I’d like to see the same skills applied to movie titles.
“A Narrative of Snakes, on board a commercial airline flight, and the subsequent conflict between Messr Sam’l Jackson and the aforementioned reptiles whilst various displays of gratuitous violence, sex, and unwholesome language occur.”
“A Narrative of the Ongoing Conflict Between the Forces of the Galactic Empire, Led by Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, and the Alliance to Restore the Republic, Led By Former Senator Mon Mothma, and the Counter Attack of Aforementioned Empire During Which It Is Revealed That Lord Vader is Commander Luke Skywalker’s Father.”
The Bounty was too small a vessel to contain a captain’s first defence against mutiny: a contingent of Royal Marines. The Marines, having taken an oath, were considered more trustworthy than the sailors, who had not. Marines maintained a permanent guard over the officers’ quarters. This, I feel should also be taken into account when considering the reasons for the mutiny.
Even if one has not read any of the Bounty books, James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific contains an account of the protagonist meeting the descendants of the mutineers.
[quote=“TWDuke, post:60, topic:490614”]
William Bligh’s own account, published in 1790, was 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 from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in the East Indies.”
Forgive me, but sometimes I feel that I’m living in the dark ages where everyone was absolutely convinced that the world was flat.
As I’ve explained in other posts, the original archive documents, not any publishers titles or books, is the stuff from which history is made. Book publishers are not historians, generally, and they make mistakes sometimes genuinely or sometimes on purpose --like Hollywood for box-office appeal.
It’s like reminding the people at the Alamo that Jahn Wayne’s Davy Crockett character was ‘Hollywoodised’ and that the real Crockett --according to an historic journal – was actually captured and tortured to death. They don’t want to know that!
Likewise, In 1989 on the bi-sentential of April 28th 1789, William Bligh’s on-the-spot, day–by-day journal was displayed in a ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ exhibition at the National Maritime Museum , Greenwich, London. It was under glass, of course, but opened at the page where the seizing of the ship story begins. There for everyone to read was the captain’s description of the events that began just before sunrise. But the very first words of what might be called the Bounty saga are these: ‘I now have to report one of the most atrocious acts of piracy ever committed’.
When I drew the exhibition executive’s attention to the fact that the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ title was a nonsense compared to all the evidence from Bligh’s journal, Captain Edwards’ journal, Trial records etc., in the National Archives, he went quite silent! A few days later I returned to the museum exhibition with a film crew, only to find that the pages of the journal had been turned so that the pertinent page was no longer on view to the public. And no-one at the museum was prepared to open up the display for the film crew to shoot the famous aforementioned page.
However, the NSW State Library of Australia, that holds the journal, has so much stuff on line (indeed, they have something like 90% of all historical documents pertaining to William Bligh) so perhaps the Bounty journal is now available on line too? But the 18th century Law Lords of England knew the difference between mutiny and piracy, even if the the general public didn’t, and that’s why the charges at the Trial were specifically related to ‘piratical seizure’ and not ‘mutinous conduct’.
By the way, the Pitcairn Islanders and some of my friends there know and accept that the Bounty was originally not an HMS vessel, but HMAV Bounty. When will the outside world come to terms with this historic reality too?
I think your condescension is tiring and insulting (everyone who disagrees with you is in the Dark Ages?* Really?), but I forgive you. I also think your insistence that it is incorrect to call the ship rightly known as Bounty and referred to in contemporary documents as “his majesty’s ship” is almost as silly as insisting that it is incorrect to refer to mutinous acts committed by mutineers “mutiny” because they are also referred to as “piracy.” It is about as meaningless as saying that a tomato isn’t a vegetable because it’s a fruit.
You seem to very selective about what you consider an “original archive document,” but why should anyone accept that you are the arbiter of “the stuff from which history is made,” as opposed to, say, Britain’s National Archives, National Maritime Museum, or Royal Navy Museum?
Yes, that must be why, because pirates obviously have no box-office appeal, now or in the earliest days of Hollywood.
Would that be José Enrique de la Peña’s memoir, first published in 1955 and widely regarded to be inaccurate if not an outright fraud?
And this is somehow more significant than Bligh’s many uses of the words “mutiny” and “mutineers.”
You are apparently unaware that turning the pages of books on exhibition is a commonplace practice and is in no way a sign of nefarious intent.
“Turning the pages every few days will protect the text from long-term exposure to light. If a title page must be displayed long term, consider using a copy. Even with page turning, periods of exhibit should be limited. Keeping a book open for long periods can damage its structure.”
:eek:Why on earth would you expect them to do that?
Perhaps the same time everyone realizes that it’s OK to use more than one term to reply to the same thing, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
*A term which has fallen into disrepute among historians, by the way, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Since Captain Bligh called it a mutiny, and since the court martial called it a mutiny, and since every historian for 220 years has called it a mutiny, and since it was a mutiny, I’m going to go right on calling it a mutiny whether bonitas likes it or not.
Thank you. I thought I was the only one.
OK, if you doubt that the ‘original documents’ in the British National Archives/NSW State Library exist, I can only repeat that they are available for anyone to examine. And if you believe that because hundreds of books have referred to the ‘mutiny’ of ‘HMS Bounty’, this means that they must be right and I must be wrong , that’s up to you. And I certainly didn’t mean to give any offense by my flat-earth/round-earth analogy.
I would simply point out that in Hong Kong there is sailing ship not long ago purchased from an Australian owner who bought it from the makers of a Hollywood movie called ‘The Bounty’ (1984). The ship is an exact scale replica of a wooden, three-masted square-rigger that became the command of Vice-Admiral William Bligh RN., FRS., when he was a 32 year-old lieutenant in 1787. It is called HMAV Bounty and not HMS Bounty like the one-third larger ‘replica’ built for the 1964 movie 'Mutiny on the Bounty. Which movie-maker was right or wrong?
In Captain Cook’s published ‘Voyages’ the charts or maps of the Third Voyage (1776-1780) are listed as the survey work of a Lieutenant Henry Roberts. Yet historians know this to be incorrect because there in Cook’s own hand, in his Logs and journal, and in the ship’s Muster Sheets, etc, in the National Archives, it was ‘Mr Bligh, the Master’ (Sailing Master) and Cook’s right-hand man as navigator/surveyor/cartographer who laid down the vast majority of those charts during the 4 years and 3 month-long expedition to find the fabled ‘North-West Passage’. And for the next two hundred years Admiralty charts of various Pacific islands and coasts were to be attributed to the work of ‘Lieu. Henry Roberts’ who was a junior officer aboard HMS ‘Resolution’ and was only given the task, on his return to England, to make copies of William Bligh’s original charts for the purpose of publication. Does this mean Captain Cook’s words are irrelevant because the Admiralty charts say otherwise?
As for the word ‘mutiny’ (notably left out of the 1984 movie title) the English-language dictionary is quite specific about what is a ‘mutiny’, and what is an act of ‘piracy’, whether generations of writers going back to the 18th century fully understood this or not. Again, I can only repeat that in British Law the main charges and findings relating to the Bounty offenders are recorded as stated in King George III’s Articles of War; namely ‘piratical seizure/running away’ with HM Armed Vessel Bounty, and not under Section 19 relating to ‘mutinous behavior/conduct’.
And not that it matters a great deal, but the page-turning of Bligh’s journal at the British Maritime Museum was not wholly related to the common practice, as you illustrated, of avoiding damaged to MSS material by prolonged exposure to light. As the idea of filming was to give prominence to the exhibition, it was in the Museum’s own interest to cooperate. Unfortunately, there were some people even there that didn’t know why some Royal Navy ship’s were prefixed HMS and others were not. For until a couple of years ago there was a beautiful model displayed of a ship marked up as ‘HMS Endeavour’. The model is still there, but on my last visit I noticed that the penny had dropped and the sign had been removed from the display. It might well now read ‘HM Bark Endeavour’, at least, I hope so.
The snag with arguing from Bligh’s choice of wording in the logbook is that he also used “mutineers” and “mutiny”.
The State Library of course have the logbook online. The same entry has passages as follows:
Aside from the opening remark, he heads the list at the end “Description of the Pirates”.
Bligh seems to have been just as happy at the time to describe the event as a mutiny as he was to call it piracy.
[Note that the extract from the logbook that’s now at the National Archives in Kew omits the “atrocious acts of piracy” comment in transcribing it.]
__________
From bonitas:- Thank you Bonza: but if you’ll recall that my original point was that legally and for all practical purposes the term “mutineers” or “mutiny” was adjudged a non-starter by the law lords, and that the official charges at the trial related to “piratical seizure”-- not mutiny.
As much as the word mutineers keeps popping up all over the place, it was, after all, the 18th century where few but the upper crust could even afford a dictionary to define or spell words. For example, the fact that Wm. Bligh spelled “trowsers” for trousers doesn’t mean that he was an ignoramus who couldn’t spell correctly, when his contemporaries often used their own spellings in their writings too.
I’m not sure if I did cite, for one, Peter Heywood at his trial wherein he addressed the judges in one instance with the words “When I was with the Pirates…” And he complained to his sister in a letter about being referred among his cohorts as "Oh, perish the term, ‘piratical villains’! Certainly Captain Edwards of the ‘Pandora’ thought of his quarry as pirates, and said so.
Then after the Fleet mutinies of 1797, as I previously mentioned, the word mutiny became allied to those genuine mutineers or strikers who had been screwed by the revolutionaries, etc., and given a bad name as virtual traitors. Words do have a habit of shifting emphasis, but the overall facts of Mr Christian’s seizure of HMAV Bounty left no doubt in the prosecutors’ minds that this was not an act of mutiny, by definition, but one of theft on the high seas and therefore piracy.
Regards,
bonitas.
For those of you carefully keeping track of exact word usages, that’d be bonzer …
At this point, your argument appears frankly rather silly. You privillaged Bligh’s use of language in the logbook as a key primary historical source, but you now dismiss the same.
Furthermore, as Freddy the Pig pointed out, your claim is at odds with the published transcripts of the court martials. We accept that secondary claims about documents can be misleading, but given that the logbook disagrees with your argument, even though you claimed otherwise, its really up to you prove that the printed and online versions of the proceedings are wrong.
Bligh’s big problem was that he had no marines and that he was trying to impose order on a crew that had just spent a protracted time in Tahiti, which was rightfully considered something of a sailor’s paradise. Blight wasn’t hard on his crew in terms of capital punishment. However, Bligh was somewhat humorless and pedantic.
Oops, missed the edit window. Capital should be corporal.
I had seen the 1935 movie before I was 18, and 1962 movie when I was in my 30s, so I definitely knew who Fletcher Christian was. Well-remembered scene of Charles Laughton bellowing, “Mr. Christian!”
_________________________________________________________________From bonitas:-
I’m glad you have accepted, at least, that online transcripts/transcribers/publishers/authors/novelists/Hollywood movie-makers can make mistakes, because for while there it looked as if this website contained a gaggle of folks who dismissed even that possibility.
In summary :- there were only two historic factors that I wished to draw to people’s attention as the 220th anniversary of this saga approaches; the first being the name of the Bounty as recorded in official archived documents.
As I write, I have before me a photo-copy of page 139 of a folio-size book, a ‘Muster-Table’ being the one that was brought back to England by Bligh on his return from the South Seas. This folio is held by the National Archives at Kew, and it is referenced there as ADM 155799.
(I have this page on a Xeroxed ‘PaperPort’ file but I don’t know to insert it into this website)
This printed Muster-Table was designed for general use and contains headed columns such as 'Time when Muftered (using the old printed f for s) , ‘Place Where’…etc. etc.
But at the top of the page, in copperplate handwriting appears these words
Bounty Armed Vessel ) Began Wages 16th and Sea Victualling
Complement 45 Men ) 20th August 1787 at Deptford
Next appears the printed words **'MUSTER-TABLE of His Majefty’s Ship the **(then a space) between’…
…in which the ship’s clerk has inserted 'Bounty’
This is how, most likely, the HMS Bounty myth began when those unaware of that peculiar custom I’ve previously mentioned about Royal Navy ships only being given the HMS prefix when commanded by ranked Captains, got confused.
It can prove a very confusing business for historians because the same named ships, but with different prefixes at different times, can make it look as if there were several different ships bearing the same name.
Given my previous example regarding Captain Cook’s ship HM Bark ‘Endeavour’ and not HMS ‘Endeavour’ is this not now sufficient proof on that aspect? Any maritime historian worth their salt, or the National Archives, will confirm the above as true.
On the second matter concerning the men whom Captain Edward Edwards captured and returned to England for trial, the situation was, as I have already indicated, one of some powerful influences being brought to bear on how the men should be tried. The civilian law lords wanted these men to be tried in a civilian court for piracy. The Royal Navy looked at their Articles of War and found that these were hardly sufficient to deal with such a high profile crime as the theft of the Bounty and the casting adrift of almost half its crew. And Captain Bligh was a national hero at that time for his tremendous achievements in the open boat voyage.
Notwithstanding, the navy turned to the Articles of War, under Section XV:-
Quote:- of deserting or running away with Ship or St****ores
‘Every Person in or belonging the the Fleet, who shall desert to the Enemy, Pirate, or Rebel, or run away with any of his Majesty’s Ships or Vessels of War, or any Ordnance, Ammunition, Stores, or Provision belonging thereto, to the weakening of the Service, or yield up to the same cowardly or treacherously to the Enemy, Pirate, or Rebel, being convicted of any such Offence by the Sentence of the Court-martial, shall suffer Death.’
This was the section chosen, hence the words that appear in the Trial Minutes (National Archives ref: AD1 5330) about ‘practical seizure’ and ‘running away’ meaning theft of HMAV Bounty.
Whereas Section XIX written to cover what is headed, quote: 'of mutinous Assemblies or uttering seditious Words** is another matter:-
‘If any Person in or belonging to the Fleet shall make or endeavour to make any mutinous Assembly upon any Pretence whatsoever, every Person offending therein, and being convicted thereof by the Sentence of the Court-martial, shall suffer Death: And if any Person in or belonging to the Fleet shall utter any Words
of Sedition or Mutiny, he shall suffer Death, or such other Punishment as a Court-martial shall deem him to deserve: And if any Officer, Mariner or Soldier in or belonging to the Fleet, shall behave himself with Contempt, to his superior Officer, such superior Officer, being in the Execution of his Office, he shall be punished according to the Nature of his Offence by the Judgment of a Court-martial.’
Therefore, if the Royal Navy could have prosecuted the ex-Bounty prisoners under their definitions of what is mutiny, the wording of the Court Martial charges would not have been in reference to Articles Section XV ‘piratical seizure’ or ‘running away’ with HMAV Bounty. And given that outside of these historic documents there are many mistakes or misconceptions, this, in British law, is how the accused men of the ‘Bounty’ were tried, and how those found guilty were adjudged and sentenced to death.
bonitas, you’re talking bollocks. English law in the eighteenth century did indeed make a careful distinction between ‘mutiny’ and ‘piracy’. That is, in fact, why you have completely misunderstood the evidence.
I don’t doubt that consideration was given to prosecuting them for piracy. Nor do I doubt that the Admiralty judges would have been especially keen to have them tried in that way. Nor that this option was not pursued. But that is because their actual trials had nothing whatsoever to do with the law on piracy.
Under the various Piracy Acts, piracy cases in the eighteenth century could only be heard by special commissions of oyer and terminer (sitting with a jury) or, more debatably, by the Court of Admiralty (exercising its original jurisdiction in such cases). The courts martial held in 1792 were manifestly neither. They were exactly what they said they were - courts marital. As such, they could never have heard piracy cases.
But what they could hear were mutiny cases.
Article XIX merely covered particular forms of mutinous behaviour: it was not itself a comprehensive definition of what constituted ‘mutiny’. Indeed, none of the Articles of War offered such a definition. They had no need to. The concept of ‘mutiny’ had been well-established in English law long before the Articles of War, or indeed the Mutiny Acts, so the purpose of the Articles was instead to set out what particular forms of behaviour could be tried by a court martial under the Mutiny Acts. It was no stretch at all to claim that the actions covered by Article XV amounted to one form of mutiny. I’m sure that any eighteenth-century English lawyer would have thought it perverse to think otherwise.
Note that Article XV says nothing about ‘piratical seizure’. You haven’t just invented that bit to sustain your nonsense argument that they were being tried for ‘piracy’, have you? Or, even worse, picked it up from the title of Sir John Barrow’s book. Now, what was it you said about book titles as evidence…
This rings alarm bells. Of course, as is well-known, Bligh himself annotated a copy of James King’s Voyage to the Pacific Ocean asserting that Roberts had merely copied his own charts. But a claim by Cook to that effect is another matter. Interesting therefore that the earliest recorded use of the word ‘cartographer’ in the OED dates only from 1863. And that the only earlier related word - ‘cartography’ - is not that much earlier either (1859). I’m also a bit suspicious of the use of virgules in that way in an eighteenth-century manuscript.
This may be an ignorant position to take, but doesn’t common usage play a part? Two hundred years ago probably everyone knew that a ‘ship’ was a three-masted vessel with a certain rigging, a “bark” was such and such, a “sloop” was such and such. All have been subsumed under the name ‘ship’ now, (or “boat” or “yacht”). Even in contemporaneous accounts, Bligh’s narrative was titled “…the Mutiny on HMS Bounty”, which, whether accurate or not, is how it has been known since then.
I’m sure that bonitas knows what he’s talking about, as does APB. I leave the technicalities to them. But to the world it is “Mutiny on the Bounty.”
IIRC, Bounty wouldn’t have been named “H.M.S. Bounty” or “H.M.A.V. Bounty” at the time of the mutiny, as that convention didn’t start until 1789 (and, the inter-spaced periods disappeared even later). The trial transcripts from 1792 use both “His Majesty’s Ship Bounty” and “His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty,” but this may just be making the official record fit the practices of the day.
From: bonitas****
Thank you, Damfino, its not an ignorant position to take and in non-APBlanguage about me “talking bollocks” (a Charter Member of this forum, no less, and what happened to ‘Straight Dope’ asking that people refrain from being jerks?).
As you say, to the world it’s “the Mutiny On Bounty”. That’s the crux of the matter, and that’s why I used the (if to some) irritating analogy about the flat-Earth/round Earth believers. It’s a case of if you repeat the same wrong a million times, then that automatically turns into a right, does it?
My only purpose in entering this forum was to provide some thoughts about the Bounty saga as the 220 anniversary drew near. And you may have noticed how quickly the emphasis changed away from the simpler theme I endeavored to illustrate; namely, that the theft or ‘running away’ by some aboard the Bounty Armed Vessel, HM Armed Vessel, HMAV Bounty was not a mutiny against Captain Bligh personally, or a strike, an insurrection as such, by motive. The purpose of Mr Christian’s gang was the steal the ship, and contents, then cut themselves out a new life in their ‘paradise’ South Seas, which is what they did, and later confirmed by John Adams on Pitcairn Island:- We only wanted to return to our loved ones on Otaheite.’
But it all got mixed up in 18th century politics and dogma between the-then revolutionaries adopting Mr Christian as their champion against the monarchists in Great Britain, struggling to keep their first-line-of-defense and the ships and men of the Royal Navy turning traitors and sailing and going over to the enemy. Hopefully, the simply truths will prevail, one day.
Finally, (as I’m not as young as I used to be, and this small print is a pain to my old eyes) I would like to thank everyone regardless of their views for participating, and to my American friends, as always, God bless America.
All of which ignores my point, which is that, in terms of eighteenth-century law, to ‘run away with any of His Majesty’s ships or vessels of war’ did amount to ‘mutiny’. So, yes, you are still talking bollocks.