Chapter 2
At daybreak on the twenty-eighth of November we got sail on the Bounty and worked down to St. Helen’s, where we dropped anchor. For nearly a month we were detained there and at Spithead by contrary winds; it was not until the twenty-third of December that we set sail down the Channel with a fair wind.
A month sounds an age to be crowded with more than forty other men on board a small vessel at anchor most of the time, but I was making the acquaintance of my shipmates, and so keen on learning my new duties that the days were all too short. The Bounty carried six midshipmen, and, since we had no school master, as is customary on a man-of-war, Lieutenant Bligh and the master divided the duty of instructing us in trigonometry, nautical astronomy, and navigation. I shared with Stewart and Young the advantage of learning navigation under Bligh, and in justice to an officer whose character in other respects was by no means perfect, I must say that there was no finer seaman and navigator afloat at the time. Both of my fellow midshipmen were men grown: George Stewart of a good family in the Orkneys, a young man of twenty-three or four, and a seaman who had made several voyages before this: and Edward Young, a stout, salty-looking fellow, with a handsome face marred by the loss of nearly all his front teeth. Both of them were already very fair navigators, and I was hard put to it not to earn the reputation of a dunce.
The boatswain, Mr. Cole, and his mate, James Morrison, instructed me in seamanship. Cole was an old-style Navy salt, bronzed, taciturn, and pigtailed, with a profound knowledge of his work and little other knowledge of any kind. Morrison was very different—a man of good birth, he had been a midshipman, and had shipped aboard the Bounty because of his interest in the voyage. He was a first-rate seaman and navigator; a dark, slender, intelligent man of thirty or thereabouts, cool in the face of danger, not given to oaths, and far above his station on board. Morrison did not thrash the men to their work, delivering blows impartially in the manner of a boatswain’s mate; he carried a colt, a piece of knotted rope, to be sure, but it was only used on obvious malingerers, or when Bligh shouted to him: “Start that man!”
There were much irritation and grumbling at the continued bad weather, but at last, on the evening of the twenty-second of December, the sky cleared and the wind shifted to the eastward. It was still dark next morning when I heard the boatswain’s pipe and Morrison’s call: “All hands! Turn out and save a clue! Out or down here! Rise and shine! Out or down there! Lash and carry!”
The stars were bright when I came on deck, and the grey glimmer of dawn was in the East. For three weeks we had had strong southwesterly winds, with rain and fog; now the air was sharp with frost, and a strong east wind blew in gusts off the coast of France. Lieutenant Bligh was on the quarter-deck with Mr. Fryer, the master; Christian and Elphinstone, the master’s mates, were forward among the men. There was a great bustle on deck and the ship rang with the piping of the bos’n’s whistle. I heard the shouting of the men at the windlass, and Christian’s voice above the din, “Hove short, sir!”
“Loose the topsails!” came from Fryer, and Christian passed the order on. My station was the mizzen-top, and in a twinkling we had the gaskets off and the small sail sheeted home. The knots in the gaskets were stiff with frost, and the men setting the fore-topsail were slow at their work. Bligh glanced aloft impatiently.
“What are you doing there?” he shouted angrily, “Are you all asleep, foretop? The main-topmen are off the yard! Look alive, you crawling caterpillars!”
The topsails filled and the yards were braced up sharp; the Bounty broke out her own anchor as she gathered way on the larboard tack. She was smartly manned in spite of Bligh’s complaints, but he was on edge, for a thousand critical eyes watched our departure from the ships at anchor closer inshore. With a “Yo! Heave ho!” the anchor came up and was tatted.
Then it was: “Loose the forecourse!” and presently, as she began to heel to the gusts: “Get the mainsail on her!” There was a thunder of canvas and a wild rattling of blocks. When the brace was hove short, Bligh himself roared: “Board. the main tack!” Little by little, with a mighty chorus at the windlass: “Heave ho! Heave and pawl! Yo, heave, hearty, ho!” the weather clew of the sail came down to the waterway. Heeling well to starboard, the bluff-bowed little ship tore through the sheltered water, on her way to the open sea.
The sun rose in a cloudless sky—a glorious winter’s morning, clear, cold, and sparkling. I stood by the bulwarks as we flew down the Solent, my breath trailing off like thin smoke. Presently we sped through the Needles and the Bounty headed away to sea, going like a race horse, with topgallants set.
That night the wind increased to a strong gale, with a heavy sea, but on the following day the weather moderated, permitting us to keep our Christmas cheerfully. Extra grog was served out, and the mess cooks were to be heard whistling as they seeded the raisins for duff, not, as a landsman might suppose, from the prospect of good cheer, but in order to prove to their messmates that the raisins were not going into their mouths.
I was still making the acquaintance of my shipmates at this time. The men of the Bounty had been attracted by the prospect of a voyage to the South Sea, or selected for their stations by the master or Bligh himself. Our fourteen able-bodied seamen were true salts, not the scum of the taverns and jails impressed to man so many of His Majesty’s ships; the officers were nearly all men of experience and tried character, and even our botanist, Mr. Nelson, had been recommended by Sir Joseph Banks because of his former voyage to Tahiti under Captain Cook. Mr. Bligh might have had a hundred midshipmen had he obliged all those who applied for a place in the Bounty’s berth; as it was, there were six of us, though the ship’s establishment provided for only two. Stewart and Young were seamen and pleasant fellows enough; Hallet was a sickly-looking boy of fifteen with a shifty eye and a weak, peevish mouth; Tinkler, Mr. Fryer’s brother-in-law, was a year younger, though he had been to sea before—a monkey of a lad, whose continual scrapes kept him at the masthead half the time. Hayward, the handsome, sulky boy I had met when I first set foot in the berth, was only, sixteen, but big and strong for his age. He was something of a bully and aspired to be cock of the berth, since he had been two years at sea aboard a seventy-four.
I shared with Hayward, Stewart, and Young a berth on the lower deck. In this small space the four of us swung our hammocks at night and had our mess, using a chest for a table and other chests for seats. On consideration of a liberal share of our grog, received each Saturday night, Alexander Smith, able-bodied, acted as our hammock man, and for a lesser sum of the same ship’s currency, Thomas Ellison, the youngest of the seamen, filled the office of mess boy. Mr. Christian was caterer to the midshipmen’s mess; like the others, I had paid him five pounds on joining the ship, and he had laid out the money in a supply of potatoes, onions, Dutch cheeses (for making that midshipman’s dish called “crab”), tea, coffee and sugar, and other small luxuries. These private stores enabled us to live well for several weeks, though a more villainous cook than young Tom Ellison would be impossible to find. As for drink, the ship’s allowance was so liberal that Christian made no special provision for us. For a month or more every man aboard received a gallon of beer each day, and when that was gone, a pint of fiery white mistela wine from Spain—the wine our seamen love and call affectionately “Miss Taylor.” And when the last of the wine was gone we fell back on an ample supply of the sailor’s sheet anchor—grog. We had a wondrous fifer on board—a half-blind Irishman named Michael Byrne. He had managed to conceal his blindness till the Bounty was at sea, when it became apparent, much to Mr. Bligh’s annoyance. But when he struck up “Nancy Dawson” on the first day he piped the men to grog, his blindness was forgotten. He could put more trills and runs into that lively old tune than any man of us had heard before a cheeriness in keeping with this happiest hour of the seaman’s day.
We lost a good part of our beer in a strong easterly gale that overtook the Bounty the day after Christmas. Several casks went adrift from their lashings and were washed overboard when a great sea broke over the ship; the same wave stove in all three of our boats and nearly carried them away. I was off watch at the time, and below, diverting myself in the surgeon’s cabin on the orlop, aft. It was a close, stinking little den, below the water line—reeking of the bilges and lit by a candle that burned blue for lack of air. But that mattered nothing to Old Bacchus. Our sawbones’s name was Thomas Huggan and it was so inscribed on the ship’s articles, but he was known as Old Bacchus to all our company. His normal state was what sailors call “in the wind” or “shaking a cloth,” and the signal that he had passed his normal state earned him the name by which all hands on the Bounty knew him. When he had indiscreetly added a glass of brandy or a tot of grog to the carefully measured supply of spirits demanded at close intervals by a stomach which must have been copper-sheathed, it was his custom to rise, balancing himself on his starboard leg, place a hand between the third and fourth buttons of his waistcoat, and recite with comic gravity a verse which begins:—
Bacchus must now his power resign.
With his wooden leg, his fiery face, snow-white hair, and rakish blue eyes, Old Bacchus seemed the veritable archetype of naval surgeons. He had been afloat so long that he could scarcely recollect the days when he had lived ashore, and viewed with apprehension the prospect of retirement. He preferred salt beef to the finest steak or chop to be obtained ashore, and confided to me one day that it was almost impossible for him to sleep in a bed. A cannon ball had carried away his larboard leg when his ship was exchanging broadsides, yardarm to yardarm, with the Ranger, and he had been made prisoner by John Paul Jones.
The cronies of Old Bacchus were Mr. Nelson, the botanist, and Peckover, the Bounty’s gunner. The duties of a gunner, onerous enough on board a man-of-war, were of the very lightest on our ship, and Peckover—a jovial fellow who loved a song and a glass dearly—had some leisure for conviviality. Mr. Nelson was a quiet, elderly man with iron-grey hair. Though devoted to the study of plants, he seemed to derive great pleasure from the surgeon’s company, and could spin a. yarn with the best when in the mood. The great event in his life had been his voyage to the South Sea with Captain Cook, whose memory he revered.
Mr. Nelson’s cabin was forward of the surgeon’s, separated from it by the cabin of Samuel, the captain’s clerk, and he was to be found more often in the surgeon’s cabin than in his own. All of the cabins were provided with standing bed places, built in by the carpenters at Deptford, but Bacchus preferred to sling a hammock at night, and used his bed as a settee and the capacious locker under it as a private spirit room. The cabin was scarcely more than six feet by seven; the bed occupied nearly half of this space, and opposite, under the hammock battens, were three small casks of wine, as yet unbroached. On one of them a candle guttered and burned blue.
Another cask served as a seat for me, and Bacchus and Nelson sat side by side on the bed. Each man held a pewter pint of flip—beer strongly laced with rum. The ship was on the larboard tack and making heavy weather of it, so that at times my cask threatened to slide from under me, but the two men on the settee seemed to give the weather no thought.
“A first-rate man, Purcell!” remarked the surgeon, glancing down admiringly at his new wooden leg; “a better ship’s carpenter never swung an adze! My other leg was most damnably uncomfortable, but this one’s like my own flesh and bone! Mr. Purcell’s health!” He took a long pull at the flip and smacked his lips. “You’re a lucky man, Nelson! Should anything happen to your underpinning, you’ve me to saw off the old leg and Purcell to make you a better one!”
Nelson smiled. “Very kind, I’m sure,” he said, “but I hope I shall not have to trouble you.”
“I hope not, my dear fellow—I hope not! But never dread an amputation. With a pint of rum, a well-stropped razor, and a crosscut saw, I’d have your leg off before you knew it. Paul Jones’s American surgeon did the trick for me.
“Let’s see—it must have been in seventy-eight. I was on the old Drake, Captain Burden, and we were on the lookout for Paul Jones’s Ranger at the time. Then we learned that she was hove-to off the. mouth of Belfast Lough. An extraordinary affair! We actually had sight-seers on board—one of them was an officer of the Inniskilling Fusileers in full uniform. We moved out slowly and came up astern of the American ship. Up went our colours and we hailed, “What ship is that?” ‘American Continental ship Ranger!’ roared the Yankee master, as his own colours went up. ‘Come on—we’re waiting for you!’ Next moment both ships let go their broadsides…Good God!”
The Bounty staggered with the shock of a great sea which broke into her at that moment. “Up with you, Byam!” ordered the surgeon; and, as I sprang out of his cabin toward the ladderway, I heard, above the creaking and straining of the ship and the roar of angry water, a faint shouting for all hands on deck. Then I found myself in an uproar and confusion very strange after the peace of the surgeon’s snuggery.
Bligh stood by the mizzenmast, beside Fryer, who was bawling orders to his mates. They were shortening sail to get the ship hove-to. The men at the clew lines struggled with might and main to hoist the stubborn thundering canvas to the yards.
My own task, with two other midshipmen, was to furl the mizzen topsail—a small sail, but far from easy to subdue at such a time. The men below brailed up the driver and made fast the vangs of its gaff. Presently the Bounty was hove-to, all snug on the larboard tack, under reefed fore and main topsails. The great wave which had boarded us left destruction in its wake. All three of our boats were stove in; the casks of beer which had been lashed on deck were nowhere to be seen; and the stern of the ship so damaged that the cabin was filled with water, which leaked into the bread room below, spoiling a large part of our stock of bread.
In latitude 39°N, the gale abated, the sun shone out, and we made all sail for Teneriffe with a fine northerly wind. On the fourth of January we spoke a French merchant vessel, bound for Mauritius, which let go her topgallant sheets in salute. The next morning we saw the island of Teneriffe to the southwest of us, about twelve leagues distant, but it fell calm near the land and we were a day and a night working up to the road of Santa Cruz, where we anchored in twenty-five fathoms, close to a Spanish packet and an American brig.
For five days we lay at anchor in the road, and it was here that the seeds of discontent, destined to be the ruin of the voyage, were sown among the Bounty’s people. As there was a great surf on the beach, Lieutenant Bligh bargained with the shore boats to bring off our water and supplies, and kept his own men busy from morning to night repairing the mischief the storm had done our ship. This occasioned much grumbling in the forecastle, as some of the sailors had hoped to be employed in the ship’s boats, which would have enabled them at least to set foot on the island and to obtain some of the wine for which it is famous, said to be little inferior to the best London Madeira.
During our sojourn the allowance of salt beef was stopped, and fresh beef, obtained on shore, issued instead. The Bounty’s salt beef was the worst I have ever met with at sea, but the beef substituted for. it in Teneriffe was worse still. The men declared that it had been cut from the carcasses of dead horses or mules, and complained to the master that it was unfit for food. Fryer informed Bligh of the complaint; the captain flew into a passion and swore that the men should eat the fresh beef or nothing at all. The result was that most of it was thrown overboard—a sight which did nothing to soothe Bligh’s temper.
I was fortunate enough to have a run ashore, for Bligh took me with him one day to wait upon the governor, the Marquis de Branchefortàé. With the governor’s permission Mr. Nelson ranged the hills every day in search of plants and natural curiosities, but his friend the surgeon only appeared on deck once during the five days we lay at anchor. Old Bacchus had ordered a monstrous supply of brandy for himself—enough to do the very god of wine, his namesake, for a year. Not trusting the shore boats with such precious freight, he had obtained the captain’s permission to send the small cutter to the pier, and when a man went below to inform him that his brandy was alongside, the surgeon came stumping to the ladderway and clambered on deck. The cutter was down to the gunwales with her load; as there was a high swell running, Old Bacchus stood by the bulwarks anxiously. “Easy with it!” he ordered with tender solicitude. “Easy now! A glass of grog all around if you break nothing!” When the last of the small casks was aboard and had been sent below, the surgeon heaved a sigh. I was standing near by and saw him glance at the land for the first time. He caught my eye. “One island’s as like another as two peas in a pod,” he remarked indifferently, pulling out a handkerchief to mop his fiery face.
When we sailed from Teneriffe, Bligh divided the people into three watches, making Christian acting lieutenant, and giving him charge of the third watch. Bligh had known him for some years in the West India trade, and believed himself to be Christian’s friend and benefactor. His friendship took the form of inviting Christian to sup or dine one day, and cursing him in the coarsest manner before the men the next; but in this case he did him a real service, since it was ten to one that, if all went well on the voyage, the appointment would be confirmed by the Admiralty, and Christian would find himself the holder of His Majesty’s commission. He now rated as a gentleman, with the midshipmen and Bligh; and Fryer was provided with a grievance both against the captain, and—such is human nature—against his former subordinate.
Nor were grievances wanting during our passage from Teneriffe to Cape Horn. The people’s food on British ships is always bad and always scanty—a fact which in later days caused so many of our seamen to desert to American vessels. But on the Bounty the food was of poorer quality, and issued in scantier quantities, than any man of us had seen before. When Bligh called the ship’s company aft to read the order appointing Christian acting lieutenant, he also informed them that, as the length of the voyage was uncertain, and the season so far advanced that it was doubtful whether we should be able to make our way around Cape Horn, it seemed necessary to reduce the allowance of bread to two thirds of the usual amount. Realizing the need for economy, the men received this cheerfully, but continued to grumble about the salt beef and pork.
We carried no purser. Bligh filled the office himself, assisted by Samuel, his clerk—a smug, tight-lipped little man, of a Jewish cast of countenance, who was believed, not without reason, to be the captain’s “narker” or spy among the men. He was heartily disliked by all hands, and it was observed that the man who showed his dislike for Mr. Samuel too openly was apt to find himself in trouble with Lieutenant Bligh. It was Samuel’s task to issue the provisions to the cooks of the messes; each time a cask of salt meat was broached, the choicest pieces were reserved for the cabin, and the remainder, scarcely lit for human food, issued out to the messes without being weighed. Samuel would call out “Four pounds,” and mark the amount down in his book, when anyone could perceive that the meat would not have weighed three:
Seamen regard meanness in their own kind with the utmost contempt, and that great rarity in the Service, a mean officer, is looked upon with loathing by his men. They can put up with a harsh captain, but nothing will drive British seamen to mutiny faster than a captain suspected of lining his pockets at their expense.
While the Bounty was still in the northeast trades, an incident occurred which gave us reason to suspect Bligh of meanness of this kind. The weather was fine, and one morning the main hatch was raised and our stock of cheeses brought up on deck to air. Bligh missed no detail of the management of his ship; he displayed in such matters a smallness of mind scarcely in accord with his commission. This unwillingness to trust those under him to perform their duties is apt to be the defect of the officer risen from the ranks—or “come in through the hawse-hole,” as seamen say—and is the principal reason why such officers are rarely popular with their men.
Bligh stood by Hillbrandt, the cooper, while he started the hoops on our casks of cheese and knocked out the heads. Two cheeses, of about fifty pounds weight, were found to be missing from one of the casks, and Bligh flew into one of his passions of rage.
“Stolen, by God!” he shouted.
“Perhaps you will recollect, sir,” Hillbrandt made bold to say, “that while we were in Deptford the cask was opened by your order and the cheeses carried ashore.”
“You insolent scoundrel! Hold your tongue!”
Christian and Fryer happened to be on the deck at the time, and Bligh included them in the black scowl he gave the men near by. “A damned set of thieves,” he went on, “You’re all in collusion against me—officers and men. But I’ll tame you—by God, I will!” He turned to the cooper, “Another word from you and I’ll have you seized up and flogged to the bone.” He turned aft on his heel and bawled down the ladderway. “Mr. Samuel! Come on deck this instant.”
Samuel came trotting up to his master obsequiously, and Bligh went on: “Two of the cheeses have been stolen. See that the allowance is stopped—from the officers too, mind you—until the deficiency is made good.”
I could see that Fryer was deeply offended, though he said nothing at the time; as for Christian—a man of honour—his feelings were not difficult to imagine. The men had a pretty clear idea of which way the wind blew by this time, and on the next banyan day, when butter alone was served out, they refused it, saying that to accept butter without cheese would be a tacit acknowledgment of the theft. John Williams, one of the seamen, declared publicly in the forecastle that he had carried the two cheeses to Mr. Bligh’s house, with a cask of vinegar and some other things which were sent up in a boat from Long Reach.
As the private stocks of provisions obtained in Spithead now began to run out, all hands went “from grub galore to the King’s own,” as seamen say. Our bread, which was only beginning to breed maggots, was fairly good, though it needed teeth better than mine to eat the central “reefer’s nut”; but our salt meat was unspeakably bad. Meeting Alexander Smith one morning when he was cook to his mess, I was shown a piece of it fresh from the cask—a dark, stony, unwholesome-looking lump, glistening with salt.
“Have a look, Mr. Byam,” he said. “What’ll it be, I wonder? Not beef or pork, that’s certain! I mind one day on the old Antelope—two years ago, that was—the cooper found three horseshoes in the bottom of a cask!” He shook his pigtail back over his shoulder and shifted a great quid of tobacco to his starboard cheek. “You’ve seen the victualing yards in Portsmouth, sir? Pass that way any night, and you’ll hear the dogs bark and the horses neigh! And I’ll tell you something else you young gentlemen don’t know.” He glanced up and down the deck cautiously and then whispered, “It’s as much as a black man’s life is worth to pass that way by night! They’d pop him into a cask like that!” He snapped his fingers impressively.
Smith was a great admirer of Old Bacchus, whom he had known on other ships, and a few days later he handed me a little wooden box. “For the surgeon, sir,” he said, “Will you give it to him?”
It was a snuffbox, curiously wrought of some dark, reddish wood, like mahogany, and very neatly fitted with a lid; a handsome hit of work, carved and polished with a seaman’s skill. I found leisure to visit the surgeon the same evening.
Christian’s watch was on duty at the time. Young Tinkler and I were in Mr. Fryer’s watch, and the third watch had been placed in charge of Mr. Peckover, a short, powerful man of forty or forty-five, who could scarcely remember a time when he had not been at sea. His good-humoured face had been blackened by the West Indian sun, and his arms were covered with tattooing. I found Peckover with the doctor and Nelson—squeezed together on the settee.
“Come in,” cried the surgeon. “Wait a bit, my lad—I think I can make a place for you.”
He sprang up with surprising agility and pushed a small cask into the doorway. Peckover held the spigot open while the wine poured frothing into a pewter pint. I delivered the snuffbox before I sat down on my cask, pint in hand.
“From Smith, you say?” asked the surgeon. “Very handsome of him! Very handsome indeed! I remember Smith well on the old Antelope—eh, Peckover? I have a recollection that I used to treat him to a drop of grog now and then. And why not, I say! A thirsty man goes straight to my heart.” He glanced complacently about his cabin, packed to the hammock battens with small casks of spirits and wine. “Thank God that neither I nor my friends shall go thirsty on this voyage!”
Nelson stretched out his hand for the snuffbox and examined it with interest. “I shall always marvel,” he remarked, “at the ingenuity of our seamen. This would be a credit to any craftsman ashore, with all the tools of his trade. And a fine bit of wood, handsomely polished, too! Mahogany, no doubt, though the grain seems different.”
Bacchus looked at Peckover quizzically, and the gunner returned the look, grinning.
“Wood?” said the surgeon, “Well, I have heard it called that, and worse. Wood that once bellowed—aye, and neighed and harked, if the tales be true. In plain English, my dear Nelson, your mahogany is old junk, more politely called salt beef—His Majesty’s own!”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Nelson, examining the snuffbox in real astonishment.
“Aye, salt beef! Handsome as any mahogany and quite as durable. Why, it had been proposed to sheathe our West India frigates with it—a material said to defy the attacks of the toredo worm!”
I took the little box from Nelson’s hand, to inspect it with a new interest. “Well, I’m damned!” I thought.
Old Bacchus had rolled up his sleeve and was pouring a train of snuff along his shaven and polished forearm. With a loud sniffing sound it disappeared up his nose. He sneezed, blew his nose violently on an enormous blue handkerchief, and filled his tankard with mistela.
“A glass of wine with you gentlemen!” he remarked, and poured the entire pint down his throat without taking breath. Mr. Peckover glanced at his friend admiringly.
“Aye, Peckover,” said the surgeon, catching his eye, “nothing like a nip of salt beef to give a man a thirst. Let the cook keep his slush. Give me a bit of the lean, well soaked and boiled, and you can have all the steaks and cutlets ashore. Just suppose, now, that we were all wrecked on a desert island, without a scrap to eat. I’d pull out my snuffbox and have one meal, at any rate, while the rest of you went hungry!”
“So you would, surgeon, so you would,” said the gunner in his rumbling voice, grinning from ear to ear.
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