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Captain Bligh Part 3: ‘A Long and Turbulent Journey’

by Matthew Fishburn

19th July, 2024

By the time Bligh returned a year later, having finally brought the breadfruit to the West Indies, the tide was out. Rather than great public acclaim and a grand official account of his success, he was reduced to conducting a small and strangely ineffective pamphlet war with Christian’s brother, the lawyer Edward Christian.[1] In reply, one of Bligh’s stranger affectations was the publishing of his Answer to Certain Assertions (1794). Basically a commonplace book of his own notes and correspondence, even the letters written in direct support of Bligh feel quite anaemic. One letter, for example, derides Christian as girl-crazy but then firmly criticises Bligh for being blind to his junior officer’s faults. Doubtless the most intriguing inclusion is the letter Heywood privately wrote to Edward Christian brother after his reprieve, which had then been printed in one of the regional newspapers in late 1792, part of the latter’s attempt to salvage the family name. In the letter Heywood sincerely remembers Christian as not some ‘horrid monster of wickedness’ but one who was ‘loved by all (except one, whose ill report is his greatest praise).’ This was a risky gambit on Heywood’s part but, equally, Bligh seemed incapable of seeing that it painted him in a deeply unflattering light.

Despite it all, Bligh’s career over the next decade was not the inglorious debacle many thought was his due. He served at the Battles of Camperdown (1797) and Copenhagen (1801), on the latter occasion being personally thanked by Lord Nelson for his support of the attack while in command of the Glatton. Soon after Camperdown Bligh was, almost inevitably, one of the commanders during the mutiny of the Nore in 1797: this was beginning to look like carelessness, as Lady Bracknell might say, even if that ‘Bounty bastard’ was by no means singled out by the striking sailors.[2]

Bligh is involved in so many courts-martial that authors struggle to keep them straight for the readers (Kennedy helpfully subtitled one of his later books on Bligh ‘the Man and his Mutinies’ to help readers follow along). At one, in 1805, after the officers on board the Warrior fell out more catastrophically than was usual, the First Lieutenant on board, while broadly positive about Bligh’s habits of command, did testify that he not only used warm language but – the image sticks in the mind – a ‘considerable motion of the hand’ when giving instructions.[3]  Bligh was admonished to look to his manners.

The following year he was appointed Governor of New South Wales, the prelude to his next big crisis, what is sometimes called his ‘other’ mutiny.[4] Once again appointed through the political manoeuvring of Banks, he soon sailed, immediately becoming embroiled in a petty and destructive dispute with the convoy commander, Joseph Short. Bligh’s actions so infuriated his colleague that Short rashly fired two warning shots at the ship on which Bligh was sailing, and seriously considered actually bringing the cannon to bear for a third.

It was a foretaste of the turmoil then rife in colonial Sydney. Both of Bligh’s predecessors, Governors Hunter and King, were all but dismissed because they were unable to bring the NSW Corps to heel, while Bligh – surely the wrong man for the job – proved no match for what Evatt calls the ‘organized defamation’ of his character.[5] It all culminated in the Rum Rebellion (so-called) on the morning of 26 January 1808, when soldiers marched to arrest Bligh in Government House. In the long run probably most significant for heralding a few more years of unrest and for the eventual appointment of his replacement Lachlan Macquarie, the whole affair was not rich in terribly sympathetic figures on either side. Those in the anti-Bligh faction continuing the well-established habit of caricaturing him being dragged out of bed, although the artist understood that on this occasion showing him in full uniform was more to the purpose.[6]

Back in England, Bligh once again watched impotently as his reputation was sifted at the long-delayed and curiously indecisive court-martial of the instigators of the rebellion. His career, his ‘long and turbulent journey,’ was coming to an end.[7] Yet again it was his language, his tone, that was in question. Most of his proponents, even some of the recipients of his vicious barbs, have argued that it was all a passing squall, his temper a flint which sparked and went cold.[8] Something was left over though. The point seems to be that his insults landed: Bligh always knew his man, knew what would sting, could be heated or sardonic to suit. After the rather petty court-martial held against him on HMS Warrior in 1805 it is noticeable how he attempts to clear the quarterdeck of everyone who testified, not only those who criticised him but the neutral commentators and supporters as well.

Bligh died in 1817 and was buried at St. Mary’s, Lambeth. A few years later, Sir John Barrow of the Admiralty anonymously published his Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty (1831). Although not blind to the events that conspired against him, in a helpful conceit, he imagined studying Bligh’s life as a useful primer for naval officers, a sort of management self-help book.

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This was Part 3 of Matthew Fishburn’s series of graphic instalments on Captain Bligh. These articles set the scene for his review of The Bounty and Beyond, by John A. Fish, that will appear in our Autumn 2024 issue. Fish offers a detailed examination of the differences between Bligh’s official version of his famous journal relating the events of the mutiny (at the National Archive in London) and his private version (at the Mitchell Library in Sydney). Numerous surprising and important differences are revealed, particularly those relating to food and drink, and Bligh’s relationships with his officers and men. The comparison is preceded by a thorough investigation of Bligh’s three first breadfruit expedition journals, that is, the journals of the Bounty, the Resource and the Vlydt.

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