Failing Up: The William Bligh Story

Captain William Bligh. Heard of him? You probably think you know all about him from the 1935 movie Mutiny on the Bounty, with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. Or the 1962 Technicolor epic, Mutiny on the Bounty, with Marlon Brando and Richard Harris. Or the 1984 blockbuster, The Bounty, with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins—supported by the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Liam Neeson.1

 

Oh, but there’s so much more. Including his noteworthy star turn as the single driving force behind the only military coup in Australia’s history.

 

Settle in…here we go….

William Bligh is arguably history’s most spectacular example of failing upward. 

 

Born in 1754 in Plymouth to a middle-class family, Bligh was destined for a life at sea, perhaps to escape his father, one of England’s most despised customs officers. And let’s not sugarcoat it, young William learned the art of being a complete bastard from the best. 

 

At the ripe age of seven, Bligh entered naval service as a ship’s boy.2 By the time he was 16, Bligh had joined the HMS Hunter as an able seaman3—not because he had any skills, there simply wasn’t an opening for a midshipman. A slot opened up a year later, though, and he made midshipman, which is essentially a maritime middle manager—not enough power to do anything, but enough to be considered responsible when bad things happened.

 

After six years as the captain’s scapegoat, Bligh was tapped as ship’s master of the HMS Resolution for Captain Cook’s ill-fated third voyage around the Pacific.4 A lot of things happened on that trip, but the upshot is that Bligh’s notable lack of personal charm meant he was the only officer not promoted upon the boat’s return to Britain.

As a man, Bligh was a sight to behold, though—if you like horrible sights. At 5'8" with a giant melon, weak chin, and a fast-retreating hairline, he looked like a gorilla stuffed into a human suit—the antithesis of a dashing naval officer. And to top off his generally disagreeable, overbearing nature, he had a mouth like a, well, a sailor, I guess. His reputation as a profanity-spewing jerk was legendary, even among sailors.

 

Despite his, um, shortcomings, he clearly had connections. He married the niece of a wealthy and powerful ship-owner with plantations in the West Indies,5 where his father-in-law set him up as an administrator in Jamaica. His time on the Resolution had also caught the eye of Captain Cook’s old buddy, Sir Joseph Banks, a man with an enthusiastic-if-morally-dubious interest in maximizing the economic efficiency of British plantations in the Caribbean.

Mutiny #1

Banks, a devoted supporter of slavery, made it his personal mission to reduce the costs of feeding slaves by transplanting breadfruit from Tahiti to the Caribbean. The assumption was that plantation owners could grow breadfruit, a high-yield plant, more cheaply than buy food, and slaves could live on breadfruit alone? I guess?

 

Anyway, Banks, citing Bligh’s exemplary navigational skills and ability to “enforce discipline,”6 insisted he be given command of the HMS Bounty and lead the breadfruit mission in 1787. And what a trip that was.

 

The Bounty was retrofitted to create an environment more amenable to breadfruit trees, though at the expense of bare minimum living standards for the crew. Bligh was 100% focused on preserving the breadfruit trees. So Bligh converted most of the crew quarters into breadfruit conservatories, and the crew was forced to cram themselves into random nooks and crannies or sleep on the floor in the common areas or even on deck. Absolutely no animals7 were allowed on board, and extraordinary measures were taken to prevent rats and cockroaches from getting to the plants.8 All this while the crew also had to contend with the captain's brutal temper, petty cruelty, and regular explosions of fury and rage.9

Life on board was pure hell. In fact, 16 sailors deserted the ship before it ever left port.10 Those who remained had to Live the Insanity for two years until they finally snapped. In 1789, after retrieving the breadfruit trees in Tahiti, the crew revolted, led by a young, headstrong Master's Mate, Fletcher Christian.11

 

The reasons behind the mutiny are still debated, 12 but whatever the proximate cause, Bligh was trundled off into a lifeboat with the 18 sailors still loyal to him. The boat was so crowded they had to bail water constantly to keep it afloat. The group made landfall on the Friendly Islands, hoping to replenish their meager supplies, but the islanders chased them off, killing one of the men.13 Which, by the way, Bligh saw as a "fortunate circumstance” because the dead man was the fattest one of the lot, and he “interfered with the boat’s progress.”

It took 41 days, but the group finally reached Dutch Timor, a journey of more than 4,000 miles—which is truly amazing. Despite arriving in (mostly) one piece, none of the group were on speaking terms with Bligh, and they all limped home to Britain on separate ships.

 

Bligh faced a court martial in which he was absolved for losing the Bounty. Initially hailed as a hero, public opinion quickly swung to Christian as people learned of Bligh’s abusive behavior. The incident ultimately had no lasting impact on his career, though, and in 1791, he was promoted from lieutenant to captain.

More breadfruit

Unbelievably, the British Admiralty, demonstrating their unparalleled talent for ignoring red flags, gave Bligh another ship to try the breadfruit mission again toward the end of 1791. Refusing to admit failure, Sir Joseph Banks ordered a second expedition and demanded Bligh lead it. Which is why we find the insistently stubborn now-Captain Bligh on his way to Tahiti at the helm of a new ship, the HMS Providence, stuffed with breadfruit pots and resentful sailors.

 

English newspapers were abuzz with excitement about the mission, particularly in the West Indies. Rumors swirled that Bligh had met with Banks and would arrive in Jamaica by February 1793 with the now-mythical breadfruit plants.

 

This time, however, there was no Fletcher Christian to lead a mutiny. Instead, Bligh brought a worshipful half-nephew as his first lieutenant, Francis Bond.14 It didn't take long for Bond's admiration to quickly morph into quiet loathing. He wrote home that Bligh’s “very high opinion…of himself makes him hold every one of our profession with contempt, perhaps envy. Nay, the Navy is but a sphere for fops and lubbers to swarm in, without one gem to vie in brilliancy with himself.” He also complained bitterly that Bligh “treated me (nay, all on board) with the insolence and arrogance of a Jacobs.”15

 

The Providence reached Tahiti in early April, where Bligh was recognized by islanders he’d befriended on his previous voyage. He and the crew were warmly greeted and spent three months collecting breadfruit plants and other specimens while documenting the Tahitians with the meticulousness of creepily enthusiastic anthropology students.

Leaving Tahiti, the crew began a monotonous routine of lugging breadfruit trees up to the deck for sunshine and then schlepping them back down at night. There are stories, perhaps apocryphal, that Bligh restricted the ship’s fresh water for the trees to further ensure their survival—and his thirsty crew was forced to lick drops of water from the trees’ leaves.

 

The Providence stopped at the Cook Islands, Tonga, and Fiji, where Bligh spent days exploring and trading with the locals.16 Despite his penchant for annoying humans, he had a surprising knack for charming indigenous peoples—probably because they didn’t have to sail with him for months on end.

 

The expedition cleared the tricky Torres Strait in three grueling weeks and anchored in early October at Timor, where they recuperated for a week. Bligh had a schedule, after all. By mid-December, the Providence made good time, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and reaching the southern Caribbean island of St. Vincent by the end of January. And in early February—just six years, two round-the-world voyages, and one mutiny after he first set out to bring breadfruit to Caribbean slaves—the Providence triumphantly docked in Jamaica.

 

In the end, Bligh deposited 180 breadfruit trees on St. Vincent and Jamaica, along with one Tahitian each, to tend them—precisely on schedule, I might add.

 

Unfortunately, despite immense efforts to transport them from the other side of the world, there was one problem – the slaves in the Caribbean wouldn’t eat breadfruit. They preferred plantains.

 

No matter. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce awarded Bligh a gold medal in December 1793 for his successful transportation of the breadfruit trees.17

Mutiny redux

By 1797, Bligh had a new ship, the HMS Director, and was making a grand return to the naval station at Nore outside London in April. He had just completed the oh-so-essential task of surveying the Humber estuary to map the exhilarating stretch from Spurn to Sunk Island up north by Hull—because clearly, nothing is more crucial during a war with France than refining coastal maps.

 

At the same time he was swanning back into London, the Spithead Mutiny kicked off near Portsmouth, England, involving a hefty chunk of the Royal Navy's Channel Fleet. The mutineers had expressed, um, displeasure at not having a raise since 1658.18 It was a relatively peaceful mutiny that saw the Admiralty actually negotiate in good faith and grant many of the mutineers’ demands. Revolutionary!

 

Just as the Spithead mutiny wrapped up and things seemed to settle down, the crew of the Director and 25 other ships at Nore, inspired by their peers at Spithead, decided they, too, had grievances. But they wanted more, demanding the King dissolve Parliament and make peace with France. Because why not aim high?

 

In a bold move, the Nore fleet blockaded London and crippled British trade for May and June. The mutiny’s leaders went so far as to encourage sailors to defect to the French Republic, which was met with a lot of, “Uh, wait…what now?” and “Say again?” The revolution fizzled because most English sailors dreaded the time it would take to learn French. In line with their typical behavior, Bligh’s ornery crew was the last to surrender.

 

There were no significant trials or harsh sentences for the Spithead mutineers; the Nore, that was a different story—29 mutineers were hanged, 9 were flogged, and many others were sentenced to transportation to the New South Wales penal colony in Australia.

Speaking of Australia…

In 1805, the situation in Sydney was spiraling out of control, becoming more corrupt every year. The Crown needed a strongman to whip the colony into shape. Guess who got the job? My man, Bligh!

 

Yep, Bligh’s longtime admirer, Sir Joseph Banks, recommended him as “firm in discipline, civil in deportment, and not subject to whimper and whine when severity of discipline is wanted.”19 Clearly, Banks knew how to pick a winner.

 

Bligh was walking into a nest of vipers,20  the nastiest one of which might have been John Macarthur. Macarthur had landed in Sydney 15 years earlier as an officer in the New South Wales Corps. Ambitious and power-hungry, he’d transformed himself into a colonial powerhouse. In other words, he was a player and couldn’t be trusted. Bligh despised Macarthur and set out to dismantle his empire, launching a campaign to cripple his businesses and prosecuting him for the illegal importation of liquor stills. Bligh also hated the Blaxland brothers, John and Gregory, Australia's first genuinely wealthy immigrants. The previous governor had promised the brothers more than 8,000 acres of land and 80 convicts to work it. Bligh chopped that down to not quite 1,300 acres and 23 convicts.21

 

In his years as a navy man, Bligh had perfected the art of making enemies. He pissed off farmers, ranchers, traders, and workers. He declared all wages fixed, punishing anyone who asked for more.22

 

Then the shit really hit the fan. Bligh evicted residents in homes surrounding Government House and requisitioned 80 convicts to do the landscaping to improve his view.23

 

Things got heated when a convict escaped from one of Macarthur’s ships in Sydney Harbour in December 1807. Bligh fined Macarthur. Macarthur refused to pay up. Bligh confiscated the ship. Macarthur refused to feed or pay the crew. Hey, they weren’t his crew anymore, right?

 

The crew, starving, rowed into Sydney and started making a fuss. Or leading a reign of terror. Depends on who you ask. Bligh sent the military24 to arrest Macarthur for illegally letting his sailors go ashore and brought him before a court of six corpsmen and one judge-advocate. The trial was a farce with lots of shouting between the judge and an officer, “I’ll have you arrested, good sir!” and “How’re you gonna do that if I already put you in jail?” 

 

Bligh was, in a word, furious. He turned to the Corps’ commanding officer, George Johnston, demanding he get his men in line. He also threw Macarthur in actual jail and threatened to try the court officers for treason.

 

A month had passed since Bligh's junior high tiff with Macarthur had begun. And everyone was in high dudgeon. Surprisingly, instead of calming things down, Commander Johnston led 300 soldiers—who, it should be noted, played instruments and sang as they marched—against Bligh on January 26, 1808, in Australia’s only military coup d’état, the Rum Rebellion. There was no resistance.25 Bligh was discovered in full dress uniform under his bed, where he later claimed to be hiding his papers. The colony, meanwhile, celebrated in high style, hooping, hollering, and drinking rum.

In all the hullabaloo, the rebels extracted a promise from Bligh that he would return to England on the first ship and released him into the wild. But instead of heading north, he seized control and sailed the ship to Tasmania, where he demanded the governor there field an army to get his throne governor’s chair back. Surprise! The Tasmanian governor declined.26

 

After unsuccessfully blockading Hobart for six months, Bligh limped back to Sydney, where he spent months and months in limbo. Britain had decided to replace him as governor, but, you know, early 19th-century travel wasn't exactly speedy. So he had to twiddle his thumbs until the new governor showed up and officially gave him the boot.27

 

True to form, the Admiralty wasn’t quite sure what to do with him.

 

So they made him an admiral.

 

He died in 1817, still a bastard.

1. Or maybe you’re a book nerd and read one of the more than 17 books that have been written about it.

Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare

Mutiny on the Bounty

Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theater on H. M. Armed Vessel Bounty

Mutiny on the Bounty

Pitcairn's Island (The Bounty Trilogy, #3)

The Bounty Mutiny

Mutiny's Daughter

Bounty's Boy

Breadfruit Buccaneers and the Bounty Bible: A Fresh Look at the Mutiny on HMS Bounty and the Story of the Pitcairn Island Colony Over Two Centuries

Pitcairn: Children of Mutiny: A Study of an Extraordinary Society with a New Look At the Bounty Mutiny and the Roles of William Bligh and Fletcher Christian

Captain Bligh: The Man and His Mutinies

The Great Bounty Conspiracy: Bligh and His Breadfruit

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Mutiny!: The Real History of the HMS Bounty

The Grave Tattoo

Captain Bligh in Wapping

Voyage of HMS Pandora: Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the Bounty in the South Seas, 1790–1791

The Mutiny on the Bounty

Captain James Cook: A Biography

 

2. This was an era when young boys at sea were as common as rum and scurvy. It sounds odd now, but back in the day, it was usual practice to enlist a "young gentleman" in the Royal Navy so he could gain—or, more likely—simply record the time as the experience he’d need later to earn a commission. Trickery!

 

3. snigger

 

4. Well, ill-fated for Cook, anyway. The Resolution completed its mission and returned to Britain in 1780. Cook, however, ended up on the business end of a Hawaiian leiomano (a particularly dangerous-looking shark-toothed club) and dying on the beach. But that’s a whole ’nuther story.

 

5. With ships and plantations in the West Indies, you can also be sure he was a slave owner, too.

 

6. French for “fascist tyrant.”

 

7. It was common for sailors back then to have pets on board their ships to be companions, control pests, and generally boost morale during long, arduous voyages. But Bligh had ordered “no Dogs, Cats, Monkeys, Parrots, Goats or indeed any animals whatever must be allowed on board.”

 

8. The traditional method for dealing with rats on ships was to string green branches from the ship to a small boat nearby, creating an enticing path for the rats from the ship to the boat, where they could be dealt with more easily. The crew would also beat drums all night long to scare the rats out of their hiding places and “encourage” them onto the boat. The traditional method for dealing with cockroaches was, as it is today, poison. The traditional method for mitigating the effects of sleeplessness and toxic poison on human sailors was non-existent.

 

9. Amazingly, despite the cramped conditions with crew and breadfruit living cheek-by-jowl (cheek-by-leaf?), Bligh found room for, and I’m being serious, a blind Irish fiddler. His rank was able seaman, though as a blind man, he had to be shit at the job. Nope, his real job was to play jigs and reels every afternoon. Bligh commanded that the crew dance for three hours every day for “relaxation and mirth”—and also because he thought it was good for their health. Sailors who declined to dance were flogged.

 

10. Bligh was nicknamed the Bounty Bastard by his crew, a term of endearment that followed him for the rest of his life.

 

11. Christian was tall, dark, and handsome—but a bit of rough trade. In the movies, he’s played by Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, or Mel Gibson when he was young and pretty. He was also tattooed, bow-legged, and “subject to violent perspirations, and particularly in his hands.” Nothing grosser than sweaty palms, people. But Bligh had taken Christian on two of his previous voyages and treated him like a son, with private dinners and full access to the liquor cabinet. Like any son, though, he was not immune to Bligh’s angry outbursts and public dressings-down.

 

12. One historian speculates that the mutiny was due to Christian’s unrequited love for Bligh. Another suggests that there was actually loads of requiting happening on the down low but that Bligh's affections had cooled. The craziest theory is that it was an inside job—that Bligh set it all up so he could avoid being blamed for all the dead breadfruit trees on board. More likely is something closer to Bligh’s own story, that the crew was mad because they really did have to load the ship up with breadfruit instead of nubile young Tahitian women. I mean, after a couple years of life on the Bounty, I’d be mad, too.

 

13. Clearly a tragic misnomer, the Friendly Islands were later renamed Tonga to avoid creating unrealistic expectations in the future.

 

14. Adoring nephews are so much easier to boss around than vengeful ex-lovers.

 

15. John Jacobs was a notorious convict contractor and merchant in London in the late 1700s, known for his arrogance and unscrupulous behavior. His name became synonymous with a rude, haughty, and insolent attitude. So, you know, snap!

 

16. After all, the Tongans had the sense to kill the fat one first during their last encounter, so, you know, no hard feelings.

 

17. The Society, much like Banks, apparently valued perseverance over practical outcomes.

 

18. I’m not kidding. It had been 139 years without so much as a Cost-Of-Living Adjustment. One can only imagine the sailors' retirement prospects were bleaker than a rat-filled hold.

 

19. I’m pretty sure he just went back through his files to the recommendation letter he’d sent in 1787 and printed it on updated letterhead.

 

20. Though it really couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

 

21. In the first batch of convicts Bligh allowed to be sent to the Blaxlands' place was an old, one-eyed, one-armed man; an asthmatic; and an idiot.

 

22. Little Oliver would not have done well. “Please, sir, may I have another?” “Off with his head!!”

 

23. None of whom, I’m assuming, were an old, one-eyed, one-armed man, an asthmatic, or an idiot.

 

24. And if you’ll recall, which Bligh apparently did not, these guys would’ve been Macarthur’s friends and former co-workers.

 

25. Well, that’s not entirely true. Bligh’s daughter, Mary, did smack a couple of the soldiers with her parasol, probably enthusiastically.

 

26. Probably because of something stupid, petty, insulting, or just plain ill-advised Bligh said.

 

27. Hilariously, he was sent home on the same ship as many of the colony’s elite, who had just banded together to force him out. It was a four-month voyage back to Britain. Imagine the dinner conversation!