It’s a bit misleading to cite the Hermione as an example of Royal Navy shipboard punishment without pointing out that Capt. Pigot’s behavior led to one of the bloodiest mutinies of the era.
It’s also misleading to refer to Bligh as “the seventh-highest ranking officer in the Royal Navy” once reaching Vice Admiral of the Blue; by his time, there was more than one officer holding each admiral rank, except for the top spot.
A bit off topic, but has anybody ever tasted breadfruit?
Lincoln went to the theatre to see it.
Got a splitting headache.
An entire GQ thread from last year addressing exactly this question in some detail.
And you’re still nitpicking. Again, I said “most stories and movies”. That’s a larger category. Movies are a subset of “stories and movies”.
Factually incorrect statement. The show was nominated for 4 Emmies, won two, and won a Peabody Award.. It was popular enough to get parodied by Bugs Bunny. That is surely not obscure.
Actually, no, you didn’t:
No. I’m listing the sources exhaustively because I actually did the research. I spent time and effort on this piece, I didn’t just toss it off from a few online sources. That list comes mostly from Pew, Curtis E. “Mutiny on the Bounty (ex-Bethia)”, Journal of Maritime Law & Commerce,31:4, 2000
Which seems contradictory to me. If most people are only aware of Bligh through the two or three movies mentioned, wouldn’t they be aware of his navigating feat?
Your historical knowledge has been well-demonstrated on this Board. Most people, including the questioner, don’t have that kind of knowledge. Whatever stories or movies constitute the average person’s exposure to Bligh, what happened after the mutiny is (a)poorly-known and (b)incredible. It deserved to be highlighted in my article because it cuts directly to the core of what the questioner asked about: Why did Bligh get more commands and promoted? I would have been lax if I didn’t mention it and also put it into context.
Welcome to the AAGP (American Association of Geezer People).
Events that we vividly remember happening “yesterday” are so far in the past that they predate the births of more than half our population. (Did you know that there are grandparents who were not born when they filmed the last episodes of Maverick and Cheyenne?)
In some neighborhoods, there are grandparents who weren’t born when the last episode of Speed Buggy was filmed.
In fairness to Bligh I don’t believe he was among the officers that the mutineers at Spithead initially demanded were removed. Sadly I don’t have my reference books to hand but I seem to recall that while he was removed from his ship at the Nore Bligh afterward pleaded the case of his crew resulting in most being pardoned and none being hanged. It should also be remembered that Bligh fought well at the battles of Copenhagen and Camperdown and was singled out for praise by Nelson after Copenhagen.
On the other hand (and the Staff Report omits this) Bligh was court-martialled and reprimanded for his behaviour after he disagreed with his first lieutenant aboard HMS Warrior.
One factor that I think was important was that the Bounty crew had been to Tahiti. Most Royal Navy sailors led a miserable life but they didn’t know any alternative - life was nasty, brutish, and short but they figured that was just the way of things and didn’t expect any better. But the Bounty showed up at a tropical island paradise and had to spent several weeks there waiting for the breadfruit trees to be ready to harvest. The crew got to hang out on the beach with the island women. The contrast between this life and normal navy life made what had seemed okay now seem unbearable.
Yeah, there was clearly something about the guy that just rubbed people the wrong way.
I read the Trilogy cited above when I was just a kid; it completely fascinated me to the point that I read it about a jillion times. Now, my memory has lost it.
You make a very important point about the Bounty mutineer’s motivation. I perhaps should have raised this under a discussion of alternative explanations for Christian’s actions if Bligh wasn’t as bad as the original questioner had thought. Christian was, after all, one of those that had taken up a native “wife” on Tahiti.
I really hope this isn’t one of those organizations where you need to wait 6-8 weeks for your wall certificate and laminated member’s card. 
According to James Dugan 31 members of his crew were singled out for punishment but Bligh succeded in having 19 of them removed from custody before trial. In the end, no one from his ship was hanged even though it was the last to surrender.
You are correct insofar as the eventual destination of the breadfruit was the Carribean, but Bligh’s mission was to bring sample breadfruit trees back to England.
In some sense, the muntiny on the Bounty was a result of the American Revolution. Britain’s Carribean plantations needed food that the laborers weren’t given time to grow themselves. After the Revolution, the nearest and cheapest source of foodstuffs was cut off (or at least more expensive). Sir Joseph had the idea that the breadfruit could be transplanted there, grown with almost no labor, and feed the slaves/indentured servants.
That process would be doomed to failure, however, if nobody in the Carribean knew what conditions the trees needed. Bligh brought the trees back to England for study by botanists so that the botanists could then bring the trees and the correct cultivating advice to places like Jamaica.
In this he was just following in the steps of Cristopher Columbus, another great navigator who managed to antagonize pretty much everybody he met and who was ultimately sent back to Spain in chains.
I’m not sure how heavily to weigh, “Captain Bligh’s Portable Nightmare” in comparison with other resources, but the book focuses almost entirely on the voyage in the launch after the mutiny and depicts Bligh as an ass trying to make himself out to be a hero at the expense of his crew.
There are several claims that John Fryer could have also made the journey and was almost entirely disregarded by Bligh because of animosity between the two.
The book also covers a formal inquiry that took place in Java. (…I believe… I don’t have the book in front of me, but I can fill in the blanks later if anyone would like.) Fryer and others from the launch did not make any complaint against Bligh and all answered Bligh’s own question the same way, that there was nothing the captain could have done differently to change the outcome of the mutiny.
One of the interesting questions I came away with was whether Bligh should have stopped on any more islands to refresh supplies and let the tortured crewmen rest. Obviously, the events on Tofoa heavily influenced Bligh’s decision to head for Timor without stopping, but I have to wonder if another man might have tried to get assistance from, for example, the Fiji islanders.
Well, Bligh’s lack of interpersonal skills is well-established, as others have also noted above. Whether he was trying to play the hero or just trying to do what he thought was right is pretty speculative.
If anyone had cause to complain of his treatment by Bligh, it was Fryer. Bligh frankly treated Fryer like dirt. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone does, whether another officer could have navigated from the area of the mutiny to Timor in such a voyage. The fact is, Bligh did do this, unaided and without adequate tools for the job. Toohey’s book I think supports the idea that Bligh’s accomplishment is both stunning and undervalued by history.
This was the inquiry by the Admiralty back in England after the arrival of Bligh and his crew. Fryer and the other crew’s responses were probably limited by the possibility that putting some of the blame on Bligh’s shoulders for the mutiny would be very dangerous for whoever accused him. Each man knew that the consequences of accusing Bligh, or even not supporting him fully, ranged from merely having a stigma of sympathisizing with the criminals to being possibly considered an accomplice to the mutiny.
Interesting question. Of course, if Bligh’s interpersonal skills were good enough to have done that halfway across the Pacific, here may not have been a mutiny in the first place.
No, there was an incident in Java and the Dutch held a hearing with some of the men, including Fryer, I believe, chained as prisoners.
Again, I am without the book at hand, but I will try to get some specifics… if there is some doubt.
I agree that the issue of whether or not another person could have accomplished the task is speculative and that Bligh’s interpersonal skills are notorious. To a certain extent though, it is reasonable to ask whether Bligh’s accomplishment was more grueling than it needed to be. Bligh may have had more issues than simply not being a people person.
Crossing thirty five thousand miles of open ocean is an incredible feat, granted. Doing it with only a sextant and one’s personal memory of the charts is incredible. But the challenge would have been mitigated by fresh provisions and rest. Only one person died between the mutiny and the arrival of the launch in Timor, but at least two died shortly after and only twelve made it back to England.
Ok, yes, looking back at my notes, you are correct that there was an initial investigation by Dutch authorities in Timor. My notes don’t, unfortunately, give me any indication of how formal this was or under what authority it was convenved. I’d have to go back to my sources to find that.
OTOH, this means there were two opportunities for Bligh’s remaining crew to express displeasure to outside authorities that they passed on.