“John Macarthur was very like Bligh in character,” C. Hartley Grattan once wrote. “He too was of a violent temper, though it was a ‘cold’ temper that found release not in curses that died away as uttered, but in calculated vituperation that lived on. He too was a stern disciplinarian, contemptuous of the whims and weaknesses of ordinary men. He too was self-confident and self-righteous. He too never committed any sincere self-doubts to paper. He too formulated his ends and set about realizing them by bending men to his will. But he differed from William Bligh, one may deduce from the records, in confusing personal advantage with justice, and in knowing how to manipulate the ‘fools’ among whom he found himself, for his own purposes. His position was strengthened when his ends coincided in part with those of a powerful minority in the community.”
During Bligh’s first year of rule, when this energetic sailor was clearing the decks and making everything shipshape, he got along fairly well with everybody, even with the provoking John Macarthur. But gradually the opposing interests showered sparks. Captain Charles Walker testified that once, when Bligh had found it necessary to refuse Macarthur’s request for something from the government stores, Macarthur had told Walker that “Governor Bligh was giving the government property to the settlers, a set of rascals who would deceive him; it would be better if he gave it to me and some of the other respectable gentlemen of the colony; if he does not, he will perhaps get another voyage in his launch again.”
A whispering campaign was begun against Bligh. An omen of the coming storm was a “pipe,” or lampoon, circulated by Macarthur’s friends against “Bounty” Bligh: “O tempora! O mores! Is there no CHRISTIAN in New South Wales to put a stop to the tyranny of the Governor?” This sounds as if a mutiny was brewing, with Macarthur cast to play the role of the aggrieved Fletcher Christian.
Macarthur’s monomania was to create a sheep industry in the new land, but Bligh’s attitude was unmistakable: “What have I to do with your sheep, sir?” Bligh roared at him. “What have I to do with your cattle? Are you to have such flocks of sheep and herds of cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir, I have heard of your concerns, sir. You have got five thousand acres of land, sir, in the finest situation in the country, but by God you shan’t keep it!”
Another series of episodes involving Macarthur caused the community to break into uproar. There was a disagreement over a certain promissory note and over an illegal copper liquor still which Macarthur wanted to keep, minus its head and coils. The immediate casus belli, however, was the seizure of Macarthur’s trading schooner Parramatta.
This vessel had broken port regulations by allowing a stowaway, a life convict named John Hoare, to escape on her from Sydney and then to get ashore at Tahiti. When the case was tried, Macarthur and his partner were condemned and a £900 bond was declared forfeited. Macarthur determined to abandon the vessel rather than lose the money, and on December 7, 1807, he notified the crew that he would no longer pay or support them. When they came ashore in defiance of orders, Macarthur tried to evade responsibility by saying that the government was now owner of the ship he had abandoned.
Acting on instructions from Bligh, the judge advocate, Richard Atkins, summoned Macarthur to appear in Sydney to answer charges. Since Atkins was not a lawyer, the indictment, which specified a long list of complaints and termed Macarthur “a malicious and seditious man, of depraved mind and wicked and diabolical disposition,” was drawn up with the aid of the only lawyer in the colony, an emancipated forger named George Crossley.
There had been bad blood between Judge Atkins and Macarthur, and the latter refused to obey the summons, on the grounds that Atkins would not give him a fair trial—even though the remaining six judges of the panel were all officers of the New South Wales Corps and open supporters of the Macarthur faction. Macarthur’s contemptuous and scornful response to the summons foreboded bloodshed, and was an open defiance of the authority of the governor. Bligh, who never evaded clear duty, supported his arrest, and Macarthur, burning with hatred at such an insult, decided on the spot that Bligh would have to be overthrown.
Out on bail, Macarthur began fomenting trouble and laying the groundwork for revolt. He revived and demanded payment of a fifteen-year-old debt owed him by Judge Atkins, amounting to £26 plus £56 interest. The judge agreed to pay even though the debt had long since been legally outlawed, but Macarthur was not satisfied and complained that it was unfair that he could not sue Atkins, who presided over the only court that could handle such a case. Macarthur then uncovered another grievance against Bligh, who had canceled an illegal lease that Macarthur had obtained on a plot of land in the Government Domain next to the church. Macarthur refused to accept another piece which Bligh offered in its place, and hired some soldiers to put a fence around the original plot, which included a public well. This was another act of calculated defiance.
When Macarthur was brought to trial on January 25, 1808, before a panel of six Corps officers and Atkins, he refused to be tried by a court presided over by his personal enemy. The officers accordingly objected to sitting with Atkins, who retired and then maintained that there was no legal court without him—an attitude that Bligh upheld. In this way, Governor Bligh was maneuvered into the paradoxical situation of opposing the military power of the colony which alone could carry out his orders. The six officers insisted that they had the right to judge Macarthur without the presence of Atkins; Bligh said they had not. Their defiance was probably a symptom of a deep plot to challenge Bligh’s position and try to restore the good old days of rum and rackets. Their secret leader was certainly Macarthur, the prisoner before them, whom they had vowed to judge impartially.
The next day Judge Atkins presented Governor Bligh with a memorial which indicated that the six officers had committed an act which amounted to a usurpation of the government and which tended to incite or create rebellion or other outrageous treason. On the basis of this report, Bligh summoned the six officers to appear before him at Government House to explain their behavior. At the same time he wrote again to ask the aid of Major George Johnston, in acting command of the Corps, requesting him to come into town and take charge of his rebellious soldiers. Johnston, who had retired to his estate four miles from the barracks, had pleaded the previous day that he was dangerously ill and could not even write a reply. Yet now he miraculously recovered and was able to ride to town in a carriage. But Bligh was to get no help from him.
The major later claimed that on his arrival at the barracks, soldiers and civilians were in a state of terror, and they convinced him that there would be a bloody insurrection unless he immediately put the unpopular Governor Bligh under arrest. Johnston did not go and talk to Bligh about the situation, or even report to him as he was obligated to do, since Bligh was his superior officer. Instead, Johnston usurped the title of lieutenant governor of the colony. Then, under this title, he ordered that John Macarthur be liberated from custody at once.
When that firebrand joined the group in the barrack square, Johnston is reported to have said: “God’s curse! What am I to do, Macarthur? Here are these fellows advising me to arrest the governor.” Macarthur answered: “Advising you? Then, sir, the only thing left for you to do is to arrest him. To advise on such matters is legally as criminal as to do them,” implying that the whole group were now committed to the rebellion.
Then Macarthur, using a cannon barrel for a desk, wrote out a petition asking Johnston to arrest Bligh. This requisition, on the basis of which Johnston led a mutiny against constituted authority in New South Wales, was probably signed by only two or three people at the time it was drafted; other signatures were gained after the rebellion was over, some of them at the point of a bayonet. But document or no document, Bligh had to be overthrown immediately after Johnston had unlawfully released Macarthur from prison.
Johnston placed himself at the head of his regiment of three to four hundred men, with bayonets set and muskets loaded with ball. The redcoats marched to the tune of “Th
e British Grenadiers,” with the proud colors of the Rum Corps floating in the air. Macarthur ran alongside, urging the men on. Less than half a mile from the barracks they came to Government House. Here they were drawn up in line opposite the gates, with pieces of artillery aimed at the building. Four officers and a number of troops were sent inside to arrest one man, Governor Bligh. Their capture of Government House was the first and last victory in the field in the history of the New South Wales Corps.
The entrance of the soldiers was delayed for a while. Mary Putland, the recently widowed daughter of Bligh, beat them off with her parasol, exclaiming: “You traitors, you rebels, you have just walked over my husband’s grave, and now come to murder my father!” She clung with her little hands to the gatepost and, even when forcibly dragged away, returned to the defense. Hers was the only hand to strike a blow in Bligh’s defense that afternoon. The soldiers soon overran the house, including Mrs. Putland’s room, and arrested the small group of magistrates conferring in Bligh’s study. But where was the governor himself?
Bligh, in spite of previous experiences, still refused to believe that anyone would mutiny against him. But here they were, on the march. From an upper room he had watched the enemy approach, and was determined not to give them the satisfaction of arresting him without a struggle. In fact, Bligh kept a whole regiment busy hunting for him for almost two hours. Again and again, in a grim game of hide-and-seek, they plunged their bayonets into likely lurking places in the house and grounds. Finally they found him in a little lumber room, in full uniform with his medal on his breast and his sword by his side. He was behind or under a bed—accounts differ.
The mutinous populace, of course, made propaganda by publishing broadsides showing their governor being dragged forth from under a bed. But it is unlikely, in the light of his whole career, that Bligh concealed himself as an act of planned cowardice. Piecing together various testimonies, it is probable that the following events took place. His first impulse at the alarm was to face his attackers. He went upstairs and donned his naval uniform and his Camperdown medal. Then he began collecting valuable papers to destroy or hide for future use. Hearing the search begin when a party of soldiers rushed upstairs, he retired to the back room with the idea of escaping to the Hawkesbury River settlements and striving to maintain his authority.
That proved impossible. At this point he lost his head, and took refuge ingloriously under a bed which was high enough to enable him to brace himself out of sight; indeed, the soldiers searched the room twice before finding him, and he might have escaped, but the Corpsmen found him on the third try. His friends have argued that this concealment was not the act of a poltroon; a coward would have surrendered without an effort to escape. But his enemies never let anyone forget the bed story.
That night, with Governor Bligh under arrest, Johnston proclaimed martial law and seized the government papers. The downfall of Bligh was celebrated with an issue of free liquor. Bonfires blazed, Bligh was burned in effigy, the military band played a piece called “The Silly Old Man” and John Macarthur was carried around the streets in a chair to receive the cheers of his faction.
Johnston took over the governor’s functions, but the power behind the throne remained Macarthur, who got himself appointed to the newly invented position of secretary to the colony. The treasonous regime at once set about restoring the old days of plunder and rum, and so distant were they from the authority in London that for two years they were able to maintain an interregnum filled with corruption.
Macarthur’s trial was resumed, and turned into a smear attack on Governor Bligh, still under arrest at Government House; the judges were the same officers who had led the overthrow of the government. The new regime elevated Bligh’s enemies to office and persecuted his followers. For example, the provost marshal and the emancipated forger who had compiled the list of complaints against Macarthur were dragged off to start seven-year sentences in the coal mines north of Sydney.
Friends of the ruling gang were rewarded by wholesale grants of public lands and cattle from the government stores. Even the naval officers were corrupted by land grants. Liquor once more flowed freely; it was reported by the Reverend Samuel Marsden that “since the governor was in arrest, ninety houses have been opened in the town of Sydney, eight and twenty in Parramatta, and fourteen at the Hawkesbury, to sell spirits.” Thefts and robberies became common. A ship was captured by forty convicts and used to escape from the colony.
The rank-and-file rebels had hoped that there would be a restoration of the old spoils system, but the new dictators they had set up were grabbing everything on their own behalf. Their greed was insatiable, and even Macarthur said that “the whole of the public property would not have satisfied them.” The administration alienated even its friends; feuds broke out; and the colony slowly fell apart.
The government in London was slow to act even when the news of the mutiny reached them; and not until December, 1809, did Bligh’s successor arrive in Sydney. Bligh did not leave for England until April, 1810, on a ship loaded with household goods and bundles of papers—his evidence in the forthcoming trial—and accompanied by no less than sixteen witnesses who were to testify in his behalf.
Major Johnston was taken to England to answer court-martial charges brought against him for deposing Bligh. He was convicted of mutiny and sentenced to be cashiered from the service.
Macarthur had also gone to England, to organize Johnston’s defense. Although it was clear that he had been the main undercover promoter of the whole affair, Macarthur was not tried, since he was not then a military officer. He attempted but failed to hold the spotlight as a champion of civil liberties, and merely played the role of a minor witness. He was forced to remain in exile from his Australian estate for eight years, under threat of arrest there for treason, and possible hanging. He did not return until 1817. During his last few years he degenerated into a hopeless lunatic.
What of William Bligh, who thus weathered his fourth mutiny and fifth major court-martial? As usual, he was not only exonerated but was also restored to his naval rank and promptly promoted. As a mark of signal honor, on July 31, 1811, which was conspicuously one day earlier than the year’s general promotions, he was gazetted a rear admiral of the Blue Squadron. Three years later he was upped to vice-admiral and became a prominent figure in the British Navy.
At the comfortable age of sixty-four, laden with glory and befriended by most of the great figures of England, Admiral William Bligh died peacefully in bed.
6
Dona Isabel, the Lady Explorer
The Pacific has never been noted for its women adventurers, primarily because the native Polynesian woman was such an utterly delightful creature that no mere stranger from Europe could hope to match her. When the first white men sailed their exploring craft into the warm waters of Polynesia one of the most striking aspects of that wonderful new world was the brown-skinned native women—and you could see all the skin—who swam out to the anchorages, their long black hair festooned with flowers and streaming out behind them, and who made the most provocative gestures, understood in any language, inviting the water-weary sailors ashore for a frolic under the palm trees.
And when these beautiful children of nature were allowed to climb aboard the ships—some captains made their men fight them off with boat hooks—the girls promptly sought out the bunking quarters, to which they took the sailors, one at a time.
It was pretty difficult for a white woman to compete against such experts, and that explains why the literature of the Pacific is so replete with wild and improbable stories about the men of the West and so barren of good tales about the women of Europe and America.
Actually, there is a considerable body of story material about white women in the tropics, but unfortunately most of these lively girls are of such recent vintage that delicacy and respect for immediate families forestall the writer of this generation. Regretfully he puts aside his notes on the soi-disant queens, the wild women of t
he gold fields and the would-be litterateurs who ploughed a deep furrow through the broad wastes of the Pacific. Their delightful stories will have to be shared with the public a generation from now.
But there is one adventuresome lady who set forth to win a Pacific empire sufficiently long ago that a brief narrative of her behavior will embarrass no one, and fortunately for the modern reader, she was one of the supreme bitches of all time.
She participated in a particularly turbulent exploring expedition that set out from Callao, Peru, in 1595. It was headed by her fumbling, well-intentioned husband, Don Alvaro de Mendaña, and was piloted by a superb gentleman who was to leave a distinguished though tragic mark upon the Pacific, Pedro Fernandez de Quirós.
But the most important member of the expedition turned out to be Mendaña’s wife, Doña Isabel Barreto, who, in pursuit of designs which no husband has ever understood since the world began, insisted that many of her relatives accompany the expedition in positions to which their abilities did not entitle them. Rarely has an expedition set forth so clearly marked for disaster: a vacillating leader, a fiery wife, a horde of incompetent relatives, maps that had been doctored to hide true longitudes and sails that tended to rot quickly in the tropics. In addition, the convoy carried with it a special complication, for Don Alvaro’s intention was not only to explore but to colonize as well, so that he took with him a number of unmarried Peruvian women. This created problems.
Fundamentally, Don Alvaro’s theory was a sound one. Ever since the Pacific had been discovered by a Spaniard, Balboa, more than eighty years before, Spain had held a virtual monopoly on this mighty ocean. Only a few intruders like the Englishman Francis Drake, whom the Spaniards considered a pirate, had entered its waters. Most of its great expanse was unknown even to the Spaniards. And its islands remained uncolonized, its natives ignorant of Christ.