• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 360 0

his followers were desperate to return to their new attachments in Tahiti. In the context of spending ten months at sea, which attenuated already weak home attachments, and of forming new and powerful bonds made through sexual liaisons in Tahiti (that in some cases even led to cohabitation and pregnancy), the men experienced elevated emotions that culminated in a breaking point of revolt one month after departing the island, just as the men reached peak withdrawal from their attachment addictions. Any excuse might suffice, and Bligh’s tirade over the stolen coconuts was one such trigger. For his part, Bligh was happily married and showed no interest in the native women, but he had a different force tugging at his brain. Bligh’s already hair-trigger temperament was put on alert by his drive to preserve hierarchy on board and to gain status in his career.

Hierarchy and Status

We have already seen that Bligh was frustrated from the start of the voyage by not being promoted to captain. Some background on Bligh reveals what effect this might have had on him, and some additional material on our scientific understanding of the role of hierarchy and status fills in our ultimate understanding of the mutiny.

Born on September 9, 1754, the firstborn son of a custom’s officer, William Bligh developed into a short, stocky man with black hair, blue eyes, and a reputation for using foul language when angered. He first went to sea at age sixteen as an able-bodied seaman, was promoted to midshipman after seven months, then worked his way up the officer ranks.

At age twenty-three Bligh sailed with the renowned Captain James Cook as a commissioned warrant officer and navigator aboard the HMS Resolution, Cook’s third voyage (during which he was killed in the Sandwiche Isles in 1779, on what is today the big island of Hawaii). Bligh skillfully and heroically navigated the Resolution back to England but did not receive the credit he thought he deserved for this, or for his general mapping and surveying tasks during the voyage. And had Cook survived, Bligh likely would have been granted his long-sought captainship, since such promotions were typically pushed through by a mentor; without Cook, Bligh was denied promotion.

During the war with France, Bligh served with distinction and was promoted to lieutenant in 1781. He was also married that year to the daughter of a custom’s officer and appointed as master of HMS Cambridge, on which he first met Fletcher Christian. In his diary, Christian claimed that Bligh “treated him like a brother.” Bligh taught Christian how to use a sextant for navigation, and they frequently dined together. When peace broke out in 1783, the navy’s budget was cut and Bligh was reduced to half pay. He took command of a merchant ship named Britannia and sailed between England and the West Indies, during which he once again commanded Fletcher Christian.

When he took command of the Bounty as her only commissioned officer, Bligh took a severe cut in pay—from 500 pounds a year to only 50 pounds a year—in hopes that a successful voyage would pay off in a higher rank. Bligh’s goal was to circumnavigate the globe, deliver the breadfruit, and return with no punishments delivered and no lives lost. By most accounts he was a professional, humanitarian leader. For example, concerned about the dreaded seaman’s disease scurvy, he regularly served the men sauerkraut. He understood the importance of physical activity beyond work, so he arranged for a near-blind fiddler named Michael Byrne to play music to which the men could dance on deck. To attenuate the drudgery of work, he split the crew into three watches instead of the usual two, which gave them more breaks.

On the way to Tahiti, Bligh administered only one flogging, about which he wrote: “Until this afternoon I had hoped I could have performed this voyage without punishment to anyone.” The flogging was of Matthew Quintal, charged by the master of the ship, John Fryer, with “mutinous behaviour,” which Bligh munificently downgraded to “insolence and contempt.” Because