William Bligh

English naval officer

• Born: September 9, 1754
• Birthplace: Plymouth, Devonshire, England
• Died: December 7, 1817
• Place of death: London, England

Notorious for having lost the Bounty to mutineers in the South Pacific in 1789, Bligh had a long and distinguished but controversial career in the British navy.

Early Life

William Bligh was the only child of Francis Bligh (1721-1780) and Jane Pearce Bligh (1713-1769). His mother, a widow when she married Francis in 1753, had a daughter Catherine who was nineteen when William was born. His father, who would remarry twice following Jane’s death, was customs officer at Plymouth. The Bligh line was well established and quite distinguished in the English West Country.

William’s half sister Catherine married John Bond, a surgeon serving on HMS Monmouth in 1762. Through this connection and perhaps those of his father, just before his eighth birthday, William was made a captain’s servant on this sixty-four-gun ship as part of the traditional preparation for a career as a naval officer. For the next eight years, Bligh was educated, mostly ashore, in mathematics, astronomy, and the various aspects of navigation and seamanship. His subsequent achievements suggest that he was an outstanding, even brilliant, student.

From 1770 until 1776, Bligh served aboard three ships, mostly as a midshipman. He then passed separate examinations qualifying him both as a naval lieutenant and as a sailing master. It was in the latter capacity, as a warrant officer rather than a commissioned officer, that Bligh was selected by the explorer Captain James Cook for his third voyage to the Pacific. For a young man of twenty-one, this appointment as master of HMS Resolution was a conspicuous honor, and Bligh performed very well. However, it was also the first subtle indication that his talents were more as a nautical technician than as a naval leader. The long voyage, from 1776 through 1780, bore this out. Bligh’s navigation, seamanship, and chartwork were outstanding, but he was quite critical of his fellow officers, including Cook. He felt, with considerable justification, that others were given credit for his work. He was open in expressing his opinions, which resulted in his not being promoted to lieutenant at the end of the voyage.

Bligh’s next several years were busy and successful. He served on four naval vessels, in the process securing promotion. He married Elizabeth Betham, his beloved “Betsy,” with whom he eventually had six daughters. On temporary half pay from naval service, he captained three merchant vessels on the West Indian run. On the last of these, the Britannia, Bligh sailed with Fletcher Christian, first his protégé, then the leader of those who deposed Bligh and seized the Bounty.

Life’s Work

In August, 1787, William Bligh was appointed commander of HMS Bounty and ordered to transport breadfruit trees from Tahiti for transplantation in the West Indies. The breadfruit were intended to serve as cheap homegrown food for slaves on West Indian plantations. Bligh accepted the appointment eagerly. Although he would command a small (ninety-foot), inadequately crewed (forty-seven-man) ship as a poorly paid lieutenant, captaincy of the Bounty offered a return to naval service on a voyage with Cook-like undertones of exploration and discovery in the South Seas.

Before the Bounty sailed in December, 1787, Bligh lobbied unsuccessfully for promotion. Status and money aside, promotion (to commander or even captain) would have enabled him to carry other commissioned officers and marines to provide discipline and security. However, Lieutenant Bligh was assisted only by warrant officers and midshipmen. Two of the former, John Fryer the master and William Peckover the gunner, commanded watches. The third watch was commanded by Christian, whose status was ambiguous. Officially a midshipman, Christian joined the ship as master’s mate but early in the voyage was promoted to acting lieutenant. Given that Christian was relatively young and inexperienced, promotion to a position that was effectively second in command was a clear sign of Bligh’s trust in and esteem for him.

Bligh’s orders were to proceed to Tahiti via Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. He sailed into headwinds and storms at the cape for a month and was forced to turn back and proceed by way of the Indian Ocean and a route south of Australia. This delayed arrival in Tahiti until October, 1788. Weighing the various accounts available, the voyage was a mixed bag. Bligh’s account emphasizes his prudent handling of the ship and its supplies, his constant concern with the crew’s health, and the relative harmony of the outbound voyage. Other accounts, some well after the fact, stress Bligh’s strained relations with his warrant officers and petty officers, his inconstant temperament and tendency toward verbal abuse, and his stinginess with food. However, Bligh’s relationship with Christian before reaching Tahiti appears to have been quite good.

The Bounty expedition remained in Tahiti from late October, 1788, until early April, 1789, procuring, potting, and nurturing the young breadfruit trees. Christian spent this time ashore in overall command of the party gathering the breadfruit. Because the Bounty carried two botanists, this was very light duty. Christian’s other activities are not completely known, especially whether he formed a relationship with a particular Tahitian woman. Certainly he, like most of the crew, was active sexually: Christian was among the many treated for sexually transmitted diseases.

When the Bounty left Tahiti, it was a different ship in several important aspects. It now carried 1,015 small breadfruit trees, as well as a variety of other plants, with the entire collection contained in 774 pots, 39 tubs, and 24 boxes. For twenty-three weeks, discipline had been slack if not nonexistent. Food and sex, the delights of sailors, had been readily available. Three men, including the master-at-arms, had deserted but been recaptured. Abruptly, the freedom and spaciousness of an island paradise were exchanged for a long, dangerous voyage in a tiny ship that was made even smaller because of the space needed for the floating garden. In addition, the ambitious, accomplished commander’s protégé, Christian, had shown himself to be human—all too human.

On April 28, 1789, between five and six in the morning, Christian, supported by roughly one-quarter of the crew, seized control of the Bounty. Before casting Bligh and eighteen “loyalists” adrift in Bounty’s twenty-three-foot launch, Christian famously uttered, “I am in hell.” His meaning will never be certain, but a reasonable interpretation is that Bligh’s tongue-lashings after the ship left Tahiti had placed Christian in a hell suspended between naval idealism and South Seas sensuality. Christian’s action makes psychological sense: Break the tension and escape hell by “running away with” the Bounty, the formal naval charge against the mutineers.

If Christian was torn between duty and freedom, Bligh was not. Once in the launch, his duty was clear: Save the men, sail to a port, return to England, recover the Bounty, and prosecute the mutineers. Bligh, always strong-willed, now became the most determined of men. With almost no provisions, in hazardous waters with a half-hearted crew, he sailed the launch about 3,800 miles in forty-eight days to Kupang on Timor in the Dutch East Indies, arriving on June 14, 1789. This is generally regarded as the most remarkable instance of small-boat navigation known.

Upon returning to England, Bligh was court-martialed, the usual procedure when a naval ship was lost. He was honorably acquitted, rapidly promoted to commander and then captain, and placed in command of a second breadfruit expedition. (Wisely, the Admiralty decided not to send Bligh in pursuit of the mutineers.) This time, Bligh sailed as a captain, with two ships and a full complement of officers and marines. The Providence and the Assistant reached Tahiti on April 9, 1792. Wasting no time, Bligh secured and loaded more than two thousand breadfruit trees and departed on July 20, 1792. Many trees died en route, but the bulk of them were delivered safely to the West Indies in January and February, 1793. For his accomplishment, Bligh was awarded one thousand guineas by the Jamaican house of assembly and the gold medal by the Royal Society of Arts.

For the next ten years, Bligh captained successively larger Royal Navy ships, culminating in command of seventy-four-gun ships. He served bravely and effectively in the Battles of Camperdown (1797) and Copenhagen (1801). Following the latter engagement, Bligh was commended publicly by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, of Trafalgar fame, for his conduct of his ship Glatton. In the periods between his naval commands, he continued his nautical surveying and charting and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1801 for his cumulative work in navigation and botany.

Mingled with these achievements were three significant controversies. In 1797, Bligh, though relatively blameless, was one of a number of officers temporarily removed from their ships during the general mutiny at the Nore. In 1804-1805, Bligh and his second lieutenant on the Warrior took turns court-martialing one another. The lieutenant was acquitted, but the charges against Bligh were “partially proved,” and he was reprimanded for his abusive language. Finally, during his governorship of New South Wales, Australia (1806-1810), Bligh was again deposed by one of his subordinates. No formal guilt was attached to Bligh, but he obviously had not been an effective governor. Despite these difficulties, Bligh was promoted to rear admiral, then vice admiral, but never sailed as such.

Significance

William Bligh was a near genius in the areas of navigation, nautical surveying, and chart making. He is substantially credited with discovery of the Fiji Islands and of an important passage in the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea. He was instrumental in the introduction of breadfruit into the West Indies. He advanced to the higher ranks of the Royal Navy at a time when the best officers might be a blend of skilled seaman, fighting commander, practical scientist, daring explorer, and observant ethnographer. His precise, graceful writing continues to be read. Individuals such as Bligh (and they were relatively few) were the backbone of English sea domination and thus of the British Empire.

Bligh, however, had failings related to his genius that made him unsuitable for higher command. Much has been made of his difficult temperament and especially of his abusive language. However, these are only symptoms of his deeper character. The evidence indicates that Bligh was a man of extraordinary focus and concentration. He ignored all but the immediate task at hand and moved relentlessly toward its completion. In surveying an uncharted coast, this worked well; in attempting to lead much less dedicated men in ambiguous circumstances—the Bounty expedition, the chaotic situation in New South Wales—Bligh’s tunnel vision and his consequent irritable, impatient behavior were sometimes a disaster. It is unfair, but not hard to understand, that he is remembered largely for disasters.

Bibliography

Alexander, Caroline. The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. New York: Viking Press, 2003. Alexander reconstructs the mutiny and its aftermath, portraying Bligh as a brilliant navigator who was not the brutal taskmaster of legend.

Bligh, William. A Book of the Bounty. Edited by George Mackaness. London: Dent, 1938. This Everyman’s Library edition includes selected writings by Bligh on the Bounty voyage and mutiny and minutes of the court-martial of the mutineers.

Christian, Glynn. Fragile Paradise. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Beautifully illustrated, this search for Fletcher Christian by a descendant uncovers new information about Christian and his relationship with Bligh.

Dening, Greg. Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Scholarly yet provocative, this postmodern treatment does a good job of setting the scenes in both the Pacific Islands and London. Illustrated, with a bibliography.

Hough, Richard. Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian. New York: Dutton, 1973. A well-written narrative that develops the theme of a broken affection between Bligh and Christian. The 1984 film The Bounty is based on this book.

Kennedy, Gavin. Captain Bligh. London: Duckworth, 1989. A full, pro-Bligh biography that contains a discussion of Christian’s activities after the mutiny.

Mackaness, George. The Life of Vice-Admiral William Bligh. 1931. Rev. ed. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1951. Written by an Australian, this standard biography develops Bligh’s governorship in considerable detail.

Nordhoff, Charles, and James Norman Hall. Mutiny on the Bounty. Boston: Little, Brown, 1932. Widely available in paperback, this historical novel is splendid reading. With its companion volumes Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn’s Island, it formed the basis for the 1935 and 1962 Bounty films.

Toohey, John. Captain Bligh’s Portable Nightmare. London: Fourth Estate, 1999. Recounts the Bounty’s voyage to Java. Reevaluates Bligh’s reputation, concluding he was a man of his time misunderstood by later generations.

Wahlroos, Sven. Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas. Topsfield, Mass.: Salem House, 1989. This useful work is part month-by-month chronicle and part encyclopedia of persons, places, and ships. Extensive bibliography included.