"The court having duly and maturely weighed and considered the whole of the evidence adduced on the prosecution, as well as what has been offered in defence, are of opinion that Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston is guilty of the act of mutiny as described in the charge, and do therefore sentence him to be cashiered";
and approval of the sentence is thus recorded:—
"His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty, was pleased, under all the circumstances of the case, to acquiesce in the sentence of the court. The court, in passing a sentence so inadequate to the enormity of the crime of which the prisoner has been found guilty, have apparently been actuated by a consideration of the novel and extraordinary circumstances which, by the evidence on the face of the proceedings, may have appeared to them to have existed during the administration of Governor Bligh, both as affecting the tranquillity of the colony and calling for some immediate decision. But although the Prince Regent admits the principle under which the court have allowed the consideration to act in mitigation
of the punishment which the crime of [a]1811] mutiny would otherwise have suggested, yet no circumstances whatever can be received by His Royal Highness in full extenuation of an assumption of power so subversive of every principle of good order and discipline as that under which Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston has been convicted."
If Bligh had no part in bringing these disasters upon himself, he was a very unfortunate man (he was never given another command), and his enemies were extremely lucky in coming off so well. Mutineers whom he accused of taking active part against him, instead of getting hanged, rise to high rank in the service of the King; the military leader of an insurrection, in place of being shot on a parade-ground, is mildly dismissed the service, and becomes a prosperous settler upon the soil on which he raised the standard of revolution. But, whatever may have been his faults, arising from his ungovernable temper and arbitrary disposition, the statements of his military traducers reflecting on his personal courage may be dismissed with the contempt they deserve.
CHAPTER XII.
OTHER NAVAL PIONEERS, AND THE PRESENT MARITIME STATE OF AUSTRALIA—CONCLUSION.
Long after Bligh, the last naval governor, was in his grave, the pioneer work of naval officers went on; and if not the chief aid to the settlement of Australia, it played an important part in its development. Begun at the foundation of the colony, when the marine explorer did his work in open boats; carried on, as the settlement grew, in locally built fore-and-aft vessels down to the present, when navigating officers are year in, year out, cruising "among the South Sea Islands," or on the less known parts of the northern and western Australian coast-line, surveying in up-to-date triple-expansion-engined steam cruisers or in steam surveying yachts, the work of chart-making has always been, and still is, done so thoroughly as to