Tag Archives: Australia

Fletcher Christian, William bligh And the mutiny on the bounty (Volume4, Episode 5) Part One

Fletcher Christian and William Bligh are permanently linked to the Mutiny on the Bounty. Listen to the true story of this infamous incident.

Fletcher Christian

Initially, Fletcher Christian was not destined for a naval career.  He was Born on the 25th of September, 1764 in the Cumbrian village of Eaglesfield. His father, Charles, was a wealthy attorney originally from the Isle of Man.  Descended from several generations of Manx judiciary, it was the senior Christian’s original aim that all three of his sons get an education and pursue the law.  Ann Christian, Fletcher’s mother, had brought her ancestral home of Moorland Close into the marriage and initially the family lived a prosperous existence as landed gentry.  Unfortunately, Charles Christian died when Fletcher was four years old and his mother continued to spend and live lavishly, despite the lack of any meaningful income.  Eventually, despite being bailed out a few times by wealthy relatives, Ann Christian fled to the Isle of Man, where she subsisted on a small annuity, safe from any prosecution for the massive debt she accrued during Fletcher’s childhood.

William Bligh

Through family connections, Christian approached Lieutenant William Bligh, also currently relegated to commanding ships involved in the rum and sugar trade of the Caribbean.  Although Bligh was underemployed in his current position, he had a reputation as a skillful navigator who had served with Captain Cook, during Cook’s third and final voyage. 

Christian casts off 18 members of the Bounty, including Captain Bligh

just before dawn on April 28, 1789, four men entered Bligh’s cabin while he was sleeping and quickly subdued and tied the Lieutenant’s wrists behind his back.  Christian, along with Charles Churchill, John Mills and Thomas Burkett were armed with weapons removed from the ship’s armory and they dragged Bligh on deck.  Although told to keep quiet, Bligh began yelling, waking other officers, including John Fryer who was warned by the armed group not to leave his cabin.  On deck Bligh continued shouting at the various crew members who were either mocking their commander or anxiously hoping to accompany him, regardless of the uncertainty.  Initially, Christian now brandishing a bayonet to intimidate those who might attempt to physically subdue him, lowered a small boat that could hold only Bligh and a few other men.  Unseaworthy and unable to hold all of the men who demanded to leave, Christian then agreed to put the Bounty’s launch into the water.  This craft was 23 feet long, about seven feet wide and allowed for a sail that gave its occupants some ability to navigate.  Normally designed for at most fifteen occupants, 18 crew members squeezed into the launch, with Bligh eventually forced to join them.

Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in the MGM 1935, “Mutiny On The Bounty
Peter Heywood

Within hours, two other men, Peter Heywood and George Stewart emerged from the island and boarded the Pandora.  All three men denied any responsibility for the mutiny, Coleman previously identified by Bligh himself as one of the crew members who was loyal but forced to stay behind.  Heywood asked Hayward to absolve him of any blame but Hayward was noncommittal.  The ruthlessness of Edwards was underlined by his subsequent order to immediately confine all three men in irons.  He maintained that it was not up to him to render a judgement on guilt or innocence in the matter, that was the responsibility of a subsequent court martial upon the Pandora’s return to England.

John Adams

Smith, a former deserter whose real name was John Adams, relaxed when Folger explained that he actually was not from England but from America.  The captain of the Topaz was correct in that Smith aka Adams had no idea what America was but he opened up about what had happened once the Bounty arrived on Pitcairn.  The nine mutineers divided up all of the land and expropriated most of the women as their wives.  The six Tahitian men were treated as slaves and eventually rebelled and killed five of the mutineers, including Fletcher Christian.  Because many of the Tahitian women were romantically involved with the dead mutineers, they were angry and subsequently murdered all of the Tahitian men.

George Smith Anthony and the Voyage of the Catalpa (Volume 1, Podcast 2)

Captain George Smith Anthony and The Voyage of the SS Catalpa
Captain George Smith Anthony
In 1874, rebel leader John Devoy received another letter from Fenian prisoner James Wilson that he chose to read aloud at a national meeting of the Clan Na Gael.  Part of it read:

     “Think that we have been nine years in this living tomb since our

       first arrest and it is impossible for mind and body to withstand the

       continual strain that is upon them.  One or the other must give way

       …We think that if you forsake us, then we are friendless indeed.”

This missive, the “Letter From the Tomb”, compelled the Clan to understand that to rescue the military Fenians was their moral imperative.  Devoy was officially urged to devise a plan of escape and he immediately proceeded to Boston and a meeting with John O’Reilly, the only man ever to successfully escape from an Australian penal colony.  O’Reilly was still in touch with members of the New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling community, including some of the former members of the crew of the Gazelle.  This close knit group quickly sold Devoy on the idea that any rescue attempt should also try to fund itself by engaging in a legitimate whaling expedition.  They also agreed that there was only one man for the job, Captain George Smith Anthony.

The S. S. Catalpa

Recruiting Anthony was merely a start.  Devoy, O’Reilly and Richardson began to scour New England for a suitable ship.  Although the Clan Na Gael had secretly raised some money from a national base of contributors they were still short of the purchase price of an appropriate vessel.  It took Richardson fronting thousands of dollars and another Clan Na Gael member, James Reynolds, mortgaging his home to provide the funding for the purchase of the ”Catalpa”, a ninety foot merchant ship that had recently returned from the West Indies.  In March of 1875, the ship was towed to New Bedford where Captain Anthony could personally supervise its repairs and reworking as a whaler.

By the end of April, a twenty-two man crew had been selected with only one man, Dennis Duggan, aware of the true mission of the Catalpa.  Duggan, Irish, was also a carpenter by trade so he would not arouse the suspicions of customs officials about any atypical crew aboard a whaler.  On April 30, 1875, Captain George Anthony raised anchor in New Bedford and began the first leg of the mission to rescue the six Irish rebels.

Fremantle Prison today.
Fremantle Prison today.

In January of 1868, after three months at sea, their prison ship reached western Australia.  On the tenth, it dropped anchor in Fremantle and the prisoners were transported to the jetty at Victoria Quay.  From there they marched through the town to the Fremantle Gaol, a forbidding stone edifice with a practically medieval appearance.  Nicknamed “The Establishment” this prison confined over three thousand human beings,  fifteen per cent of the western region’s twenty thousand inhabitants.  Escape was considered impossible.  If a convict even made it outside of the walls of Fremantle Gaol, he would have to circumvent thousands of miles of shark infested ocean or an equally lengthy trek through the desert like conditions of the Australian bush country.  He would  probably die of thirst before aboriginal trackers found him and dragged him back to be hanged in the prison yard.  The military members of the Fenian group were placed in one man cells that were three feet wide, seven feet long and nine feet high.  Here they were doomed to service on a work gang, eventual death and burial in an unmarked grave along some Australian road.