Mutinous Mary’s miracle on the high seas

After Captain Bligh survived one of history’s most perilous voyages, a Cornish woman transported Down Under was inspired to do the same . . .

MOST of us know the story of Captain Bligh and the mutiny on hMS Bounty from the hollywood movies, variously starring Charles Laughton, Trevor howard and Anthony hopkins, through which Bligh became a byword for shipboard tyranny.

In contrast, few have heard of the female convict Mary Bryant, transported Down Under in 1787. But, as Diana Preston’s vivid, continuously compelling book reveals, there are intriguing links between Bligh and Bryant.

Preston’s revisiting of the mutiny is rich in detail. Bligh’s orders were to sail to the Pacific island of Tahiti, gather breadfruit seedlings and take them to the West Indies to grow food for plantation slaves.

his troubles began when he arrived in Tahiti, that ‘fabled paradise of plenty and pleasure’.

european visitors had, from the time of the island’s discovery, been both delighted and scandalised by what they found there, and sex-starved sailors had rejoiced in what seemed like Tahitian free love.

The Bounty’s men were no different, and they were unsurprisingly reluctant to leave at the end of their five-month layover, but Bligh hauled them back to the ship.

Once they had left Tahiti, relationships on board the Bounty rapidly deteriorated. Bligh’s outbursts of temper and foulmouthed ranting undermined the men’s already low morale.

PArTICULArLY distressed by what he saw as his unfair treatment was Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian who, within weeks, could take it no longer. On April 28, 1789, he and fellow mutineers took over the ship. ‘You have treated me like a dog all voyage,’ he told Bligh. ‘I am determined to suffer it no longer.’

Bligh and 18 men loyal to him were ordered into an open boat 23ft long and 6ft 9in at its widest — and left to the mercies of the sea.

What followed was more extraordinary than the mutiny itself. Bligh decided to head for Timor, 3,600 miles away in the Dutch east Indies. All the men agreed to a daily ration of one ounce of bread and a quarter-pint of water, which Bligh measured out using scales and weights improvised from two coconut shells and pistol balls. (They can still be seen in the national Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.)

Unsurprisingly, these rations caused pains in the bowels and constipation. ‘Most of us 18 days without an evacuation,’ noted Bligh at one point.

Despite the hardships, Bligh successfully navigated his tiny boat to its destination. Six weeks later, it arrived in the Dutch harbour of Kupang and Bligh hoisted a Union Jack he had fashioned from signal flags. All but one man had survived.

In Britain two years earlier, as the Bounty was setting sail in search of breadfruit, the first plans for criminals to be exiled Down Under were drawn up.

When the First Fleet of 11 ships sailed from Portsmouth for new South Wales, there were more than 700 convicts on board. The oldest was an 82-year-old rag-and-bone woman convicted of perjury; the youngest was nine-year-old John hudson, whose chimney-sweep master had pushed him through the skylight of a house to steal from it.

Maid elizabeth Beckford had taken several pounds of Gloucester cheese from her mistress’s larder. Thomas Chaddick had appropriated 12 cucumbers from a kitchen garden.

Compared to these petty thieves, Mary Broad was a major criminal. She had been a highway robber and was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation.

By the time she set off for new South Wales, Mary was pregnant — probably by one of her guards. During the voyage, she gave birth to a girl and took up with William Bryant, a fisherman convicted of

smuggling. They married once they arrived in what was then called New Holland.

Conditions in the new colony were hellish. Deprivation and disease were everywhere and punishments were severe.

William Bryant and his wife seem to have decided that anything was preferable to remaining in New Holland. They may well have heard of Bligh’s extraordinary journey from a passing Dutch ship captain and were inspired to steal a boat.

Together with their children (they now had two) and seven other convicts, they made their bid for freedom. Heading like Bligh to the Dutch East Indies, they travelled 3,254 nautical miles along Australia’s eastern seaboard, westward through the feared Torres Strait and across the largely uncharted Arafura Sea. Whenever they ventured on shore, they were threatened by hostile natives. They faced seas ‘running mountains high’, and lived in dread ‘that our boat would be staved to pieces and every soul perish’.

SIxTy-NINE days later, they arrived in Kupang, where they claimed to be the survivors of a shipwrecked whaler. Their true story eventually emerged and they were taken back to Britain, coincidentally on board the same ship as some of the Bounty mutineers who had been captured while enjoying more sex and sunshine in Tahiti.

Both the open-boat voyage made by Bligh and his men and the one by Mary Bryant and her companions rank among the most remarkable in maritime history.

Bligh’s subsequent career included service under Lord Nelson and a spell as Governor of New South Wales, during which he faced another mutiny.

Mary Bryant’s case was taken up by distinguished men, including Dr Johnson’s biographer James Boswell. She was given a free pardon in 1793 and returned to her native Cornwall, where she is assumed to have died some time before the end of the century.

In telling these tales in parallel, Preston provides a fresh perspective on both the endlessly fascinating saga of the Bounty and the early history of white Australia.