so shocked him that in those interim four months he couldn’t speak to anyone ‘nor by any means be prevailed on to do so’.

In 1794 Edward Christian, who was a lawyer, published the minutes of the court martial with an appendix giving a spirited defence of his youngest brother, Fletcher. Bligh gave a reasoned and bitter response, but he did not come out of the affair well and a taint attached to him of sadism and overly harsh command.

Peter Heywood accepted an invitation from the presiding judge at his trial, Lord Hood, to sail with him on the Victory as his midshipman and he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Lord Hood was a friend of his uncle.

36

The rain set in. I lost count of the days and time took on a strange dimension. Lady Myre surfed the net or lay on my bed working her way through a thousand tunes and drinking exotic cocktails of