chapter of Dr. Lang's history of the colony—Lang was no partisan or connection of Bligh—which shows beyond dispute that Bligh acted, as he always did, with the most scrupulous regard to his duty and instructions, and received from time to time the written approval of the King, through Lord Castlereagh, then Secretary of State.
[H] Mrs. Nutting has here made a mistake in the distance traversed. Timoa is, of course, meant for Timor. (See page 246.)
"It has been the pleasure of this generation to malign and misrepresent this good man and brave, not once, but continually. It originated in false statements made in the defence of two of the mutineers, Christian and Heywood, representing Bligh's severity and cruelty as being the cause of the mutiny. Yet it can be proved from the minutes of the court-martial that Heywood on his trial defended himself by swearing that he was kept on board the Bounty by force, and that it was 'impossible he could ever willingly have done anything to injure Captain Bligh, who had always been a father to him.' As to Christian, it can be shown that this was the third voyage he had sailed with Captain Bligh. Would a man go three times with a commander such as Bligh has been described by his enemies?
"I have no object in writing this account but love for the memory of a man who was my mother's father, and so beloved of her and his other daughters (for he had no son), that the same love and feeling were instilled into the minds of her children. It was quite recently asserted in a newspaper that 'Bligh was dismissed his ship for ill-conduct after the mutiny of the Bounty,' and these attacks and false statements are frequent. I know that I am asking what you may deem unusual and inconvenient, and yet I have faith in your love of justice, and desire to clear the memory of one who served his king and country as Bligh did."
Some years ago, an accomplished young lady, well known and much respected in Norfolk Island, and one of the (two or three generations removed) descendants by one side of her family from the mutineers, visited England. An anecdote of this visit was told by the lady herself to one of these authors. This lady's husband, proud of his wife, took her to England and to his home in a certain English county, where, in her honour, her husband's relatives had invited many friends, among them a dear old lady who they knew was a descendant of Bligh. "What an interesting meeting this will be!" thought they, not taking into account all the circumstances. The old lady and the young lady were duly introduced. "Dear me!" said the young lady, "and so you are the——" (mentioning the relationship) "of the tyrant Bligh!" "How dare you, the——" (again emphasising the relationship) "descendant of a base mutineer, thus speak of a distinguished officer," indignantly exclaimed the old lady. Which little anecdote shows how very emphatically there are two sides to this story.
Bligh owed his appointment as governor to Sir Joseph Banks, and a letter from Banks, dated April 19th, 1805, says that he was
empowered by Lord Camden to offer the government of the colony to Bligh at a salary of £2000 a year. Bligh's "Instructions" from the Crown contained a clause which has an important bearing on his administration. It was as follows:—
"And whereas it has been represented to us that great evils have arisen from the unrestrained importation of spirits into our said settlement from vessels touching there, whereby both the settlers and convicts have been induced to barter and exchange their live stock and other necessary articles for the said spirits, to their particular loss and detriment, as well as to that of our said settlement at large, we do, therefore, strictly enjoin you, on pain of our utmost displeasure, to order and direct that no spirits shall be landed from any vessel coming to our said settlement without your consent or that of our governor-in-chief for the time being previously obtained for that purpose, which orders and directions you are to signify to all captains or masters of ships immediately on their arrival at our said settlement, and you are, at the same time, to take the most effective measures that the said orders and directions shall be strictly obey'd and complied with."
Why Bligh should have been selected to govern the colony at this particular period it is difficult to understand, unless it was that, as appears from official correspondence, Sir Joseph Banks pretty well controlled the making of
Australian history at this [a]1807] time—nearly always, if not invariably, to the advantage of Australia.
The condition of affairs ought to have been well understood at home. Hunter and King had both harped upon it in their despatches, and lamented their inability to remedy the abuses that had grown up. They had made it no less plain that the New South Wales Regiment, so far from being a force with which to back authority, was one of the most dangerous elements in the rum-trading community of the settlement.