You continue to work steadily but Bligh's relentless hectoring drives the gentle but weak Botanist David Nelson into a tropical disease which claims his life the month after you arrived in Coupang. By August the HMS Resource is ready and the remaining eighteen Loyalists under Bligh make a short voyage to the busy Indonesian port of Batavia, another Dutch port, arriving on the first day of October. The constant bickering between Bligh and the rest of you continue during this
voyage.

At one point Fryer declares to Bligh "You do not only use me ill but every man in the vessel will say the same."

"Yes by God, we are used damn ill and you do not have any right to do so," Purcell declares.

Bligh grabs a cutlass and has the two men clapped in irons, releasing Fryer after an apology but keeping Purcell imprisoned for the last ten days of the trip. Bligh quickly begins making arrangements to sell the HMS Resource and the boat you left the Bounty on in order to finance the return home of all of you.

The boat has been mislaid and officials in Batavia have mistakenly moored it in a mosquito-infested inland bit of water. Bligh orders Seaman Thomas Hall to go and retrieve it despite the risk from the mosquitoes.

You let him do it on his own

You avoid helping Hall and predictably he becomes sick with malaria from mosquito bites while retrieving the boat and quickly dies. Bligh has also become sick with malaria and just five days after Hall's death he books passage aboard the Dutch ship Vlydte bound for Portsmouth. By this point hostility against him is so widespread that only two men, his clerk John Samuel and his servant John Smith are willing to travel with him, the remaining thirteen prefer to wait under Fryer's command for another ship.

You return to England with Bligh

The voyage back to England is thankfully smooth sailing. It takes two months to reach Cape Town in South Africa, which the Vlydte departs in the first days of 1790. Three months later you are back in England after over two years away and never have you been so relieved to return to your native country. While Bligh goes to London to report the Mutiny on the Bounty to the Admiralty you remain in Portsmouth to rest and wait for your comrades to rejoin you in the safety of England.

You hunting for the Bounty Mutineers

Just thirteen of the twenty loyal crew members cast adrift with Bligh survive to return to England in the spring and summer of 1790, yourself among them. Bligh quickly reports the Mutiny on the Bounty and publishes a book about it, snappily titled A Narrative Of The Mutiny On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew In The Ship's Boat, which you never both to read.

In October Bligh is court martialed for the loss of the Bounty, acquitted and subsequently promoted from Lieutenant to Post Captain. The Admiralty begins making plans to deal with the twenty-five Bounty pirates and decides to send the 24-gun frigate HMS Pandora with 134 men under Captain Edward England to Tahiti to capture all the pirates they can find and bring them back to England for trial. The Admiralty puts out a request for former crew of the Bounty to join the voyage to help identify the pirates and Midshipman Thomas Haywood volunteers for the voyage in exchange for a promotion to Third Lieutenant.

You consider whether to go or not.

You sail with the Pandora to Tahiti to hunt down your former companions

It is with considerable trepidation that you agree to a second voyage to Tahiti but to your relief this one goes smoothly. The Pandora leaves Spithead and sails directly to Tahiti, travelling successfully around Cape Horn. After a swift four month voyage, which last time took you nearly a year, you arrive off the familiar tropical paradise of Tahiti and sail into Toaroa Bay.

You and Lieutenant Haywood, a lazy and arrogant character whom you despise, remain on board the HMS Pandora while parties of heavily armed sailors go ashore. They swiftly return with three men (Armourer Joseph Coleman and Midshipmen Peter Heywood and George Stewart) who surrender themselves and the following day they capture another man. The remaining Mutineers flee into the mountains prompting sailors to scour the island in order to capture them all.

Within two weeks three more men are captured and a fourth has surrendered. By the middle of April six more men have been captured bringing the total up to fourteen of the twenty-five who remained on the Bounty, including all four of the men who wanted to join Bligh in the boat but had no space to do so. They claim two of the remaining men were killed in fights on the island while the other nine Mutineers sailed away aboard the Bounty with several Tahitians in September of 1789 and they haven't been seen since. The Natives confirm these stories.

With nine Mutineers and the Bounty still missing Captain England hoists anchor on 8 May and sets sail to find them. The fourteen prisoners are kept in a specially designed prison on the Pandora's deck.

You disaster!

The Pandora spends three fruitless months scouring the Pacific for signs of the remaining pirates and the Bounty while the fourteen Mutineers they have captured are kept imprisoned in a makeshift prison cell on the quarterdeck inevitably dubbed "Pandora's Box". The voyage is hopeless: with hundreds, if not thousands, of islands to hide on the chances of finding the Bounty and the Mutineers is small.

Disaster strikes you once more one summer's day when the Pandora runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef. She immediately begins sinking and all efforts to either free her or patch up the damage is hopeless. By the next day she is listing worse than ever and you and Haywood are among the first into the boats. The Mutineers are not released in time and four of them drown, only ten swim to the safety of the boats.

The survivors of the Pandora, about one hundred of you including the prisoners re-assemble on a small sand cay. Once more you are sailing to Coupang in four open boats and from there onto Batavia and thence to England, this time with your ten prisoners in tow. The prospect of repeating the same arduous trip you took before fills you with dismay but there is nothing else you can do.

Another remarkable voyage

This time your return back to England is much easier than last time.

You reach Coupang after a voyage of twenty days and from there arrange transport on to Batavia. In Batavia you are lucky enough to find the HMS Gorgon at anchor and board it to return to England. You reach England one summer's day and disembark at Spithead with your ten prisoners in tow. Altogether fifty-six of the one hundred and thirty-four-man crew of the Pandora died during the sinking or of disease as well as four of the prisoners. Captain Edwards is court martialed and acquitted of the loss of the Pandora and the Admiralty prepares for the trial of the surviving Bounty Mutineers.

You trials

Following your safe return to England a Court Martial is quickly arranged to try the ten captured mutineers you and Haywood managed to help the crew of the Pandora get back. Bligh and another of your former comrades, a sailor called Lawrence LeBogue, have gone sailing on a second voyage to try and do what Bligh failed to do on his first voyage and deliver breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica.

The Admiralty requests that as many of the eleven remaining loyal members of the Bounty crew that can be found (not counting Bligh and LeBogue) should testify against the ten captured mutineers and you read in newspapers that seven, including Fryer, Cole, Peckover, Purcell and Haywood, have volunteered their services. You wonder whether you should go or not.

You testify against your former companions

You decide to attend the court martial proceedings aboard the HMS Duke overseen by Admiral Hood. Of the ten prisoners Carpenter's Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne have letters from Bligh allowing that they wanted to join him in his boat but had to remain aboard the Bounty due to lack of room. They are quickly acquitted.

Sailing Master John Fryer, Boatswain William Cole, Gunner William Peckover, Carpenter William Purcell, Lieutenants Thomas Hayward and John Hallet, Seaman John Smith and yourself all testify against the six remainder: Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain's Mate James Morrison and Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison, John Millward and William Muspratt. With eighteen former crew members of the Bounty present it is the closest you get to a reunion.

Heywood fights a strong case, pointing out he was just sixteen at the time, that he slept through most of what was going on and arrived on deck too late to help and wanted to join Bligh in the boat but there was no room. Witnesses agree they never saw him helping the mutineers but also that he never did much to help the Loyalists either. Ultimately the Judges decided to pardon him.

Morrison is another man who wins a pardon, arguing a tenacious defense that successfully convinced the Judge's he had also taken no part either for or against the Mutineers. Muspratt has a harder time as he was seen at the time of the mutiny standing by with a musket in his hands. He wins a pardon largely based on a technicality: his request to call Byrn and Norman as witnesses was refused and a mistrial was later ruled.

Burkett, Ellison and Millward had no chance. Burkett was among those who forced Bligh from his cabin at gunpoint. Ellison and Millward both had cutlasses in their hands and took an active part in forcing people into the boat. All three are sentenced to be hung and two months after the court martial all three are executed upon the HMS Brunswick in Spithead and their bodies left hanging for all to see.

The following summer Bligh returned from his breadfruit expedition, doubtless disappointed to have missed the trials of the Bounty mutineers. This voyage had been a success but on bringing the breadfruit to Jamaica the slaves refused to eat it, not liking the taste. It seems that the reason behind the voyage of the Bounty, and everything that arose from it, was fundamentally pointless.

The Future

By the end of 1793 there are just thirteen men who survived the boat journey to Coupang in England, including you. Of these you have lost contact with Gunner William Peckover, Clerk John Samuel and Captain's Servant John Smith. You know some of your former companions have had enough and want to retire from the sea but most are happy to keep serving. You must make your choice.

You retire from the sea

The years go by and as you age you read in newspapers about what befalls your former comrades. Lieutenant John Hallett dies in 1794 of lingering malaria from your voyages. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood drowns when the HMS Swift sinks in 1798, Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue dies of a fall the same year. Quartermaster's Mate George Simpson dies on land in 1801. Others go on to long and distinguished careers.

William Bligh and John Fryer both enjoy success and promotion in the Navy, both die in 1817. Midshipman Robert Tinkler dies in 1820. Boatswain William Cole dies ashore in 1833 and the last of your companions, opinionated Carpenter William Purcell dies in 1834. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian.

In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people, except for him all women or children. The Admiralty decides against taking any action.

John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.

You conclusion

By the end of 1835 you have outlived every single one of the forty-six men who sailed from England aboard the Bounty in the winter of 1787 and go to your grave peacefully.

From 1787-1793 twenty-four, over half, of the Bounty's crew died of disease, drowned, were killed by Natives or each other or were killed in England. Over the next fourteen years seven more met similar fates. Of the entire Crew only nine are known to have definitely suffered natural deaths. You are one of the few lucky ones who experienced disease, piracy, Native attacks, shipwrecks, fighting and all the other hazards that befell you and survived. Ultimately hundreds of deaths including seventy-eight Natives killed on Tubai, and the fifty-eight who died from the HMS Pandora's crew, are connected with the Mutiny on the Bounty.

Even the 2012 death of Claudene Christian, Fletcher Christian's descendent, who drowned when the Bounty, a replica of the HMS Bounty, sank during Hurricane Sandy, can be connected to the Mutiny.

Singularly each of these events, the Mutiny, the wrecking of the Pandora, the Trials of the Mutineers in Spithead, Massacre Day on Pitcairn, the loss of the replica Bounty were fairly common place events, especially in the 1700's and 1800's in England but taken altogether they form a remarkable story. The greatest legacy of this remarkable legacy is the still-populated island of Pitcairn, with approximately fifty people descended from Pirates it remains the smallest country in the world.

So who was ultimately to blame for the Mutiny, Bligh or Christian?

Carpenter William Purcell, who hated Bligh, had no doubt.

"Christian was a gentleman," he told Christian's brother after his return to England. "A brave man and every officer and seaman on board the ship would have gone through fire and water to serve him. As much as I have lost and suffered by him if he could be restored to his country I should be the first to go without wages in search of him."

It was Christian's fate, in a moment of madness, to set off a chain of events that would end with him being shot in the back while carrying wood across his garden on Pitcairn four years later. There is a tale oft-told on Pitcairn of a certain cave that Christian had stocked with muskets in case he needed to make a last stand if the island were ever found by the Royal Navy. Often he sat alone up there at night, mournfully reflecting on all that he had lost and the nineteen men he had cast adrift at sea for the sins of one of them.

The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty can be seen as much as a Tragedy as an Adventure.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

You sources

I will end this story game with a few notes about my Sources.

The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty has been made into movies five times, in 1916, in 1933 (with Errol Flynn), in 1935 (with Clark Gable), in 1962 (with Marlon Brando and Richard Harris) and in 1984 (with Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson). The most recent version is also the most accurate and all are worth watching, if only for entertainment value.

Wikipedia gave me a good start on sources about the Bounty, the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre proved an invaluable resource and the Famous Trials page on the Mutiny on the Bounty by Doug Linder provided me with detailed accounts of the 1792 trial of the surviving mutineers. Firsthand accounts by William Bligh and a rather good later 1831 book by Sir John Barrow, accessed through Project Gutenberg, also helped immerse myself in the period including Bligh's bizarre vocabulary of insults.

As the replica of the HMS Bounty used in the 1984 movie in anchored off Lantau Island in Hong Kong I took the opportunity to pop over from Shenzhen and see it (from a distance as it is a privately-owned ship) on one of my rest days. This replica was made in 1979 and helped drive home the small size of the Bounty, as already noted a second vessel made in 1962 sank during Hurricane Sandy fifty years later resulting in the death of two people including Fletcher Christian's descendent Claudene Christian. The Christian Science Monitor called her death "an almost inexplicable twist in that family's legacy".

One of my biggest hopes for the future is to one day visit Pitcairn Island.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

NOTE: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT THE VARIOUS FATES OF THE BOUNTY CREW USE THIS ITEM.