CHAPTER III. THE MUTINEERS
After Captain Bligh had been deserted in the open sea, the Bounty set sail for Tahiti. The same day she reached Toubouai. The smiling aspect of this little island, surrounded by a belt of coral rocks, invited Christian to touch there; but the demonstrations of the inhabitants appearing too threatening, a landing was not effected.
On the 6th of June, 1789, the anchor was dropped in the roads of Matavai. Great was the surprise of the Tahitians on recognising the Bounty. The mutineers soon fell in with the natives, whose friendship they had gained on a previous occasion, and to them they told a story, into which they took care to bring the name of Captain Cook, whom the Tahitians well remembered.
On the 29th of June the mutineers departed for Toubouai and began a search for some island out of the ordinary route of ships, where the soil was fertile enough to supply them with food, and where they might live in security. They roved thus from one group of islands to another, committing excesses of all sorts, which Christian’s authority was rarely sufficient to prevent. Then, attracted once more by the fertility of Tahiti, and by the gentle and easy nature of the inhabitants, they returned to the Bay of Matavai. There two-thirds of the crew landed, but that same evening the Bounty weighed anchor and disappeared, before the men suspected Christian of any intention of going without them.
Left to their own resources, the seamen established themselves without much regret in different parts of the island. George Stewart and Peter Heywood, the two midshipmen whom Christian had excepted from the sentence pronounced against Bligh, and had brought in spite of themselves, remained at Matavai near the king Tippao, whose sister Stewart soon afterwards married. Morrison and Milward joined the chief Peno, who received them well. As to the others they went inland, and before long took Tahitian wives.
Churchill and a mad fellow named Thompson, after having committed all sorts of crimes, came at last to blows. Churchill was killed in the struggle, and Thompson was stoned to death by the natives.
Thus perished two of the persons who had taken the greatest share in the mutiny. The others, on the contrary, by their good conduct, endeared themselves to the Tahitians.
However, Morrison and Milward, always seeing chastisement suspended over their heads, could not live quietly in an island where they might be so easily discovered. They, therefore, conceived the idea of building a schooner, in which to reach Batavia, there to conceal themselves in the midst of a civilised community. With eight of their companions, having only a few ordinary carpenters’ tools, they contrived, not without difficulty, to construct a small vessel, which they called the Resolution, mooring her in a bay behind Venus Point; but the impossibility of procuring sails prevented them from putting to sea.
All this time, strong in their innocence, Stewart cultivated a garden, and Peter Heywood collected materials for a vocabulary, which, later, was of great assistance to the English missionaries.
Eighteen months had thus passed away, when, on the 23rd of March, 1791, a vessel doubled Venus Point, and anchored in Matavai Bay. This was the Pandora, sent in pursuit of the mutineers by the English Admiralty.
Heywood and Stewart hastened on board, declared their names and rank, and said that they had taken no part in the mutiny; but they were not believed, and were immediately put in irons, as were the rest of the men found on shore, without the least enquiry having been made as to the truth of their statements. Loaded with chains, and threatened that they would be shot should they converse in the Tahitian language among themselves, they were shut up in a cage eleven feet long, placed at the end of the quarter-deck, to which some one versed in mythology gave the name of Pandora’s box.
On the 19th of May, the Resolution, which had been provided with sails, and the Pandora, put to sea. For three months they cruised among the Friendly Isles, where it was supposed that Christian and the rest of the mutineers had taken refuge. As the Resolution did not draw much water, she was of great use in this cruise; but she disappeared near Chatham Island, and although the Pandora remained in the neighbourhood for several days, nothing was ever again heard of her or of the five seamen by whom she was manned.
The Pandora was on her way back to Europe with the prisoners, when, in Torres Straits, she struck on a coral reef, and went down with thirty-one of her own men, and four of the mutineers.
The crew and the prisoners who escaped gained a sandy island. There the officers and seamen sheltered themselves under tents; but the mutineers, exposed to the heat of a vertical sun, were obliged, in order to obtain a little relief, to bury themselves up to their necks in sand.
The castaways remained on this islet for some days, and then all reached Timor in the Pandora’s boats, the strict watch kept over the mutineers, notwithstanding the fearful circumstances in which they were placed, never being for a moment relaxed.
Reaching England in the month of June, 1792, the mutineers were brought before a court-martial, presided over by Admiral Hood. The trial lasted six days, and was terminated by the acquittal of four of the accused, and the condemnation to death of six others, for the crime of desertion and carrying off of the vessel given to their charge. Four of the condemned were hung on board a ship of war; the two others, Stewart and Peter Heywood, whose innocence was at last acknowledged, were pardoned.
But what had become of the Bounty? Had she been wrecked with the last of the mutineers? This no one could tell.
In 1814, twenty-five years after the scene with which this narrative commences, two English ships of war were cruising in Oceania, under the command of Captain Staines. They found themselves to the south of the dangerous archipelago, in sight of a mountainous and volcanic island, discovered by Carteret in his voyage round the world, and by him given the name of Pitcairn Island. It was a mere islet, almost without a shore, rising perpendicularly from the sea, and clothed to its summit with forests of palms and bread-fruit trees.
This island had never before been visited; it was twelve hundred miles from Tahiti, 25 4′ south latitude, and 180 8′ west longitude; it measured four miles and a half in circumference, and only a mile and a half across in its widest part. No one knew what report Carteret had given of it.
Captain Staines resolved to survey it, and ascertain if a suitable place for landing existed.
On approaching the shore, he was surprised at seeing huts, plantations, and on the beach, two natives, who, having launched a boat and skilfully crossed the surf, came towards his vessel. But his astonishment was boundless when they addressed him in excellent English with the words –
“Hullo, you there! Will you heave us a rope, that we may get on board!”
Directly they reached the deck, the two sturdy rowers were surrounded by the wondering sailors, who overwhelmed them with questions. Brought before the captain, they were interrogated in form –
“Who are you?”
“My name is Thursday October Christian, and my mate here is Ned Young.”
These names told nothing to Captain Staines, who was far from thinking of the survivors of the Bounty.
“How long have you lived here?”
“We were born here.”
“How old are you?”
“I am five-and-twenty, and Young is eighteen.”
“Were your parents wrecked on this island?”
The son of Fletcher Christian, for such the young man was, then gave Captain Staines the following narrative –
On leaving Tahiti, where he abandoned twenty-one of his comrades, Christian, who had on board an account of Cartaret’s voyage, steered towards Pitcairn Island, the position of which appeared to him suitable for the plan he proposed. Twenty-eight men now composed the crew of the Bounty. They were Fletcher Christian, the midshipman Young, and seven seamen, six Tahitians, three with wives, a child of ten months old, and three men and six women, natives of Roubouai.
The first care of Christian and his companions on reaching Pitcairn had been to destroy the Bounty, so as not to be discovered. This, of course, prevented their leaving the island again, but it was necessary for their safety.
The establishment of the little colony was not made without difficulty among persons whose only bond of union was their common crime. Bloody quarrels soon broke out between the Tahitians and the English. In 1794 only four of the mutineers survived. Christian had fallen by the knife of one of the natives he had brought to the island. All the Tahitians had been massacred.
One of the English, who had discovered a way of manufacturing spirits from the root of a plant, became brutalised by drunkenness, and, in a fit of delirium tremens, threw himself from the top of a cliff into the sea.
Another, in a fit of madness, attacked Young, and one of the sailors, named John Adams, was obliged to kill him. In 1800 Young died from a violent attack of asthma.
John Adams was then the sole survivor of the mutineers. Remaining alone, with several women and twenty children, the offspring of marriages between his shipmates and the natives, the character of John Adams underwent a complete change. He was then not more than thirty-six; but during those years he had been present at so many scenes of violence and bloodshed, he had seen human nature under so many sad aspects, that, on looking back on his conduct, he became an altered man.
In the library of the Bounty, kept on the island, were a Bible and several Prayer-books. John Adams, who read them frequently, became converted, brought up the youthful population, who considered him as a father, in excellent principles, and became, in the nature of things, the legislator, the high priest, and, so to speak, the king of Pitcairn.
However, up to 1814, his alarms had been constant. In 1795, a vessel had approached Pitcairn, and the four survivors of the Bounty hid themselves in inaccessible woods, not daring to descend to the bay until after the departure of the ship. John Adams acted in the same way, when, in 1808, an American captain landed on the island, from which he carried off a chronometer and a compass, which he sent to the British Admiralty; but the Admiralty were not affected at the sight of these relics of the Bounty, there being something more important to think of in Europe just at that time.
Such was the narrative given to Captain Staines by the two natives, English on their father’s side, one the son of Christian, the other the son of Young; but when Captain Staines asked to see John Adams, the latter refused to come on board, until he knew how he was likely to be treated.
The captain, having assured the two young men that John Adams was safe, as twenty-five years had passed since the mutiny of the Bounty, went on shore, where he was received by a population composed of forty-six adults, and a large number of children. All were tall and strong, of a clearly-marked English type, the girls especially being remarkably pretty, the modesty of their manners making them altogether charming.
The laws in force in the island were of the simplest character. On a register was noted all that each one gained by his work. Money was unknown, all transactions being made by means of exchange; but there was no manufactory, as no materials were to be had. For clothing the inhabitants wore large hats and belts of grass. Fishing and agriculture were their principal occupations. Marriages were only made with the permission of Adams, and when the man had cleared and planted ground sufficient for the support of his future family.
Captain Staines, having collected much curious information relating to this island, thus long concealed from the civilised world in the most unfrequented part of the Pacific, put to sea, and returned to Europe.
Since that time the venerable John Adams has terminated his checkered career. He died in 1829, and was replaced by the Reverend John Nobbs, who then fulfilled in the island the functions of pastor, doctor, and schoolmaster.
In 1853, the descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty numbered a hundred and seventy individuals. Since then the population had increased and become so numerous that, three years later, it was decided to remove a number to Norfolk Island, which until then had been used for convicts. But the party of emigrants regretted Pitcairn so much, although Norfolk was four times larger, its soil remarkable for its richness, and living there was far easier, that after a couple of years’ stay, several families returned to Pitcairn, where they continue to prosper.
Such was the issue of an adventure which had begun in so tragic a way.
At first, mutineers, murderers, madmen, and now, under the influence of Christian morals, and instruction given by a poor converted sailor, Pitcairn Island has become the fatherland of a gentle, hospitable, and happy population, among whom are found the primitive manners of the patriarchal ages.