HMS Bounty

“ No time was lost in acquainting the English Government with the disastrous failure of the Bounty’s mission, and, although there were some among the crew who, at the time of the mutiny, pleaded that no blame should be attached to them, the result showed that Bligh did not spare those whose hearts and hands were alike innocent of any wrong against him. Very soon the Pandora, commanded by Captain Edwards, a man devoid of the humane feelings of kindness and pity, was sent in search of the men who had so willfully forgotten their duty. ”

“ The navigation bounties were accorded to French-built ships, of more than 80 tons for sailing-ships, and 100 tons gross for steamers, engaged in making long voyages and in international coasting; and were limited to ten years. They were based on gross tonnage per thousand sailed miles. To merchant steamships built in accordance with plans approved by the Navy Department, the rate of fifteen per cent above the regular navigation bounty provided in the law of 1881, was increased to twenty-five per cent. All ships receiving the navigation bounty were subject to impressment in case of war. ”

“ For retaking or salvaging English goods taken by the enemy, 1/8th their value was to be paid. Privateers taking merchant ships by collusion were to forfeit their ships, with 1/3rd going to the person who makes the discovery and prosecutes.
Later, any able seaman volunteering for the navy is to receive 5 pounds bounty. Any seaman volunteering for the navy shall receive a bounty of 3 pounds. If a navy seaman is killed or drowned, his widow is to receive a year's pay as bounty. No seaman in a merchant ship is to receive more than 35s. per month because of the present war. ”

“ Recaptured ships are to be returned to the original owner if an English subject on payment of from one-eighth to one-fourth salvage unless they have been fitted out by the enemy as ships of war when they will be considered good prize. If prize bounty is granted in any war by proclamation the officers and crew actually present at the taking or destroying of any armed ship of the enemy are entitled to bounty calculated at the rate of five pounds for each person on board the enemy's ship at the beginning of the engagement. ”

“ Five of the seamen and the mate were killed and most of the others wounded. On her way to Manila in the same voyage the brig touched at the Pelew Islands and was again attacked, in which affray a cabin boy was killed. The Charles Doggett had previously played a part in one of the most romantic chapters of ocean history, the mutiny of the Bounty. In 1831, Captain William Driver took the brig to Tahiti whither, a short time before, the Bounty colony had been transported by the British Government from its first home on Pitcairn Island. ”

“ In the correspondence with the Government of the Netherlands upon this subject they have contended that the favor shown to their own shipping by this bounty upon their tonnage is not to be considered as a discriminating duty; but it can not be denied that it produces all the same effects. Had the mutual abolition been stipulated by treaty, such a bounty upon the national vessels could scarcely have been granted consistently with good faith. ”

“ As the Bounty sailed away, leaving them to their fate, those in the boat cast anxious looks to the captain, wondering what should be done. At a time when his mind must have been full of the injury he had received, and the loss of his ship at a moment when his plans were so flourishing and he had every reason to congratulate himself as to the ultimate success of the undertaking, it is much in his favor that he seems to have realized their unfortunate position and to have been determined to make the best of it. ”

“ The explosive crises of life are very often touched off by the merest trifles and a few cocoanuts appear to have played a part in the melodramatic upheaval of the Bounty's crew. Boatswain's Mate James Morrison kept a journal in which he set down that Lieutenant Bligh missed some of his own personal cocoanuts, which had been stowed between the guns. ”

“ The most objectionable practice was that of giving bounties to agents for bringing in recruits. The effect of this at the beginning of the war was that great numbers of men deserted from the British navy, and the Admiral at Halifax reported that at one time there were a hundred deserters from one ship alone, the St. Vincent, but as the contest progressed the bounty system was responsible for innumerable cases of kidnapping in which British subjects were the sufferers. ”

“ At eleven in the forenoon the Launch and Pinnance was dispatched with Lieutenants Corner and Hayward and twenty-six men, to the north west part of the island, in quest of mutineers. Immediately on our arrival, Joseph Coleman, the armourer of the Bounty, came on board, and a little after the two midshipmen belonging to the Bounty; at three Richard Skinner came off, and on the 25th the boats returned, after chasing the mutineers on shore, and taking possession of their boat. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That a bounty shall be paid by the United States, of twenty dollars, for each person on board any ship of an enemy at the commencement of an engagement, which shall be sunk or destroyed by any ship or vessel belonging to the United States, of equal or inferior force, the same to be divided among the officers and crew in the same manner as prize money. ”

“ I have also had some letters from himself; and notwithstanding he must still continue in confinement, every attention and indulgence possible is granted him by Captain Montague of the Hector, who is my particular friend. I have no doubt of the truth of your brother's narrative; the master, boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, late of the Bounty, I have seen, and have the pleasure to assure you that they are all favourable, and corroborate what he says. That fellow, Captain Edwards, whose inhuman rigour of confinement I shall never forget, I have likewise seen ”

“ Singularly strange as all this was to Sir Thomas Staines and Captain Pipon, this youth soon satisfied them that he was no other than the person he represented himself to be, and that he was fully acquainted with the whole history of the Bounty; and, in short, that the island before them was the retreat of the mutineers of that ship. Young Christian was, at this time, about twenty-four years of age, a fine tall youth, full six feet high, with dark, almost black, hair, and a countenance open and extremely interesting. ”

“ Lieutenant Bligh assumed that it was the deliberate intent to leave him to perish, because dead men tell no tales; but if this were true, the mutineers would not have been so careful to stock the boat with food and water and stores to last the party at least a fortnight without severe hardship.
They were within easy sailing distance of peopled islands, on some of which they might hope to find a friendly reception. By drowning them, Fletcher Christian could have obliterated all traces of the mutiny, and the Bounty would have vanished from human ken, gone to the port of missing ships. ”

“ It is not enough in cases of mutiny (and this case was aggravated by the piratical seizure of a king's ship) that the officers and men in his Majesty's naval service should take no active part;—to be neutral or passive is considered as tantamount to aiding and abetting. ”

“ The ship was named the Bounty: I was appointed to command her on the 16th of August 1787. ”

“ And the captain did not repeat his invitation. Turning to the mate he ordered all dispatch to be made in getting the stores on board, then abruptly left the side and the boat’s crew saw him no more. In a very few minutes the boat was cleared and as soon as she was empty Philip shouted, “Cast off that rope.” It was done and with a powerful sweep of the steer oar they swept away from the ship’s side, and shipping their oars bent to them with a will, every man of them feeling glad to put an increasing distance between them and the hive of evil they felt the ship to be. ”

“ Bligh when he put in there for refreshments in the Bounty's launch. Before the sun set we got within a small distance of the island, but it was too late for our boats to go on shore, and the canoes were sent to the islands to announce the arrival of these great chiefs; their coming in the ship I made no doubt would increase their consequence, and probably also the [54] tribute they might think proper to impose on their subjects.
The next morning Lt. Corner, attended by the two chiefs, was sent on shore at Toofoa to search and to make the necessary inquiries after the Bounty and our tender, &c. ”

“ A school of porpoises had joined the vessel, and were indulging in their graceful sinewy gambols under the bows as usual.
“Now, my boy,” cried the skipper, “is your time to show your shipmates what you can do with the iron. Your shot yesterday was a fancy one, I’ll admit, but this is a different matter. Come along forrard.”
Already a harpoon had been passed out to the bowsprit and attached to a stout line, which was rove through a block secured there in readiness and the other end passed in on deck. ”

“ Soldiers and sailors in general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly sot, or the son of a man who has ‘plenty of brass’—their own term—but will mutiny against the just orders of a skilful and brave officer who ‘is no better than themselves.’ There was the affair of the Bounty, for example: Bligh was one of the best seamen that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of men ”

“ But when any symptoms of mutiny showed themselves, the pirates found that although they did not have a sailor in command over them, they had a very determined and relentless master. Bonnet knew that the captain of a pirate ship ought to be the most severe and rigid man on board, and so, at the slightest sign of insubordination, his grumbling men were put in chains [Pg 222] or flogged, and it was Bonnet's habit at such times to strut about the deck with loaded pistols, threatening to blow out the brains of any man who dared to disobey him. ”

“ The spoils had been divided, at least every man knew what his share was to be, and the officers and the crew of the Revenge were in a well-contented state of mind. In fact, Captain Bonnet would not have sailed after a little brig, certainly unsuited to carry costly cargo, had it not been that his piratical principle made it appear to him a point of conscience to prey upon all mercantile craft, little or big, which might come in his way. Thus it was, that he was sailing merrily after the King and Queen, when Ben Greenway came to him with his disturbing words. ”

“ Impressed by the precedent thus afforded, and failing to distinguish between the requirements of the old-time and the modern man-o'-war, the Merchant Marine Commission of 1904 proposed to pay bounties to the crews now employed in the fisheries. Of course bounties paid to the crews of tugs and other harbor steamers would be far more effective for the end in view. The tenacity with which our people cling to the idea that a modern sailor needs training on a ship of the sail is one of the discouraging features of the outlook for a revival of our merchant marine. ”

“ The beneficent vessel by which the father of Kate Bonnet should give to him his life's desire was so near to him that he could have sent a musket ball into her had he chosen to fire. It was so near to him that he could now, with his glass, read the word "Revenge" on her bow. His brows were knit, his jaws were set tight, his muscles hardened themselves with energy.
Again the orders were passed, that when the men of the corvette boarded the pirate they were to cut down the rascals without mercy, and not one of them was to draw sword or pistol against the pirate captain. ”

“ When Black-beard lost his Ship at Topsail Inlet, and surrendered to the King’s Proclamation, Bonnet reassumed the Command of his own Sloop, Revenge, goes directly away to Bath-Town in North-Carolina, surrenders likewise to the King’s Pardon, and receives a Certificate. The War was now broke out between the Tripple Allies and Spain; so Major Bonnet gets a Clearence for his Sloop at North-Carolina, to go to the Island of St. Thomas, with a Design (at least it was pretended so) to get the Emperor’s Commission, to go a Privateering upon the Spaniards. ”

“ Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh Christian, and Captain Bowen, in the Thunderer 74, accompanied by the Invincible, a third rate, Grampus of 54 guns, and four smaller vessels of war, with such of the transports and merchantmen as were ready, sailed from Spithead on the 20th March, and arrived at Barbadoes after a passage of 32 days. ”

“ Goff had quickly confirmed Bonteck's assumption that Le Gros hadn't the smallest idea of keeping his word to us about the turning over of the long-boat, so we were justified in declaring war again if we chose. Bonteck's first proposal was to load our fighting squad into the launch, in which we could paddle our way through the nearest reef gap and around to the Andromeda, on the chance of taking the yacht by a surprise attack with Haskell and his engine-room and stoke-hold contingent to help us if we could contrive to liberate them. ”

“ Bonnet had lost two men killed and several hurt in the fight, so that the crew of the Royal James, without the prize crew on board the Francis, now numbered scarce a dozen able-bodied men. The question of manning the newly captured sloop was finally settled by transferring to her George Dunkin and his seven seamen. Bonnet freed the men of the Francis who had been in chains, and set them to work their own ship under command of Herriot and another pirate. ”