Caroline Alexander - The Bounty - The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

The arrival of the mutineers was noted offhandedly in the Gorgon’s log, along with the more important additions: ‘Recd Wine fresh Meat; Bread for Ships Company; also Water. Caulkers Caulking within and without board. Carpenters as necessary. Armourer at his forge; Sent to Sick quarters 1 Supernumerary Marine. Came on board from the Dutch Ship Vreedenburgh 10 Pirates belonging to His Majesty’s Ship Bounty…’

At four in the afternoon of 5 April 1792, the Gorgon at last set sail for England, exchanging salutes with the fort as she passed. Blessed with fine weather and ‘a charming Breeze’, as one of the marines, Lieutenant Ralph Clark, noted in his private journal, the Gorgon passed the island of St Helena in under two weeks. Five days later they anchored at Ascension Island, primarily to refresh their food stock with local turtles. Although each passing mile brought the prisoners closer to their day of reckoning, they enjoyed the return to familiar British naval routine. Their confinement had been made less rigorous than under Edwards, and as Morrison noted, they had begun to regain their health and strength.

May 1 brought an extraordinary diversion: two sharks were caught and in the belly of one was found a prayer book, ‘quite fresh,’ according to Lieutenant Clark, ‘not a leaf of it defaced.’ The book was inscribed ‘Francis Carthy, cast for death in the Year 1786 and Repreaved the Same day at four oClock in the afternoon.’ The book was subsequently confirmed as having belonged to a convict who had sailed to Botany Bay in 1788 with the first fleet of prisoners consigned to transportation.

In the early rainy hours of 6 May died Charlotte Bryant, the child of Mary Bryant, the escaped convict who had sailed so boldly into Coupang before the arrival of the Pandora. Amid the mixed humanity that the Gorgon carried, it was not the pirates of the Bounty who appear to have stood out, but the young widow from Cornwall, age twenty-seven, ‘height 5′4″, grey eyes, brown hair, sallow complexion,’ as the register of Newgate Prison records, who had been sentenced to transportation for stealing a cloak. By coincidence, Marine Captain Watkin Tench, returning from Botany Bay, had gone out with Mary five years before, and recalled that she and her husband-to-be ‘had both of them been always distinguished for good behaviour.’ Now, he got from her the details of her extraordinary 3254-mile voyage, coasting the shores of New Holland, harassed by the ‘Indians’ when attempting to land, foraging for food and water – this story, which surely circulated around the ship, was one every sailing man on board would appreciate.

On 19 June, the Gorgon completed her long voyage and on an overcast day anchored at Spithead off Portsmouth alongside three of His Majesty’s ships, the Duke, Brunswick and Edgar , three frigates and a sloop of war. Captain Parker immediately notified Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, the port’s commander on duty, of his ship’s arrival and awaited further instructions. Meanwhile, his crew busied themselves with the numerous tedious and chaotic duties that awaited the end of a long voyage. The officers and men of the Portsmouth and Plymouth Divisions were disembarked, and water and victuals were brought onboard. The carpenter made his customary report, noting that the ship’s ‘works in general is very weak from carying large quantities of water and hay & tubs of Plants.’

Captain Edwards, a passenger, had nothing to do with these transactions. Most of his men were still behind him, on the other Dutch ships, and the pirates and convicts would now be turned over to the proper authorities. Disembarking early at the Isle of Wight, he was safe in Portsmouth by the time the Gorgon came to anchor. At some point in their wanderings, most probably during the sultry, sickly sojourn at Batavia, an anonymous member of the Pandora’s crew had immortalized their journey, and their captain, with a long doggerel poem:

Brave Edwards then with freindly Care

for men and boat began to fear…

by hard fatigue Our men were Spent,

the Ship keel’d Over and Down She went

An Equel Chance Our Captain Gave

to All Alike their Lives to Save…

Edwards’s last semi-official duty had been to accompany the captain’s wife, Mary Ann Parker, to shore, a journey that, perhaps predictably, turned into a four-hour ordeal, as she noted, ‘rowing against the wind’. Once onshore, nothing remained for Edwards but to await his own court-martial; like Bligh, he had returned without his ship.

On the day after the Gorgon ’s arrival, Captain Hamond informed Captain Parker that their lordships of the Admiralty had directed that ‘the ten Prisoners belonging to the Bounty be sent to the security of one of the port guardships. The following day, a longboat, manned and armed, was sent from the Hector , Captain George Montagu, to collect the mutineers. Put over the side of the Gorgon in chains into the waiting boat, the prisoners were able to enjoy the sights of the busy, lively anchorage in the course of their short journey. The cloudy weather had briefly cleared and showed breezy and fair – an English summer day. Their arrival on board was mentioned briefly in the Hector’s log: ‘Post-noon received the above Prisoners, Wm Muspratt, James Morrison, Jn Milward, Peter Heywood, Thomas Ellison, Michl Burn, Thos Burkett, Josh Coleman, Thos. McIntosh & Charles Norman…and secured them in the Gun Room.’ A sergeant’s guard of marines was sent over to provide additional security. For Thomas Burkett, at least, the Hector was familiar territory: he had served as an able seaman on this same ship, six years previously.

Peter Heywood had brought away a single possession from his long ordeal, a Book of Common Prayer , which he had carried in his teeth as he swam from the wreck of the Pandora. On the flyleaves, he had made some notations of events and dates important to him: ‘Sept. 22 1789, Mya TOOBOOAI mye; Mar. 25 1791, We ta Pahee Pandora…We tow te Vredenberg tea…Pahee HECTOR’ – the most striking thing about Peter’s entries is that he had written them in Tahitian.

Back in Tahiti, the Bounty men who had cast their lot in with the islanders were remembered largely with affection. Less than eight months after the Pandora left Matavai Bay, Captain George Vancouver arrived with his two ships, Discovery and Chatham. Through conversations with the Tahitians, he and his men learned a great deal about the mutineers’ lives on the island: they had built a schooner; they had each taken a wife and treated their women well; Stewart and Heywood had laid out gardens that were still in a flourishing state; these two had conformed to Tahitian manners to such an extent that they ceremonially uncovered their upper bodies when in the presence of King Tynah, as was the local custom.

One day the Chatham’s men were ‘surpized at seeing alongside in a double Canoe, three women all dress’d in White Linen Shirts, and having each a fine young child in their arms, perfectly white,’ as Edward Bell, a young clerk on the Chatham , reported in his journal. These were the women who had lived with the Bounty’s mutineers, and their children.

‘One call’d herself Peggy Stewart, after Mr. Stewart, one of the Bounty’s midshipmen, and her child which was very beautiful was called Charlotte,’ wrote Bell. ‘Another’s name was Mary MacIntosh and the other’s Mary Bocket [Burkett].’

Following this first meeting, Peggy Stewart frequently came to visit, often bringing small gifts and always enquiring after her husband. At length, it was time for the ships to depart, and she came to make her affectionate and tearful farewell.