WHEN I WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A LAD, Mr Lewis used to complain that I was a feckless creature, one who could never be relied upon to finish a job that I started. It was one of the many accusations he flung at me whenever he was in one of his tantrums, if one of my brothers had come home with less of a pot than he had expected, say, or if a lad had got into a fight and bruised his face, making him a less pretty object and unlikely to be chosen during Evening Selection. If you weren’t cleaning up the house, then you were out on the street snapping from pockets, and if you weren’t doing that you were engaged in those other activities of which I prefer not to speak. But I think I would have him confounded if he saw all the work that I have put into this recollection so far.
All told, we were on board that blessed boat for just shy of a full calendar year. Our stay on the island lasted a mere half of that time, but the Saviour knows that it was no less of an eventful period. For if the crossing had been difficult at times, and wearying, and if there had been the occasional altercation between AB and boatswain, midshipman and officer, captain and master, then for all that we were still for the most part a happy crew, and a contented one, and a gang of men who saw Mr Bligh as our anointed leader, in much the same way that the Saviour himself had anointed King George to rule over us all. This was a sacred trust and one that we would not have questioned, and, as such, we were a community of little dissent. But it was on the island, where we were not all thrown together in such a small space as we had been while at sea, that things started to change. The men changed; the officers changed; the captain changed. And I changed too, I do believe. Every one of us discovered something there that came upon us most unexpectedly. For better or worse, the events that took place there, and the pleasure that we all took in them, were set to make new men of the Bounty crew and the result of that would brand every one of us, from captain to servant-lad, in different ways for the rest of our lives.