Lost ships and lonely seas

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

After watching the faithless Bounty until she gleamed like a bit of cloud, the refugees shoved out their oars and pulled in the direction of the nearest island, Tofa, about forty miles distant. A slant of wind presently favored them, and they hoisted sail, bowling along until they were able to drop anchor outside the barrier of surf soon after nightfall of the same day.

Next morning they landed in a cove and found natives who seemed amiable enough and who supplied them with cocoanuts, plantains, breadfruit, and water. The humor of these temperamental islanders changed without warning, however, and in a sudden attack with stones and spears they killed one of the quartermasters. This dissuaded Bligh from his plan of cruising from one island to another and so making his way to civilization. He told his men that he purposed to attempt to make no more landings, but to steer for the Dutch East Indies and the port of Timor, almost four thousand miles away. In those wild seas there was no nearer haven where they might hope to find Europeans and a ship to carry them home to England.

In the confusion of escaping from Tofa, they lost most of the fruit which had been taken on there, and so they set sail with just about the amount of stores with which they had been set adrift from the Bounty, but with one less man to feed. They were so cramped for space in the yawl that Bligh divided them into watches, and half the men sat upon the cross-seats while the others lay down in the bottom, and every two hours they exchanged places. The bread was stowed in the carpenter’s tool-chest, and all the provisions were scrupulously guarded by sentries.

There were no symptoms of mutiny in this company. Bligh had found himself, and he ruled them with a rod of iron. They were willing and obedient, realizing that this imperious, unshaken commander was their only hope of winning against the odds which loomed black against them. Timor was merely a name to them. Some of them did not even know where it was, but they had implicit faith in Lieutenant William Bligh.

The carpenter whittled for him a pair of scales and some musket-balls were found in the boat. These were known to weigh twenty-five to the pound of sixteen ounces. In order to make the provisions last as long as possible, three meals a day were served, and each consisted of a musket-ball’s weight of bread, an ounce of pork, and a teaspoonful of rum in a quarter of a pint of water. If you should be curious enough to measure out such a repast for yourself and try living on it for a few days only, I have no doubt that your weight would be reduced more rapidly than any high-priced specialist in dietetics could possibly achieve for you. A twenty-fifth of a pound of hard bread would not much more than satisfy the appetite of a vigorous canary bird. Yet these seventeen men lived on it and stayed alive for weeks and weeks. Heavy rains came to give them more water, but thirst was a continual torment, so sparingly and prudently did Lieutenant Bligh dole out the precious fluid.

They passed within sight of many islands, green and smiling, and smoke wreathed skyward from native camps and villages, but Bligh sternly checked his men when they yearned to seek the land and a respite from the merciless sea. With him it was Timor or die, and in the lonely watches he recalled that previous voyage with Captain Cook, when the great navigator was lured to his death by the soft-voiced, garlanded people of Oahu. And so the open boat flitted past the mysterious beaches and lagoons of the New Hebrides and veered farther seaward to give a wide berth to the savage coast of New Guinea. After one of the numerous storms which almost swamped them, Bligh noted in his diary:

I found every person complaining and some of them requested extra allowance. I positively refused. Our situation was miserable, always wet and suffering extreme cold in the night, without the least shelter from the weather. Being constantly compelled to bale the boat to keep her from filling perhaps should not have been reckoned an evil because it gave us exercise. Our appearance was shocking and several of my people seemed half-dead. I could look no way without catching the eye of some one in distress. The little sleep we got was in the midst of water and we always awoke with severe cramps and pains in our bones.

This was on May 22, or eighteen days after they had left the island of Tofa, during most of which time there had been drenching rains and somber skies and heavy seas, which broke into the boat and almost swamped her time and again. The seventeen men were still existing on the morsels of bread and pork carefully weighed out with the musket-ball, which they said was “little better than starving,” but Bligh held them in hand, and there was no rebellion even when he explained that the system of rationing would permit them to exist for twenty-nine days longer, though he was not at all certain that they could fetch Timor in that time, and he purposed to make the stores hold out for six weeks.

In order to do that they would have to omit their supper and get along on two meals of a twenty-fifth of a pound of bread. “I was apprehensive that a proposal on this head would be ill received,” Lieutenant Bligh commented, “and that it would require my utmost resolution to enforce it. However, on representing to the people the necessity of guarding against casual delays, from adverse winds, and other causes, they all cheerfully assented.”

There was never a more methodical man than this Lieutenant William Bligh. When they caught a couple of boobies, sea-fowl as large as a duck, the bodies were divided into seventeen portions, and one man was detailed to turn his back while another pointed at the pieces and asked, “Who is to have this?” The first sailor named a companion at random, and drew the fragment designated. In this manner a fair distribution was assured, and the man who drew the feet of the bird to chew could have no quarrel with the lucky sailor who got a bit of the breast.