The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause and Consequences

by Sir John Barrow

'To show that I have no disposition to impose upon this Court, by endeavouring to paint the situation of the boat to be worse than it really was, I need only refer to the captain's own narrative, wherein he says that she would have sunk with them on the evening of the 3rd May, had it not been for his timely caution of throwing out some of the stores, and all the clothes belonging to the people, excepting two suits for each.

'Now what clothes or stores could they have spared which in weight would have been equal to that of two men? (for if I had been in her, and the poor fellow, Norton, had not been murdered at Tofoa, she would have been encumbered with our additional weight), and if it be true that she was saved by those means, which the captain says she was, it must follow that if Norton and myself had been in her (to say nothing of Coleman, M'Intosh, Norman, and Byrne, who, 'tis confessed, were desirous of leaving the ship), she must either have gone down with us, or, to prevent it, we must have lightened her of the provisions and other necessary articles, and thereby have perished for want—dreadful alternative!

'A choice of deaths to those who are certain of dying may be a matter of indifference; but where, on one hand, death appears inevitable, and the means of salvation present themselves on the other, however imprudent it might be to resort to those means in any other less trying situation, I think (and hope even at my present time of life) that I shall not be suspected of a want of courage for saying, few men would hesitate to embrace the latter.

'Such, then, was exactly my situation on board the Bounty; to be starved to death, or drowned, appeared to be inevitable if I went in the boat; and surely it is not to be wondered at, if, at the age of sixteen years, with no one to advise with, and so ignorant of the discipline of the service (having never been at sea before) as not to know or even suppose it was possible that what I should determine upon might afterwards be alleged against me as a crime—I say, under such circumstances, in so trying a situation, can it be wondered at, if I suffered the preservation of my life to be the first, and to supersede every other, consideration.

'Besides, through the medium of the master, the captain had directed the rest of the officers to remain on board, in hopes of retaking the ship. Such is the master's assertion, and such the report on board, and as it accorded with my own wishes for the preservation of my life, I felt myself doubly justified in staying on board, not only as it appeared to be safer than going in the boat, but from a consideration also of being in the way to be useful in assisting to accomplish so desirable a wish of the captain.

'Let it not—for God's sake—let it not be argued that my fears were groundless, and that the arrival of the boat at Timor is a proof that my conduct was wrong. This would be judging from the event, and I think I have plainly shown that, but for the death of Norton at Tofoa, and the prudent order of the captain not to overload the boat, neither himself nor any of the people who were saved with him, would at this moment have been alive to have preferred any charge against me, or given evidence at this trial.

'If deliberate guilt be necessarily affixed to all who continued on board the ship, and that in consequence they must be numbered with Christian's party—in such a strict view of matters it must irrevocably impeach the armourer and two carpenter's mates, as well as Martin and Byrne, who certainly wished to quit the ship. And if Christian's first intention of sending away the captain, with a few persons only, in the small cutter, had not been given up, or if even the large cutter had not been exchanged for the launch, more than half of those who did go with him would have been obliged to stay with me. Forgetful for a moment of my own misfortunes, I cannot help being agitated at the bare thought of their narrow escape.

'Every body must, and I am sure that this Court will, allow that my case is a peculiarly hard one, inasmuch as the running away with the ship is a proof of the mutiny having been committed. The innocent and the guilty are upon exactly the same footing—had the former been confined by sickness, without a leg to stand on, or an arm to assist them in opposing the mutineers, they must have been put upon their trial, and instead of the captain being obliged to prove their guilt, it would have been incumbent upon them to have proved themselves innocent. How can this be done but negatively? If all who wished it could not accompany the captain, they were necessarily compelled to stay with Christian; and being with him, were dependent on him, subject to his orders, however disinclined to obey them, for force in such a state is paramount to every thing. But when, on the contrary, instead of being in arms, or obeying any orders of the mutineers, I did every thing in my power to assist the captain, and those who went with him, and by all my actions (except in neglecting to do what, if I had done, must have endangered the lives of those who were so fortunate as to quit the ship) I showed myself faithful to the last moment of the captain's stay, what is there to leave a doubt in the minds of impartial and dispassionate men of my being perfectly innocent? Happy indeed should I have been if the master had stayed on board, which he probably would have done, if his reasons for wishing to do so had not been overheard by the man who was in the bread-room.

'Captain Bligh in his narrative acknowledges that he had left some friends on board the Bounty, and no part of my conduct could have induced him to believe that I ought not to be reckoned of the number. Indeed from his attention to and very kind treatment of me personally, I should have been a monster of depravity to have betrayed him. The idea alone is sufficient to disturb a mind where humanity and gratitude have, I hope, ever been noticed as its characteristic features; and yet Mr. Hallet has said that he saw me laugh at a time when, Heaven knows, the conflict in my own mind, independent of the captain's situation, rendered such a want of decency impossible. The charge in its nature is dreadful, but I boldly declare, notwithstanding an internal conviction of my innocence has enabled me to endure my sufferings for the last sixteen months, could I have laid to my heart so heavy an accusation, I should not have lived to defend myself from it. And this brings to my recollection another part of Captain Bligh's narrative, in which he says, "I was kept apart from every one, and all I could do was by speaking to them in general, but my endeavours were of no avail, for I was kept securely bound, and no one but the guard was suffered to come near me."

'If the captain, whose narrative we may suppose to have been a detail of every thing which happened, could only recollect that he had spoken generally to the people, I trust it will hardly be believed that Mr. Hallet, without notes, at so distant a period as this, should be capable of recollecting that he heard him speak to any one in particular; and here it may not be improper to observe that, at the time to which I allude, Mr. Hallet (if I am rightly informed) could not have been more than fifteen years of age. I mean not to impeach his courage, but I think if circumstances be considered, and an adequate idea of the confused state of the ship can be formed by this Court, it will not appear probable that this young gentleman should have been so perfectly unembarrassed as to have been able to particularize the muscles of a man's countenance, even at a considerable distance from him; and what is still more extraordinary is, that he heard the captain call to me from abaft the mizen to the platform where I was standing, which required an exertion of voice, and must have been heard and noticed by all who were present, as the captain and Christian were at that awful moment the objects of every one's peculiar attention; yet he who was standing between us, and noticing the transactions of us both, could not hear what was said.