Flinders had married in 1801 Ann, daughter of Captain [a]1814] Chappell, and by her he had one daughter, Mrs. Annie Petril, who was in 1852 granted, by the joint Governments of New South Wales and Victoria, a pension of £200 a year, which she enjoyed until her death in 1892.
CHAPTER X.
BLIGH AND THE MUTINY OF THE "BOUNTY"
Bligh arrived in New South Wales, and relieved King as governor, in August, 1806. His two years' administration in the colony is noteworthy for nothing but the remarkable manner of its termination. Just as Sir John Franklin's name will live as an Arctic explorer and be forgotten as a Tasmanian governor, so will the name of Bligh in England always recall to mind the Bounty mutiny and scarcely be remembered in connection with Australian history.
Any number of books, and a dozen different versions, have been written of the mutiny. There is Sir John Barrow's Mutiny of the "Bounty," which, considering that the author was Secretary to the Admiralty, ought to be, and is, regarded as an authority; there is Lady Belcher's Mutineers of the "Bounty," by far the most interesting, and probably, notwithstanding
a strong anti-Bligh bias, an impartial account of [a]1806] facts. It is no wonder Lady Belcher was no admirer of Bligh. Heywood, the midshipman who was tried for his life, was her step-father, and she had very good reason to remember Bligh with no friendly feeling. There are other books, some of them as dull as they are pious and inaccurate, others containing no quality of accuracy or piety, and only dull; and there is Bligh's own narrative of the affair, remarkable for its plain account of the mutiny and the writer's boat voyage and the absence of a single word that could throw a shadow of blame upon the memory of Captain Bligh. Byron's poem of "The Island" is, of course, founded on the Bounty mutiny, but the poet has used his licence to such an extent that the poem, which, by the way, some of the poet's admirers say is one of his worst, has no resemblance to the facts. In 1884 Judge McFarland, of the New South Wales District Court, wrote a book on the mutiny, and this work, for the reason that it was published in a remote part of the world, is little known; yet it is probably the best book on the subject. The Judge marshals his facts with judicial ability, and he sums up in such a manner the causes leading to the mutiny, that
if Bligh were on trial before him we are afraid the jury would convict that officer without leaving the box.
A critic whose opinion is entitled to the greatest weight, having read the manuscript of this and the next chapter before it went to press, considered that, although we had written of Bligh's harshness to his men as proved, we had not specifically alluded to the proof. For this reason, and because the story of the Bounty mutiny, like every event that happened in the South Seas a hundred years ago, is interwoven with the early history of Australia, we propose to retell the story shortly. And since it seems that Bligh's tyrannical character is still a fact not taken for granted by everyone, we will endeavour, not to justify the mutiny, but to show that, by all the rules of evidence, Bligh's behaviour to his ship's company is proved to have been of the aggravating character alleged by his shipmates, and that the Bounty was not, as Bligh represented her to be, what is called by sailors "a happy ship."