November 30- Day Two At Sea
Last evening the sunset as we sailed along was lovely. At
last the weather seems a little better ad the sea is not rocking so much.
Today the DBD (dreaded boat drill) was repeated. The
International Maritime Law or SOLAS (Safety on Land and Sea) means the boat drill
has to be repeated every 14 days. Now wouldn’t you think folks were smart
enough to remember how to put on a life jacket, where to go for the muster
station and what the ship’s signal sounds like, but I guess not.
I asked Samuel this morning what was his job during the boat
drill and he told us all the Butlers make up the team of people who are
available to assist people who need special assistance. Since the elevators
don’t work in a real emergency, they have to carry those people down the inside
crew stairwells on stretchers. He said they had special training in how to lift
people up so they don’t hurt themselves.
The DBD- second time around- was similar to the first in
that we had to take life jackets, march into the balcony of the theater via one
door but walk all the way over to the other side to sit down. I guess it gave
more control checking the role. We heard the same stuff including the
demonstration about putting on a life jacket. Then we were done. We- thankfully-
didn’t have to go outside to the boats.
William Bligh |
Jim went to the lectures about William Bligh and learned
some things about this story that are different than the popularized stories
about the mutiny on the Bounty. First,
Bligh was not the tyrant he was made out to be, in fact he was generally kind
to his men and actually used the lash as punishment less than Capt. Cooke. When he was sent on his mission to gather
breadfruit trees and transplant them to the West Indies, his ship was mainly
staffed by impressed sailors, who were unruly and poor sailors. And unlike many expeditions, he had no marine
guards for his protection or to protect the crew. However competent Bligh was,
he was not a natural leader and was not respected by his men. He tended to play favorites.
When they got to Tahiti, the crew was allowed to do as they
pleased for 6 months and became even more undisciplined. They loved the life in Tahiti and the women
of Tahiti. Moreover, some of them became
addicted to laudanum (an opiate), especially Fletcher Christian. Christian was not the swashbuckling character
portrayed in the movies he was a basic sailor who was not the leader. The crew, upon sailing from Tahiti, basically
decided they loved the life in Tahiti more than their lives in England. So they mutinied, sent Bligh and 18 others
adrift in a 23 foot boat, and sailed back to Tahiti. The most remarkable thing
in the whole saga is the voyage Bligh accomplished in returning to England with
no charts an only a sextant.
Some
other basic facts learned are: William Bligh (September 9, 1754- December 7,
1817) was born in Plymouth to Francis Bligh and his wife Jane. He was signed
for the Royal Navy at age seven, it being common to sign on a "young
gentleman" simply to gain experience at sea required for promotion. In
1770, at age 16, he joined HMS Hunter as an able
seaman, the term used
because there was no vacancy for a midshipman. In September 1771, Bligh was
transferred to the Crescent and remained in the ship for three years.
In 1776,
Bligh was selected by Captain
James Cook for the position of sailing
master of the Resolution and accompanied Cook in July 1776 on Cook's third and fatal voyage
to the Pacific. Bligh returned to England at the end of 1780 and was able to
give details of Cook's last voyage.
Between 1783
and 1787, Bligh was a captain in the merchant service. Like many lieutenants he
would have found full-pay employment in the Navy hard to obtain with the fleet
largely demobilized at the end of the War of American Independence. In 1787,
Bligh was selected as commander of the Bounty. He rose eventually to the
rank of Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy.
A historic mutiny occurred during his command of HMS Bounty in 1789; Bligh and his loyal men made a
remarkable voyage to Timor,
3,618 nautical miles (4,164 miles), after being set adrift in the Bounty's
launch
by the mutineers. Fifteen years after the Bounty mutiny, he was
appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up
the corrupt rum
trade of the New South Wales Corps, resulting in the so-called Rum
Rebellion.
Since it
was rated only as a cutter,
the Bounty had no officers other than Bligh himself (who was then only a
lieutenant), a very small crew, and no Marines to provide protection from
hostile natives during stops or enforce security on board ship. To allow longer
uninterrupted sleep, Bligh divided his crew into three watches instead of two,
placing his protégé Fletcher
Christian—rated as a
Master's Mate—in charge of one of the watches. The mutiny,
which took place on 28 April 1789 during the return voyage, was led by
Christian and supported by eighteen of the crew. They had seized firearms during
Christian's night watch and surprised and bound Bligh in his cabin.
Despite
being in the majority, none of the loyalists put up a significant struggle once
they saw Bligh bound, and the ship was taken over without bloodshed. The
mutineers provided Bligh and eighteen loyal crewmen with a 23 foot launch that was so heavily loaded that the
gunwales were only a few inches above the water. They were allowed four cutlasses, food and water for perhaps a week, a quadrant
and a compass, but no charts, or Marine
chronometer. The launch
could not hold all the loyal crew members, so four were detained on the Bounty
for their useful skills; they were later released at Tahiti.
Tahiti
was upwind from Bligh's initial position, and was the obvious destination of
the mutineers. Many of the loyalists claimed to have heard the mutineers cry
"Huzzah for Otaheite!" as the Bounty pulled away.
Bligh and his crew first made for Tofua, only a few miles distant, to obtain
supplies. However, they were attacked by hostile natives and John Norton, a
quartermaster, was killed. Fleeing from Tofua, Bligh did not dare to stop at
the next islands, the Fiji
islands, as he had no weapons for defense and expected hostile receptions.
Bligh
had confidence in his navigational skills, which he had perfected under the
instruction of Captain Cook. His first responsibility was to bring his men to safety. Thus, he
undertook the seemingly impossible 3,618 nautical miles (4,164 miles)
voyage to Timor, the nearest European settlement. In this remarkable act of
seamanship, Bligh succeeded in reaching Timor after a 47-day voyage, the only
casualty being the crewman killed on Tofua.
From May 4th until May 29th , when they reached
the Great Barrier Reef, the 18 men lived on 1/12 of a pound of bread per day. The weather
was often stormy, and they were in constant fear of foundering due to the boat's
heavily laden condition. They landed on a small island off the coast of Australia,
which they appropriately named Restoration Island, May 29th, 1660
being their landing date and the date of the restoration of the British
monarchy. Over the next week or more they island-hopped north along the Great
Barrier reef- while Bligh, cartographer as always, sketched maps of the coast.
Early in June they passed through the Endeavour
Strait and sailed again
on the open sea until they reached Coupang, a settlement on Timor, on June 15,
1789. Several of the men who survived this ordeal with him soon died of
sickness, possibly malaria, in the pestilential Dutch East
Indies port of Batavia, the present-day Indonesian capital of Jakarta, as they waited for transport to
Britain. Bligh returned to Britain and reported the mutiny to the
Admiralty on March 15, 1790, 2 years and
11 weeks after his original departure. In October 1790, Bligh was honorably
acquitted at the court-martial inquiring into the loss of the Bounty.
The British
government dispatched HMS Pandora to capture the mutineers, and Pandora
reached Tahiti on March 23, 1791. Four of the men from Bounty came on
board soon after her arrival, and ten more were arrested within a few weeks.
These fourteen were imprisoned in a makeshift cell on Pandora's deck. Pandora
ran aground on part of the Great
Barrier Reef on August
29, 1791, with the loss of 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners. Of the 10
surviving prisoners eventually brought home, four were acquitted, owing to
Bligh's testimony that they were non-mutineers that Bligh was obliged to leave
on the Bounty because of lack of space in the launch. Two others were
convicted because, while not participating in the mutiny, they were passive and
did not resist. They subsequently received royal pardons. One was convicted but
excused on a technicality. The remaining three were convicted and hanged.
To this
day, the reasons behind the mutiny are a subject of debate. Many believe that
Bligh was a cruel tyrant whose abuse of the crew led them to feel that they had
no choice but to take over the ship. Others argue that the crew, inexperienced
and unused to the rigors of the sea and, after having been exposed to freedom
and sexual license on Tahiti, refused to return to the "Jack Tar's" life of an ordinary seaman.
They were led by Fletcher Christian in order to be free from Bligh's acid
tongue. This view holds that the crew took the ship so they could return to
comfort and ease on Tahiti.
The
mutiny is made more mysterious by the friendship of Christian and Bligh, which
dates back to Bligh's days in the merchant service. Christian was well
acquainted with the Bligh family. As Bligh was being set adrift he appealed to
this friendship, saying "you have dandled my children upon your
knee". According to Bligh, Christian "appeared disturbed" and
replied, "That, Captain Bligh, that is the thing; I am in hell-I am in
hell."
The Bounty's
log shows that Bligh resorted to punishments relatively sparingly. He scolded
when other captains would have whipped, and whipped when other captains would
have hanged. He was an educated man, deeply interested in science, convinced
that good diet and sanitation were necessary for the welfare of his crew. He
took a great interest in his crew's exercise, was very careful about the
quality of their food, and insisted upon the Bounty's being kept very clean.
He tried unsuccessfully to check the spread of venereal disease among the men. J. C. Beaglehole has described the major flaw
in this otherwise enlightened naval officer: "[Bligh made] dogmatic judgments
which he felt himself entitled to make; he saw fools about him too easily ...
thin-skinned vanity was his curse through life ... [Bligh] never learnt that you
do not make friends of men by insulting them."
Seas are a bit calmer for us as we sail along toward Nuku Hiva. The Captain
promises good weather tomorrow as we cross the equator. Really glad to be sailing
in these modern times and not back there with William Bligh or James Cooke.
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