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Taxes and fees extra. See full terms

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at mintmobile.com. It's

1:05

April 28th, 1789, and

1:08

another remarkable event is

1:10

about to be uncovered by

1:12

Ariane, Rebecca, and Ollie. The

1:15

Retrospectors. The

1:18

mutiny on the bounty happened just

1:20

before sunrise today in history in

1:22

1789, when William Bly, ship commander

1:24

of the bounty, was awoken in

1:26

his cabin by the master's mate,

1:28

Fletcher Christian, heading up 23 of

1:31

his 42 -man crew, who

1:33

then ordered him off of his ship and

1:35

into a 7 -metre longboat that they then

1:37

cast a drift into the Pacific Ocean. Yeah,

1:40

Bly and Christian had known each other for a

1:42

long time and had been fairly close friends. Bly

1:44

had actually head -hunted Christian for the role he'd

1:46

tried to actually get him on board as the

1:48

master of the ship, but he didn't have the

1:50

seniority, so he'd brought him on as the master's

1:52

mate. And so to be woken up, you know,

1:55

kind of at bayonet point by him, must have

1:57

been incredibly shocking. And in fact, as he stood

1:59

on the deck about to be manhandled into this

2:01

boat and set adrift, Bly was stunned

2:03

and he reproached Christian, you have

2:05

dandled my children upon your knee to

2:07

which an overwrought Christian But I

2:09

am in hell. And this boat was

2:11

very small indeed. It was designed

2:14

to carry a maximum of 15 people

2:16

over very short distances. And in

2:18

the boat, alongside Bly, were 18 crew

2:20

members who had loyally stood by

2:22

him. They were given a few things

2:24

to take with them. Four cutlassers,

2:26

a quadrant, a compass, 28 gallons of

2:29

water, 150 pounds of bread, 32

2:31

pounds of salted pork, six quarts of

2:33

rum, and six bottles of wine.

2:35

And then they were cast to drift

2:37

on the Pacific Ocean, like that.

2:39

As the bounty made off without them

2:41

in the other direction, they could

2:43

hear the crew members, the mutinous ones,

2:46

shouting, Huzzah for Otahati. That was

2:48

the last thing they heard. And the

2:50

Otahati was the contemporary name for

2:52

Tahiti, which was where the possibly randy,

2:54

possibly love sick sailors were heading

2:56

back to because they'd met various women

2:58

while they were over in Tahiti

3:01

and partnered while they'd been stopped off

3:03

there recently. Yeah. So the bounty,

3:06

I think people think of it as Royal

3:08

Navy vessel, but it's a merchant vessel. It's

3:11

on its business picking up fruit. It

3:13

had gone to what we now call

3:15

Tahiti to pick up some breadfruit plants

3:17

to take to the West Indies as

3:19

an experiment to see whether they could

3:21

feed enslaved people there more cheaply using

3:23

breadfruit. Part of waiting for the breadfruit

3:25

to ripen in Tahiti meant sitting around

3:27

for five months and getting sexual favours

3:29

from the local women who traded them

3:31

for things like nails that the crew

3:33

had with them, 40 % of the

3:36

men on board. were treated for STDs

3:38

after visiting Tahiti because they had not

3:40

been the only sailors to pull into

3:42

that port. Yeah, I mean, the issue

3:44

was that there was never intended to

3:46

be a five month stop off to

3:48

wait for the breadfruit to ripen. The

3:50

voyage had been extremely grueling. You know,

3:52

after leaving Britain, they were supposed to

3:54

sail west via South America. But after

3:56

spending a month unsuccessfully battling to get

3:58

around Cape Horn, which is very notorious

4:01

for its storms and for unpredictable winds,

4:03

they were forced to totally change tack.

4:05

And this time, sail east around the

4:07

Cape of Good Hope at the tip

4:09

of Africa, also famously not a picnic. By

4:12

the time they got to Tahiti, the schedule was

4:14

all out of whack and the breadfruit was no

4:16

longer in season and that's why they needed to

4:18

wait for the new crop to ripen. This was

4:20

the deadly factor really. The crew had spent five

4:22

months yucking it up in Tahiti and pretty much

4:24

the moment they got back on board the ship,

4:26

the mood started to sour. No,

4:29

we're not. This sucks. Yeah. And the

4:31

evidence suggests that Bly was, you know,

4:33

although he was later depicted as a

4:35

bit of a paranoid tyrant, he was

4:37

at worst a neat freak who was

4:39

prone to very angry tirades. The ship's

4:41

disciplinary records. It doesn't sound magnificent, by

4:44

the way. Well, it was probably wasn't

4:46

much fun, but we have the ship's

4:48

log and the disciplinary records. know what

4:50

you're going to say. You're one of

4:52

these Bly apologists, aren't you? The flogging

4:54

on board bounty was well below the

4:56

average Royal Navy. That's what you're about

4:58

to say. Yes, that's exactly what I'm

5:01

about to Still did some flogging, Rebecca.

5:03

Yes, he did. Yeah, but listen, these guys

5:05

were in the Navy. They understood that

5:07

that involved some flogging. They weren't going to

5:09

hold a bit of flogging against somebody.

5:11

You know, the record suggests he was not

5:13

actually a harsher captain than average. But

5:16

the idea that Bly was a

5:18

tyrant arose from media portrayals, obviously the

5:20

movies, but starting with the very

5:22

earliest, the widely read newspaper accounts of

5:24

the later court -martial, at which Christian's

5:26

brother Edward, who very helpfully of

5:28

him was a Cambridge law professor, painted

5:30

a very compelling portrait of his

5:32

brother as a put -upon victim of

5:34

Bly's rages, which to be fair, does

5:36

seem to have been true. He

5:39

really targeted a lot of his ire

5:41

at Christian and there's been some suggestion that

5:43

Bly might have even had Tourette because

5:45

he just seemed to lose himself, go in

5:47

these incredibly vicious outbursts and then kind

5:49

of forget that he'd set them and apparently

5:51

the breaking point was when he accused

5:54

Christian of stealing his supply of coconuts and

5:56

at this point Christian was like I

5:58

really can't take this anymore. Well

6:00

certainly in support of your apology Rebecca

6:02

was the fact that more members of

6:04

the Bounty's 44 man crew actually sided

6:06

with their captain than with Christian which

6:08

is why you have this near overloading

6:11

incident before they even got going. Several

6:13

people left on the bounty actually had

6:15

to be physically restrained from joining Bly

6:17

in his apparently doomed vessel as far

6:19

as they were all concerned. This thing

6:21

was going to go off and it

6:23

might make it to Tonga or more

6:26

likely it might sink and that would

6:28

be the best outcome for everybody on

6:30

the bounty because that means no court

6:32

marshals and it also means no hanging

6:34

once they get back to England if

6:36

that ever occurs. They're not thinking do

6:38

we love this guy who assaults humiliates

6:40

our friend. They're thinking there's

6:43

a chance of survival by getting

6:45

on this boat but if we

6:47

stay on the ship there's no

6:49

plan here and at some point

6:51

the British will find us. and

6:53

then they're going to hang us

6:55

anyway. Yeah, exactly. I guess many

6:57

of them would have been backing

6:59

Bly's incredible skills as a navigator,

7:01

because far from just accepting going

7:03

to Tonga, his plan was to

7:05

head for Timor in Indonesia, which

7:07

was the closest European settlement, by

7:09

crossing over 3 ,500 nautical miles of

7:11

ocean in this barely seaworthy boat

7:13

with no charts and no marine

7:15

chronometer. So this really was a

7:17

plan that was destined to fail.

7:19

And yet it didn't fail. They

7:21

took 47 days to reach Timor

7:23

along the way he stopped up

7:25

to Fua where the crew were

7:27

attacked. And the quartermaster

7:29

was murdered. I mean, imagine that

7:31

you've just spent 20 days in the

7:33

blazing sun drinking rainwater to survive. You've got

7:35

a bit of pork and wine between

7:37

the 18 of you. Then you finally get

7:40

off and you're chased and attacked and

7:42

murdered by the people that are on the

7:44

islands. They went past the Fijian Islands

7:46

because he wrote in his log, I dare

7:48

not land for fear of the natives.

7:50

That must have been another. impossible

7:52

decision. Look, food over

7:54

there guys, but sorry, we're kicking on

7:57

everyone. So we are the food. But

8:00

he did manage to get all the

8:02

way to Batavia, finally, where he secured

8:04

passage back to England. And

8:06

then, as Rebecca said, reported the mutiny.

8:08

Yeah, remarkably, all 18 men on board,

8:10

apart from the one who was murdered,

8:12

made it, although three of them then

8:14

died in Port Awaiting Transport at home

8:16

because they were in pretty bad condition

8:18

and Batavia was notorious for malaria and

8:20

similar disease. And meanwhile, the mutineers were

8:22

having kind of similar issues with the

8:24

hostile indigenous people they encountered. They did

8:27

make it to Tahiti, but when they

8:29

tried to set up their own settlement

8:31

on a nearby island, they then came

8:33

under attack. They also knew that

8:35

the Royal Navy would soon be looking for them.

8:37

And indeed, of the 16 men who chose

8:39

to take their chances and stay on Tahiti, the

8:41

14 of them who were still alive in

8:43

March of 1791 were apprehended by the HMS Pandora,

8:45

which had been sent to fetch them and

8:47

bring them back to England for court martial. who

8:50

made it back to England alive,

8:52

there was a fire on that ship

8:54

and several men were kind of

8:56

burned alive in their cages. They were

8:58

indeed court -martialed. The bounty itself set

9:00

sail east, carrying nine mutineers, including

9:02

Fletcher Christian, as well as 20, it's

9:05

often just described as like Tahitians,

9:07

but they were actually... they had

9:09

been invited on board the boat

9:11

and then the boat had just

9:13

sailed away with them They were

9:15

like well We're gonna need more

9:17

people for this settlement including women

9:19

14 of the captives were women

9:21

and ultimately this breakaway party landed

9:23

in the Pitken Islands in January

9:25

1790 yeah, they unloaded there and

9:27

they destroyed the ship thinking we

9:29

probably don't want the evidence of

9:31

this thing that we mutinied on

9:33

and then made off with and

9:35

Basically, it started out fairly peacefully

9:37

But tensions escalated over time violence

9:39

eventually erupted in September of 1793,

9:41

mainly due to the mutineer's treatment

9:43

of women who ended up being

9:46

I mean, it's not nice, but passed

9:48

between them, and this resulted in

9:50

this uprising of the Tahitians on one

9:52

side against mutineers on the other

9:54

side. Several of the mutineers were killed.

9:57

Christian's fate remains a bit uncertain. There's

9:59

a few conflicting accounts of his death.

10:01

Some claim that he was killed in

10:03

that massacre, but there are also stories

10:05

that he had died of sickness or

10:07

by suicide. At any rate, his

10:09

gravesite has never been found. And then

10:11

25 years go by, and as far

10:13

as we know, there's just one of

10:15

them left. John Adams who was found

10:17

eventually by warships who were still occasionally

10:20

searching the South Pacific to bring the

10:22

mutinies to justice and stumbled on Pitken

10:24

Island and found him but upon visiting

10:26

him these Victorian Christians seeing some other

10:28

Victorian Christian on the other side of

10:30

the world about halfway between New Zealand

10:32

and Peru actually thought Oh, look at

10:34

this marvellous man, John Adams. Look at

10:36

the great patriarchy that he's built in

10:38

the name of Christ. Look at how

10:40

he's brought Christian values from the empire

10:42

over to this side of the world.

10:44

It would be, quote, an act of

10:46

great cruelty to arrest him, so they

10:48

didn't. And in 1825, he

10:50

was granted amnesty, and the

10:52

capital of Pitken Island, Adams Town,

10:55

is still named after him. And meanwhile,

10:57

for Bly, being the target of such

10:59

a famous coup, didn't seem to negatively

11:01

impact his career at all. He went

11:03

back to sea, which I feel like

11:05

I personally wouldn't do. but he had

11:07

been in the Navy since age of

11:09

seven. He served as captain on a

11:11

series of Navy ships, even had a

11:13

stint as governor of New South Wales

11:15

and ended his career of Vice Admiral.

11:17

I must say, if you look back

11:19

to that period of his governorship of

11:21

New South Wales, it couldn't be described

11:23

as glorious because after two years, a

11:25

group of army officers arrested and deposed

11:27

him in what became known as the

11:29

Rum Rebellion. It was the

11:31

only coup d 'etat in the

11:33

history of Australia and it happened

11:36

under his watch. So for

11:38

all of the stories of him

11:40

being this great guy who

11:42

was like unfairly represented in his

11:44

press. I must say, he

11:46

continues to sort of show up with

11:48

these very unfortunate situations of the people

11:51

immediately below him overthrowing him. Yeah, there

11:53

was another one. There was the normal

11:55

mutiny of 1797 when he was expelled

11:57

from his ship as well. I mean,

11:59

I think to suffer mutiny once is

12:01

unlucky. Twice is terrible. Three times suggests

12:03

it's not about coconuts, doesn't it? Yeah. Whatever,

12:07

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retrospectives! So

12:26

Retrospectors, what historical events are we

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ticking off on this week's run of

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Today in History? On Monday, the

12:33

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textbook marketing debacle of New Coke. On

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Ming Dynasty. And on Friday, why Franz

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