I HAD THOUGHT TO TELL my tale from its beginnings to the present in this journal, but I find myself forced to write now of a fact which will shape all our lives for ever, whatever that span shall be. Bounty is no more. Our ship has burned and sunk. We worked for a full week, dawn to dusk, stripping her of everything useful for our island life and it was in my mind to run her aground and let her break up that we might use more of her structure. And yet, I do not know if I would ever have accomplished this act of finality to the beautiful vessel that, cursed as she was by the purpose to which she was put, served us so well.
Discussion there was little. All knew that a passing ship catching sight of Bounty at anchor would be the end of us. Some were for leaving her afloat a little longer but by midday on the 23rd she was a hulk and I eventually gave the order to raise the anchor. We’d let her drift ashore and see what happened. It was a powerful heave needed for a small band of men, some of whom were drunk on liquor from the ship, to get the anchor up, but we succeeded and prepared to abandon her by boarding the cutter being held alongside.
The anchor was scarcely out of the water when I heard a shout of fire and turned to see smoke pouring up from the main hatch. I swore and chocked the windlass as she drifted towards the rocks.
‘No use, lads. To the cutter!’ I shouted and all raced towards the side where we’d hung ropes down to the cutter. We gathered there for a last look and I saw Mathew Quintal, staggering drunk, come across the deck.
‘What have you done, you scoundrel?’
For an answer he flung the top of a pitch barrel over the side. ‘Best to be done with her,’ he shouted over the noise of the fire and the pounding of the surf, ‘else the Indians would have killed us in the night and taken her.’
McCoy staggered into view through the smoke carrying a liquor barrel. With some help from others he lowered it to the cutter by rope. Then a roar came from below as the fire devoured all before it. Quintal was the first down a rope, shoving others aside. The heat was intense and the natives shouted in panic as they swarmed down the ropes. I was the last to leave the ship and the deck was blistering around my feet as I swung myself over the side.
I steered the cutter through the rocks with smoke billowing around us and the parting ship’s timbers cracking like gunshots. Will Brown told me later that the flames leapt to half the former height of the masts. We could hear the wailing of the women on the beach and they rushed into the surf to what purpose I know not; Jack Williams had to jump over the side with the grapnel and line and push them aside lest they attempt to board and swamp the boat.
That night I ate little and slept less. I stood on the beach and watched the ship being consumed by fire. Sparks shot into the air visible to a great height through the clouds of smoke until at last there was a long, loud hiss of steam as the vessel sank beneath the waves.
Writing thus has relieved my feelings somewhat, but I fear the black pit that could open in my mind. I accepted a stiff tot of rum from McCoy’s cask, needing something to soothe my soul’s chill. I would that my wife, Mauatua, now comforting the women, was with me to warm me with her love. I will have more to say of her.