William Bligh’s “Narrative of the Mutiny”

Sometimes I think we hardly need fiction. It’s not just that truth is stranger—it’s also just as dramatic and just as fascinating. I’m very fond in general of reading fiction presented in the form of some other document—diary entries, letters, statements, legal records of all sorts, fiction within fiction, etc.—and when I read nonfiction put together in the same way I’m always surprised at how it seems just as ingeniously constructed as the novels.

The story of the Essex was exciting with its somewhat conflicting journal entries and long lost manuscripts, not to mention the high drama of the events themselves. But in terms of historical documents, The Bounty Mutiny‘s were more numerous, more varied, and more nasty.

The first document, though, is mostly remarkable for its similarity to Owen Chase’s account of the wreck of the Essex. Or rather the other way around, since the Bounty mutiny took place in 1789.

Captain Bligh begins his story with the mutiny itself. Since we have no knowledge of what preceded it, it is as inexplicable as the actions of the whale that destroys the Essex. Bligh professes complete surprise at his treatment and very quickly we are all in the launch with him and his few remaining comrades. The narrative of the journey in the launch is very like Chase’s: in the form of a ship’s log, without much going on except weather, rationing, and the setting in of weakness and possibly death.

Bligh’s men don’t seem nearly as hardy as Chase’s, though. The crew of the Essex are out and about for 90 days; Bligh makes it to Timor in something like half that time, and his men are significantly luckier in terms of both food and water supplies. Of course, it is still a harrowing trip, in the open ocean just a few inches above the water in a launch, and Bligh’s men faced other challenges. The seas were much less charted at that point, and the islands they encountered were all inhabited by unfriendly natives.

Bligh is just as obsessed by rationing as Owen Chase; it’s amazing the way these men do take responsibility for the lives of their fellows. Bligh is a little more melodramatic, though. He has some wine, to be used for medicinal purposes, and when he doles some out explains that he had saved it “expecting such a melancholy occasion.” No more than one page later is he giving the next dose of wine, which he “had saved for this dreadful stage.” At least when the boatswain tells Bligh he looks worse than anyone else in the launch “the simplicity with which he uttered such an opinion diverted me, and I had good humour enough to return him a better compliment.”

Even in such dire straits Bligh sits around charting the coast of Australia and noting the locations where a ship might pass through the Great Barrier Reef. The Bounty had been on a scientific mission, to pick up breadfruit from Tahiti* and transport it to the West Indies, and though he continually despairs at the failure of his mission the captain makes every effort to use his desperate trip to Timor as a voyage of exploration. Flora and fauna are noted, of course, and the presence and appearance of the natives (“naked, and apparently black, and their hair or wool bushy and short”). And the way they play the child’s game “Who Shall Have This?” to divide up all their caught food is darkly comic.

I’d rather be in Bligh’s boat than Chase’s. He does lose a man to some un-Friendly Islanders, but no one gets eaten, and they make it to Timor pretty much intact to enjoy the hospitality of the Dutch. Little did the mutineers expect the troupe to make it home. They only appear in Bligh’s account for a few pages, but after his tale ends they are found and brought to justice. Which is where the nastiness will begin…

*The appendix to this Penguin edition includes several descriptions of breadfruit, which have no bearing whatever on the story of the Bounty but which I’m quite glad to have read. Did you know that “it is as big as a penny-loaf when wheat is at five shillings the bushel”?