History with a little fiction
If you love a good yarn but baulk at reading history, this will appeal to you,
It was inevitable that Graeme Lay would be drawn to one of the great adventures of the South Pacific, the tale of Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian and the 1789 mutiny on the Bounty.
The prolific writer has produced travel books, short stories, non-fiction and novels for all ages, many based on the region, which has long fascinated him.
His recent series of three novels covering the rise and fall of Captain James Cook blended much fact with a little fiction. They expanded the audience for Cook’s story, and the same will be the case with the lesserknown Fletcher Christian.
The saga of William Bligh has been well documented by historians, one highlight of a busy life being his long voyage of survival after being cast off by the Bounty mutineers. His life has been analysed in many books and movies.
Fletcher Christian was the master’s mate of the Bounty and led the mutiny. He has been played in movies by the likes of Errol Flynn (1933), Clark Gable (1935), Marlon Brando (1962) and Mel Gibson (1984), but remains an enigma. That’s because he went into hiding after the mutiny and died just four years later.
Christian settled on remote Pitcairn Island with other mutineers and some Tahitians, including his lover, Isabella. By 1793, Christian was dead, murdered by one of the Tahitians, but he left behind his lover and three offspring.
Details of Christian’s life are somewhat murky. Lay has stayed close to the truth, but improvised with a few storylines that are figments of his imagination. He used fictional letters home and a diary to fill in the story and develop Christian’s character.
Bligh is depicted as a quicktempered man. He doesn’t flog offenders as much as many of his contemporaries, but lashes them with a vicious tongue, and his crude language here is not for the fainthearted. After the Bounty leaves Tahiti, he turns nasty on Christian, who was once the apple of his eye. Christian is a handsome, randy young man, who is shocked when Bligh makes a pass at him... more fiction, of course.
As Lay writes it, Bligh’s cruel treatment is the final straw that led to the mutiny, but being forced to leave his lover in Tahiti after five months of ecstasy obviously weighed heavily on Christian’s mind. It was certainly a catalyst for other mutineers. Given a choice they would all have stayed in paradise.
The story ends rather abruptly, but that’s what happened to most of the Pitcairn settlers as they set about killing each other. Luckily, they were breeding for a few years before their world fell apart, and there are descendants dotted around the Pacific, including Norfolk Island and New Zealand. An afterword and a piece on Pitcairn today complete the book and details the fates of the mutineers.
The book will appeal to adults who love a good yarn but baulk at reading history.