6 - Ruinous friendships

Summary

for to the friendly and endearing behaviour of these people, may be ascribed the motives for that event which effected the ruin of an expedition . . .

– William Bligh

William Bligh published two accounts of the Bounty mutiny. Viewed in relation to one another, they can acquire the status of hasty and reflective responses, of part and whole, or on the other hand, of eyewitness and modified text. The Narrative of the Mutiny, on board his Britannic Majesty's ship Bounty; and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew, in the ship's boat, from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in the East-Indies, published in 1790, begins almost exactly where his Bounty log breaks off, with Bligh's departure from Tahiti, and takes the reader immediately into the events of the mutiny. After recording his own good conscience and hence good spirits upon being consigned to the ship's boat, Bligh addresses the question of motivation:

It will very naturally be asked, what could be the reason for such a revolt? in answer to which, I can only conjecture that the mutineers had assured themselves of a more happy life among the Otaheitans, than they could possibly have in England; which, joined to some female connections, have most probably been the principle cause of the whole transaction.

As Bligh immediately elaborates:

The women at Otaheite are handsome, mild and cheerful in their manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much attached to our people, that they rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under these, and many other attendant circumstances equally desirable, it is now perhaps not so much to be wondered at, though scarcely possible to have been foreseen, that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections, should be led away; especially when, in addition to such powerful inducements, they imagined it in their power to fix themselves in the midst of plenty, on the finest island in the world, where they need not labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond anything that can be conceived.

(Bligh 1977:9)