Q & A: Bligh edition
Writing about Pitcairn made me refresh my Bligh & Bounty knowledge by browsing in the books I already knew, and check outs some I didn't, which is why you get some more ramblings on the subject.
Top Pop Culture Misunderstandings About William Bligh:
"Captain Bligh": when in command of the Bounty, he wasn't. He was Lieutenant Bligh, which isn't unimportant. After the end of seven years war, he'd switched from navy to merchant vessels as Lieutenant; there, he'd made Captain (of the ship Britannia), but when returning to the navy for the Bounty mission had to accept being a Lieutenant again, with the pay of a Lieutenant (far less than a Captain's) while being an acting Captain (and adressed as Captain on board the ship). The Bounty was rated as a Cutter, which meant it didn't rate a navy degree Captain. It also didn't rate soldiers, as, for example, Bligh's mentor James Cook had had with him. And it meant Bligh had a very limited possibility to choose his own appointments among the other officers. He had to put up with a drunken surgeon (though he managed to at least get permission to hire an assistant surgeon) whom everyone one expected to die (he was THAT obviously an incompetent drunk), which he did eventually on Tahiti, but not before doing some damage), a Master whom he couldn't stand from the get go and vice versa, John Fryer, and no purser, instead having to do the job himself (this is important because if financial incorrectness and losses were found after the journey, the purser had to pay them out of his personal fortune; the fuss Bligh made about the stealing of items and food wasn't because he needed an excuse to rant).
Bligh was within his rights to promote people during the course of the journey, which he did with Fletcher Christian, who was hired as a Master's Mate and was made an Acting Lieutenant by Bligh. If the Bounty mission had gone as planed, the navy would probably have promoted not only Bligh from Acting to genuine Captain but also Fletcher Christian to real Lieutenant, with the time spent as Acting Lieutenant on the Bounty counting as years of service. Again, in terms of pay and career, this was all important, but the most significant thing about it is that because Christian's temporary promotion was solely due to Bligh, any failure of his would reflect back on Bligh and Bligh's judgment as well.
Floggings: his pop culture image being that he basically had sea men flogged if they as much as sneezed wrong. The two "Mutiny on the Bounty" movies even have him order corpses flogged. (A movie innovation which even the anti-Bligh writings at the time did not charge.) It therefore surprises most newbies to the Bounty saga to learn that Bligh started out the journey determined not to order any floggings at all. This was one of his main goals, stated not post facto as a defense but in letters written to his patron from the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, before the launch and during the first part of the journey. He's backed up in this by letters sent back (from South Africa and via passing whalers) during said first part of the journey by other crew members, such as the assistant surgeon Ledward and the future mutineer Peter Heywood. The first time Bligh did order a flogging was when the ship's Master Mr. Fryer logged a formal complaint against future mutineer Matthew Quintal. Bligh downgraded Fryer's complaint from an accusation of mutiny to an accusation of insolence towards on officer, but the later still warranted flogging as a punishment (the former actually warranted, if taken seriously, a death sentence, or at least captivity for the rest of the journey). Until the arrival on Tahiti, there was just one other occasion when flogging was ordered. On Tahiti and after, until Mutiny, he did order floggings for various misdemeanours as part of the ultilmately vain attempt to restore discipline, but still significantly less than avarage compared with other Captains at the time (we have everyone's logs to prove it): as a historian said, he scolded where others flogged, and flogged where others handed out death sentences. (Not that being scolded by Bligh was fun. Something that pop culture doesn't get wrong is his capacity for verbal eviscaration; I'll get to this.) Whatever caused the Mutiny of the Bounty, fears of the the seamen of being flogged to death by Bligh wasn't it.
Not unrelated: Pressganged Seamen: press ganging was a vice of the time, but the crew of the Bounty actually consisted of volunteers. Not least due to its destination: the women of Tahiti were already a famous incentive. Again, we do have the written records (and yes, if men were press ganged it was written down).
Bligh and Christian couldn't stand each other from the start: this is a legacy of the 1930s "Mutiny on the Bounty" novel and the two film versions based on it. In fact, Fletcher Christian was a protegé of Bligh's who'd already sailed twice with him, on the Britannia when they had both been in merchant trade. He owed his job on the Bounty, both the original one and the promotion to Acting Lieutenant, to Bligh, was familiar with Bligh's family ("you danced my children on your knees" said an outraged Bligh on the day of the mutiny), and according to his brother had said pre: Bounty that Bligh was "passionate" but that he, Fletcher Christian, prided himself on knowing how to handle him. He also was literally in debt to Bligh in that Bligh had lend him money in Cape Town (a rarity for the tight fisted Bligh, who had a wife and four children to support on a Lieutenant's salary, see above). Quite what turned the two against each other on this third journey together is still under debate, Bligh's harsh language and Christian's falling not just in lust but in love on Tahiti being the most often named culprits. The third movie on the Bounty Mutiny, The Bounty, not, as the first two, based on the 1930s novel but on a 1970s biography called "Lieutenant Bligh and Mr. Christian", script by Robert Bolt, was the first one who went for homoerotic subtext, nowhere more obvious than its version of the mutiny scene, which is the first one to use actual memoir dialogue including Christians "I am in hell!" yelling at Bligh (which Clark Gable and Marlon Brando could not have said to Charles Laughton and Trevor Howard respectively, since they were the hero confronting the evil villain and bringing him to judgment for his misdeeds). Here it is, with Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian:
Bligh, as opposed to his crew, looked down on the Tahitans, was British imperialism personified and had no interaction with the Tahitans: he certainly was the only one not getting laid on Tahiti, but far from not interacting with the people of Tahiti, there's the interesting fact that the sole account of the whole Bounty saga which absolutely focuses most of the narrative on the Tahitans, their customs, their personalities, not on the Europeans, is William Bligh's A Voyage to the South Seas, which you can read here. Until the play Pitcairn, I hadn't yet come across a fictional version that bothered to flesh out any of the Polynesians at all; they usually show up in female form to sexually liberate the poor British seamen, are pretty and willing, and that's it. The narratives grant them no personalities or agenda beyond having sex with the Brits. Now don't get me wrong: Bligh wasn't a modern man, and he certainly shows in his account no doubt in British superiority etc. But he was truly interested in the Tahitans, describing them both as people and as individuals, their customs, their hierarchy, even the games their children play (which interested Bligh, father of three young daughters and his wife pregnant when he had left England, not just on an explorer level). He gives us their names and those of their stories he learned, and tells about his conversations, such as the one with the Queen, Iddia, who asked him how British women managed childbirth and when hearing it was unimpressed and told him how it was done in Tahiti (with the woman squatted in the arms of a male attendant who massaged and rubbed her), or the fact that Iddia learned how to load and shoot a gun far better than her husband Tainu. (Iddia being, like her husband, very heavy and middle aged, you won't spot her in any of the Bounty movies as anything but a background figure, whereas Bligh has quite a lot to tell about her and Tainu, including the death and funeral of one of their children - again, of personal resonance to Bligh, some of whose children had died as infants as well, or the fact Iddia had a young lover with Tainu's approval.)
Which brings me to:
Top Unknown To Pop Culture Yet Interesting Facts about William Bligh
Curious Mind: he truly had one. He had started out his career under James Cook, and never ceased to feel as an explorer. Leave it to William Bligh to note down looks and behavior of birds and fish when being on the open see for an incredible 41 days in a small boat with 18 other men, navigating by memory and with a compass over roughly 3600 sea miles. And like I said, his account of the whole Bounty saga remains the only one that focuses not on himself and the men, and conflicts with same, but on the Tahitans (and before that on various animals and natural phenomenons on the journey).
Bligh the Reformer: serving as Captain Cook's Master had led him to adopt several key Cook innovations, such as ordering three shifts instead of two, giving the men accordingly more time to sleep, having sauerkraut on board to prevent the most dreaded of seamen's diseases, and to insist on one hour of dancing per day (this was the sole reason why the Bounty had a fiddler on board) to keep the men fit. (Unfortunately, the one hour per day obligatory dancing wasn't seen as fun or as a preventing illness measure, but as part of Bligh's being a perfectionist irritant among the men.) He also was a fiend for hygiene, insisting on the men washing themselves and keeping the decks clean. (All of which worked in the intended way - there was just one man of the Bounty crew who died during the journey on board, and he died due to the drunken surgeon's incompetence - the surgeon fumbled a blood letting which led to blood infection which led to gruesome death.)
Dedicated husband and father: To his wife Elizabeth "Betsy", and their surviving daughters. This included one who was an epileptic and also otherwise handicapped, Anne. Anne never learned to speak and could only communicate via movements. In an age where, depending on your income, you dealt with handicapped family members by storing them in country hospitals or city madhouses or the proverbial attics, Bligh raised his along with his other daughters and proudly pushed her wheel chair through the park when at land. His wife sharing an interest in natural history with him and having a shell collection, he collected shells for her (now there's an image you don't see in the movies), and if he ever cheated on her with anyone, even his direct enemies (of which he had many in the end), who told all types of stories about him, didn't bring it up. He also (as opposed to Fletcher Christian, Peter Heywood and a great many other sea men, mutineers and loyalist alike) was never diagnosed with a veneral disease. The first account of the mutiny he ever gave was in a letter to his wife once he'd made it safely on shore in Timor, starting: "My Dear, Dear Betsy, I am now, for the most part, in a part of the world I never expected, it is however a place that has afforded me relief and saved my life, and I have the happiness to assure you that I am now in perfect health....Know then my own Dear Betsy, that I have lost the Bounty ..." and closing "Give my blessings to my Dear Harriet, my Dear Mary, my Dear Betsy & to my Dear little stranger & tell them I shall soon be home...To You my Love I give all that an affectionate Husband can give - Love, Respect & all that is or ever will be in the power of your ever affectionate Friend and Husband Wm Bligh".
(The "dear little stranger" was the child Betsy had been pregnant with when he left - he didn't know yet, of course, whether it had been a boy or a girl.)
But, I hear you ask, if Bligh was such a capital fellow, how did he end up with not one but several mutinies and all those enemies? Well:
Top Facts Pop Culture History Gets Right about Bligh:
Thin Skinned Verbal Eviscarator: when he ranted he RANTED. His was the temper that if you like someone you describe as "doesn't suffer fools gladly" and if you don't you call verbal bullying. Unfortunately, this was coupled with a complete lack of insight on how this affected people. For Bligh, there was no contradiction in chewing Christian out in front of the entire crew over the disappearance of some coconuts and cursing him, and then, when he'd cooled down, inviting him for dinner (Christian declined; this was immediately before the mutiny). It's no wonder one of the books on Bligh is called "Mr. Bligh's Bad Language": the same man who was infinitely patient with his handicapped daughter flew off in a rant when feeling himself offended quite easily, and he often did. Also, tact? Never heard of it. When Heywood's family wrote to him to ask whether their boy truly had mutineered, whether this wasn't a horrible misunderstanding, Bligh wrote back that they should resign themselves to their son's fate because Peter Heywood was traitorous scum. The Heywood family was later instrumental in turning public opinion on Bligh from heroic Captain to sadistic brute. (However, since verbal humiliation isn't seen as a horrible slight on one's honor anymore, it's not surprising the 20th century didn't leave Bligh's sins at that but added good old physical sadism and non stop flogging.)
Brilliant navigator: even his enemies conceded this. The first Bounty movie, with Charles Laughton being a sadistic flogger, still concedes him his moment of heroism post mutiny, the other thing he's famous for: the seemingly impossible 3,618-nautical-mile (6,701 km; 4,164 mi) voyage in an open small boat to Timor, the nearest European settlement. Bligh succeeded in reaching Timor after a 47-day voyage, despite having no maps and food only for five days. The only man lost during the journey was one killed during the initial stop on an island (the murderous result of that stop was why they didn't try the Fijiis or another landing point but went for Timor). The third movie, with Hopkins as Bligh, which is largely sympathetic to him but has him lose it between Tahiti and the mutiny, uses this navigational and disciplinary miracle as Bligh's redemption, as in this scene:
(The second movie, with Trevor Howard as evil Bligh, doesn't bother with Bligh's fate post mutiny.)
In the play Pitcairn, which is solely about the mutineers on the title island, Bligh is only occasionally referenced, with most of the mutineers believing he surely died and only Fletcher Christian convinced he died, precisely because Christian, due to his having sailed with Bligh before, knowing what a brilliant navigator he is so that he actually had a shot at survival. Whether or not this is true or whether Christian as well as the other mutineers thought Bligh and his loyalists would all die when they exposed them is anyone's guess, of course. I'll leave you with the end of the 1983 movie, which depicts its two main characters on Pitcairn and in London at a court martial respectively:
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1192231.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Top Pop Culture Misunderstandings About William Bligh:
"Captain Bligh": when in command of the Bounty, he wasn't. He was Lieutenant Bligh, which isn't unimportant. After the end of seven years war, he'd switched from navy to merchant vessels as Lieutenant; there, he'd made Captain (of the ship Britannia), but when returning to the navy for the Bounty mission had to accept being a Lieutenant again, with the pay of a Lieutenant (far less than a Captain's) while being an acting Captain (and adressed as Captain on board the ship). The Bounty was rated as a Cutter, which meant it didn't rate a navy degree Captain. It also didn't rate soldiers, as, for example, Bligh's mentor James Cook had had with him. And it meant Bligh had a very limited possibility to choose his own appointments among the other officers. He had to put up with a drunken surgeon (though he managed to at least get permission to hire an assistant surgeon) whom everyone one expected to die (he was THAT obviously an incompetent drunk), which he did eventually on Tahiti, but not before doing some damage), a Master whom he couldn't stand from the get go and vice versa, John Fryer, and no purser, instead having to do the job himself (this is important because if financial incorrectness and losses were found after the journey, the purser had to pay them out of his personal fortune; the fuss Bligh made about the stealing of items and food wasn't because he needed an excuse to rant).
Bligh was within his rights to promote people during the course of the journey, which he did with Fletcher Christian, who was hired as a Master's Mate and was made an Acting Lieutenant by Bligh. If the Bounty mission had gone as planed, the navy would probably have promoted not only Bligh from Acting to genuine Captain but also Fletcher Christian to real Lieutenant, with the time spent as Acting Lieutenant on the Bounty counting as years of service. Again, in terms of pay and career, this was all important, but the most significant thing about it is that because Christian's temporary promotion was solely due to Bligh, any failure of his would reflect back on Bligh and Bligh's judgment as well.
Floggings: his pop culture image being that he basically had sea men flogged if they as much as sneezed wrong. The two "Mutiny on the Bounty" movies even have him order corpses flogged. (A movie innovation which even the anti-Bligh writings at the time did not charge.) It therefore surprises most newbies to the Bounty saga to learn that Bligh started out the journey determined not to order any floggings at all. This was one of his main goals, stated not post facto as a defense but in letters written to his patron from the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, before the launch and during the first part of the journey. He's backed up in this by letters sent back (from South Africa and via passing whalers) during said first part of the journey by other crew members, such as the assistant surgeon Ledward and the future mutineer Peter Heywood. The first time Bligh did order a flogging was when the ship's Master Mr. Fryer logged a formal complaint against future mutineer Matthew Quintal. Bligh downgraded Fryer's complaint from an accusation of mutiny to an accusation of insolence towards on officer, but the later still warranted flogging as a punishment (the former actually warranted, if taken seriously, a death sentence, or at least captivity for the rest of the journey). Until the arrival on Tahiti, there was just one other occasion when flogging was ordered. On Tahiti and after, until Mutiny, he did order floggings for various misdemeanours as part of the ultilmately vain attempt to restore discipline, but still significantly less than avarage compared with other Captains at the time (we have everyone's logs to prove it): as a historian said, he scolded where others flogged, and flogged where others handed out death sentences. (Not that being scolded by Bligh was fun. Something that pop culture doesn't get wrong is his capacity for verbal eviscaration; I'll get to this.) Whatever caused the Mutiny of the Bounty, fears of the the seamen of being flogged to death by Bligh wasn't it.
Not unrelated: Pressganged Seamen: press ganging was a vice of the time, but the crew of the Bounty actually consisted of volunteers. Not least due to its destination: the women of Tahiti were already a famous incentive. Again, we do have the written records (and yes, if men were press ganged it was written down).
Bligh and Christian couldn't stand each other from the start: this is a legacy of the 1930s "Mutiny on the Bounty" novel and the two film versions based on it. In fact, Fletcher Christian was a protegé of Bligh's who'd already sailed twice with him, on the Britannia when they had both been in merchant trade. He owed his job on the Bounty, both the original one and the promotion to Acting Lieutenant, to Bligh, was familiar with Bligh's family ("you danced my children on your knees" said an outraged Bligh on the day of the mutiny), and according to his brother had said pre: Bounty that Bligh was "passionate" but that he, Fletcher Christian, prided himself on knowing how to handle him. He also was literally in debt to Bligh in that Bligh had lend him money in Cape Town (a rarity for the tight fisted Bligh, who had a wife and four children to support on a Lieutenant's salary, see above). Quite what turned the two against each other on this third journey together is still under debate, Bligh's harsh language and Christian's falling not just in lust but in love on Tahiti being the most often named culprits. The third movie on the Bounty Mutiny, The Bounty, not, as the first two, based on the 1930s novel but on a 1970s biography called "Lieutenant Bligh and Mr. Christian", script by Robert Bolt, was the first one who went for homoerotic subtext, nowhere more obvious than its version of the mutiny scene, which is the first one to use actual memoir dialogue including Christians "I am in hell!" yelling at Bligh (which Clark Gable and Marlon Brando could not have said to Charles Laughton and Trevor Howard respectively, since they were the hero confronting the evil villain and bringing him to judgment for his misdeeds). Here it is, with Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian:
Click to viewBligh, as opposed to his crew, looked down on the Tahitans, was British imperialism personified and had no interaction with the Tahitans: he certainly was the only one not getting laid on Tahiti, but far from not interacting with the people of Tahiti, there's the interesting fact that the sole account of the whole Bounty saga which absolutely focuses most of the narrative on the Tahitans, their customs, their personalities, not on the Europeans, is William Bligh's A Voyage to the South Seas, which you can read here. Until the play Pitcairn, I hadn't yet come across a fictional version that bothered to flesh out any of the Polynesians at all; they usually show up in female form to sexually liberate the poor British seamen, are pretty and willing, and that's it. The narratives grant them no personalities or agenda beyond having sex with the Brits. Now don't get me wrong: Bligh wasn't a modern man, and he certainly shows in his account no doubt in British superiority etc. But he was truly interested in the Tahitans, describing them both as people and as individuals, their customs, their hierarchy, even the games their children play (which interested Bligh, father of three young daughters and his wife pregnant when he had left England, not just on an explorer level). He gives us their names and those of their stories he learned, and tells about his conversations, such as the one with the Queen, Iddia, who asked him how British women managed childbirth and when hearing it was unimpressed and told him how it was done in Tahiti (with the woman squatted in the arms of a male attendant who massaged and rubbed her), or the fact that Iddia learned how to load and shoot a gun far better than her husband Tainu. (Iddia being, like her husband, very heavy and middle aged, you won't spot her in any of the Bounty movies as anything but a background figure, whereas Bligh has quite a lot to tell about her and Tainu, including the death and funeral of one of their children - again, of personal resonance to Bligh, some of whose children had died as infants as well, or the fact Iddia had a young lover with Tainu's approval.)
Which brings me to:
Top Unknown To Pop Culture Yet Interesting Facts about William Bligh
Curious Mind: he truly had one. He had started out his career under James Cook, and never ceased to feel as an explorer. Leave it to William Bligh to note down looks and behavior of birds and fish when being on the open see for an incredible 41 days in a small boat with 18 other men, navigating by memory and with a compass over roughly 3600 sea miles. And like I said, his account of the whole Bounty saga remains the only one that focuses not on himself and the men, and conflicts with same, but on the Tahitans (and before that on various animals and natural phenomenons on the journey).
Bligh the Reformer: serving as Captain Cook's Master had led him to adopt several key Cook innovations, such as ordering three shifts instead of two, giving the men accordingly more time to sleep, having sauerkraut on board to prevent the most dreaded of seamen's diseases, and to insist on one hour of dancing per day (this was the sole reason why the Bounty had a fiddler on board) to keep the men fit. (Unfortunately, the one hour per day obligatory dancing wasn't seen as fun or as a preventing illness measure, but as part of Bligh's being a perfectionist irritant among the men.) He also was a fiend for hygiene, insisting on the men washing themselves and keeping the decks clean. (All of which worked in the intended way - there was just one man of the Bounty crew who died during the journey on board, and he died due to the drunken surgeon's incompetence - the surgeon fumbled a blood letting which led to blood infection which led to gruesome death.)
Dedicated husband and father: To his wife Elizabeth "Betsy", and their surviving daughters. This included one who was an epileptic and also otherwise handicapped, Anne. Anne never learned to speak and could only communicate via movements. In an age where, depending on your income, you dealt with handicapped family members by storing them in country hospitals or city madhouses or the proverbial attics, Bligh raised his along with his other daughters and proudly pushed her wheel chair through the park when at land. His wife sharing an interest in natural history with him and having a shell collection, he collected shells for her (now there's an image you don't see in the movies), and if he ever cheated on her with anyone, even his direct enemies (of which he had many in the end), who told all types of stories about him, didn't bring it up. He also (as opposed to Fletcher Christian, Peter Heywood and a great many other sea men, mutineers and loyalist alike) was never diagnosed with a veneral disease. The first account of the mutiny he ever gave was in a letter to his wife once he'd made it safely on shore in Timor, starting: "My Dear, Dear Betsy, I am now, for the most part, in a part of the world I never expected, it is however a place that has afforded me relief and saved my life, and I have the happiness to assure you that I am now in perfect health....Know then my own Dear Betsy, that I have lost the Bounty ..." and closing "Give my blessings to my Dear Harriet, my Dear Mary, my Dear Betsy & to my Dear little stranger & tell them I shall soon be home...To You my Love I give all that an affectionate Husband can give - Love, Respect & all that is or ever will be in the power of your ever affectionate Friend and Husband Wm Bligh".
(The "dear little stranger" was the child Betsy had been pregnant with when he left - he didn't know yet, of course, whether it had been a boy or a girl.)
But, I hear you ask, if Bligh was such a capital fellow, how did he end up with not one but several mutinies and all those enemies? Well:
Top Facts Pop Culture History Gets Right about Bligh:
Thin Skinned Verbal Eviscarator: when he ranted he RANTED. His was the temper that if you like someone you describe as "doesn't suffer fools gladly" and if you don't you call verbal bullying. Unfortunately, this was coupled with a complete lack of insight on how this affected people. For Bligh, there was no contradiction in chewing Christian out in front of the entire crew over the disappearance of some coconuts and cursing him, and then, when he'd cooled down, inviting him for dinner (Christian declined; this was immediately before the mutiny). It's no wonder one of the books on Bligh is called "Mr. Bligh's Bad Language": the same man who was infinitely patient with his handicapped daughter flew off in a rant when feeling himself offended quite easily, and he often did. Also, tact? Never heard of it. When Heywood's family wrote to him to ask whether their boy truly had mutineered, whether this wasn't a horrible misunderstanding, Bligh wrote back that they should resign themselves to their son's fate because Peter Heywood was traitorous scum. The Heywood family was later instrumental in turning public opinion on Bligh from heroic Captain to sadistic brute. (However, since verbal humiliation isn't seen as a horrible slight on one's honor anymore, it's not surprising the 20th century didn't leave Bligh's sins at that but added good old physical sadism and non stop flogging.)
Brilliant navigator: even his enemies conceded this. The first Bounty movie, with Charles Laughton being a sadistic flogger, still concedes him his moment of heroism post mutiny, the other thing he's famous for: the seemingly impossible 3,618-nautical-mile (6,701 km; 4,164 mi) voyage in an open small boat to Timor, the nearest European settlement. Bligh succeeded in reaching Timor after a 47-day voyage, despite having no maps and food only for five days. The only man lost during the journey was one killed during the initial stop on an island (the murderous result of that stop was why they didn't try the Fijiis or another landing point but went for Timor). The third movie, with Hopkins as Bligh, which is largely sympathetic to him but has him lose it between Tahiti and the mutiny, uses this navigational and disciplinary miracle as Bligh's redemption, as in this scene:
(The second movie, with Trevor Howard as evil Bligh, doesn't bother with Bligh's fate post mutiny.)
In the play Pitcairn, which is solely about the mutineers on the title island, Bligh is only occasionally referenced, with most of the mutineers believing he surely died and only Fletcher Christian convinced he died, precisely because Christian, due to his having sailed with Bligh before, knowing what a brilliant navigator he is so that he actually had a shot at survival. Whether or not this is true or whether Christian as well as the other mutineers thought Bligh and his loyalists would all die when they exposed them is anyone's guess, of course. I'll leave you with the end of the 1983 movie, which depicts its two main characters on Pitcairn and in London at a court martial respectively:
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1192231.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.