EPILOGUE

Sydney, 1806

Governor, rum and rebellion

When Sir Joseph Banks had offered Bligh the position of governor of New South Wales, informing him that King George III’s current representative in the colony, Philip Gidley King, was ‘disliked and much opposed’, Bligh could not have imagined what was actually meant. Trouble was brewing. Corruption and dissent were rife and King, a naval officer like Bligh, could do nothing to stop it. What attempts he did make were treated with total contempt. Inevitably word reached England that King was all but powerless and the colony was collapsing. Something had to be done, and that ‘something’ was to appoint Bligh as governor.

King’s greatest concern was that the root of the rot lay at the feet of one man, John Macarthur, a charismatic individual who had arrived in Sydney Town in June 1790 as a member of the New South Wales Corps. The Corps had been assembled in England the previous year as a replacement for the Marines, the original convict guard Governor Phillip had landed with when the convict settlement was established in 1788. The Corps was under the command of Major Francis Grose, and when the initial complement arrived with the Second Fleet in June 1790 their number represented ten per cent of the European population in the settlement. Macarthur, who was heavily in debt when he left England, was among them.

As soon as he set foot on land it seemed Macarthur’s intent went far beyond being a military man: he was out to take every opportunity available to him and build his personal wealth, no matter what. As the years passed this grew increasingly apparent: he was ruthless in his pursuit of a personal fortune and had become a law unto himself: Governor King knew it, former Governor John Hunter knew it, and Sir Joseph Banks and the British Government knew it.

In 1801, however, Macarthur’s plans were interrupted. He was sent to London by Governor King to face trial after seriously wounding another member of the New South Wales Corps, Colonel William Paterson, in a duel. The dispatch relating to the incident, which the governor sent to London on the same ship, mysteriously disappeared during the voyage. Macarthur returned to Sydney in 1805 without being tried.

Within ten years of his arrival in the colony the avaricious Macarthur had amassed a fortune amounting to £20,000, ‘mostly at the public expense’ through ‘sewing discord and strife’. Governor King had scathingly quipped while Macarthur was in England: ‘If Captain Macarthur returns here in any official character, it should be that of governor, as one-half the colony already belongs to him, and it will not be long before he gets the other half.’ Knowing that a great number of the problems crippling the colony started and finished with Macarthur, King declared he should be investigated and dealt with. He made his views well known to London:

Experience has convinced every man in this colony that there are no resources which art, cunning, impudence and a pair of basilisk eyes can afford that he does not put in practice to obtain any point he undertakes … persecution and opposition became Captain Macarthur’s system. If the records of this colony, now in your office, are examined, you will find his name very conspicuous. Many and many instances of his diabolical spirit has shown itself before Governor Phillip left this colony, and since, although in many instances he has been the master worker of the puppets he has set in motion.

At the time the ailing Governor King was denouncing Macarthur, a coup of sorts had already taken place. The New South Wales Corps, to which Macarthur was still closely aligned, essentially had free rein in the town. Wherever significant profits were to be made, the Corps were in control. On the waterfront they ran unchecked, purchasing all cargo of any worth that arrived from England, and with rum being the local currency, it was their prime target. Under the influence of Macarthur and Captain George Johnston Corps members bartered brutally with the struggling settlers for stock, produce and even their property. It was a system that ensured maximum profits for the Corps members, and Macarthur, and endless hardship for the colonists.

The British government could no longer ignore these problems. They needed someone strong willed and tenacious if they were to have any hope of breaking Macarthur’s stranglehold on the community. A decision had been made. Surely, the incorruptible and indomitable navy man, William Bligh, was the one man who could stand firm and hobble the unprincipled profiteer and his supporters in the Corps? Bligh, having accepted the challenge, had set sail with express orders to regain control of the colony from Macarthur and his covetous cohorts and put this British outpost on a solid path towards prosperity.

From that moment Bligh and Macarthur were on a collision course.

A crowd started to build as word spread that the new governor was arriving from England. William Bligh stepped ashore from a longboat to an audience wondering what this new man would bring to their troubled settlement. Welcomed by a worn-down Governor King, Bligh was then escorted to Government House, which stood on the corner of what is now Bridge and Phillip streets, where he was no doubt further briefed on the all-consuming troubles.

The colony was then under significant added pressure following a devastating flood five months earlier, in March. Floodwaters had surged down the Hawkesbury River to the northwest of the settlement and caused considerable havoc with the colony’s food crops. This meant that Bligh was also going to have to deal with the resulting food shortages and skyrocketing prices.

Within days of him moving into Government House, Governor King made three land grants to Bligh: 240 acres on the southern fringe of the settlement, 105 acres near Parramatta and 1,000 acres near Rouse Hill. Bligh named two in honour of his battles, Camperdown and Copenhagen, and the third Mount Betham, after his wife.

Bligh formally took office as the fourth governor of New South Wales on 13 August 1806. He was officially welcomed to New South Wales by three men, apparently self-declared, to be representatives of the community – George Johnston for the military, Richard Atkins for the civilian officers and John Macarthur for the free settlers. Bligh was by then well aware that the aspiring sheep grazier Macarthur was the man causing Sir Joseph Banks most concern, and that Governor King had dubbed him the ‘Botany Bay perturbator [agitator]’. This knowledge left Bligh in no doubt it wasn’t going to be an easy governorship, but at that time he had no idea how hard it would prove to be.

His concerns were reinforced when anti-Macarthur sentiment emerged as soon as the swearing-in ceremony had been completed: 135 free settlers sought an audience with him and declared that Macarthur in no way represented them in an official capacity – and further accused him of blatant and corrupt profiteering through the controlled supply of mutton to the community. Settlers from the Hawkesbury River region also accused Macarthur of infringing their rights and privileges by acting on their behalf when not authorised to do so.

Bligh commenced work quickly after his induction. Always a man of action, he immediately set out to tour the devastated Hawkesbury region and arranged relief for those struggling to find food. He made it clear he intended to assess the administrative processes to reform the colony and its dysfunctional economy. He did not tread lightly and within weeks the gloves were completely off. Mindful of the shortage of available agricultural land, he wanted to slow down the pace of land grants. Of particular concern was the matter of an extraordinary grant to Macarthur when he arrived back in town from England: 5,000 acres of prime agricultural land on the banks of the beautiful Nepean River. Macarthur was furious that his personal empire-building was suddenly under threat, but Bligh remained unyielding. The two men quarrelled famously and heatedly at Government House; Macarthur later reported that Bligh had said in one of these verbal stoushes: ‘What have I to do with your sheep, sir? What have I to do with your cattle? Are you to have such flocks of sheep and such herds of cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir! … I have heard of your concerns, sir, you have got 5,000 acres of land in the finest situation in the country; but by God, you shan’t keep it!’

By October 1806, in his ongoing efforts to curtail the crooked activities of Macarthur and the Corps, Bligh ordered new port regulations and was acting swiftly to enact laws to reduce the colony’s reliance on rum as currency. Throughout the period of November 1806 to February 1807 he issued orders outlawing barter in goods and spirits and banned the importation of private stills for alcohol production.

The new governor continued to clash constantly with Macarthur over the next few months. Bligh introduced a system in which free farmers and settlers were no longer obliged to purchase exclusively from the monopolists the articles they required. Instead, they could now make purchases from the government’s stores at a fair price. This move brought Bligh great respect and loyalty from the populace, but it was a direct attack on the powerbase of the corrupt Rum Corps, as the NSW Corps was now commonly known.

On 10 October 1807 Bligh’s daughter, well aware of the difficulties her father was facing, wrote to her mother:

Papa is quite well but dreadfully harassed by business and the troublesome set of people he has to deal with. In general he gives great satisfaction, but there are a few that we suspect wish to oppose him; as yet they have done nothing openly; though it is known their ‘tools’ have been at work some time; that is, they are trying to find something in Papa’s conduct to write home about; but which, I am sure, from his great circumspection, they will not be able to do with honour to themselves. Mr Macarthur is one of the party, the others are the military officers, but they are all invited to the house and treated with the same politeness as usual.

By the end of 1807 Bligh continued his march against Macarthur and the Corps, taking measures to up the ante. Earlier that year a sailing schooner, Parramatta, co-owned by Macarthur, sailed from Sydney to Tahiti with one of the colony’s least desirable and most notorious convicts, John Hoare, as an apparent stowaway. When Parramatta returned to her home port, the government bond that had been lodged to ensure the ship complied with all regulations on departure – which included a search for stowaways – was forfeited because the ship was the means of Hoare’s escape. Macarthur, arrogantly placing himself above the law, ignored an order to appear in court when the matter relating to this incident was heard. He was duly arrested on 16 August 1807, charged and ordered to face court on 25 January 1808. The accused was not concerned: he was then convinced he had the perfect arena for the ultimate showdown with the governor.

When the day of reckoning arrived, the court comprised the Judge-Advocate, Richard Atkins, and six officers of the New South Wales Corps. Macarthur immediately challenged the authority of Atkins to sit in judgement, using ‘a great torrent of threats and abusive language’ in disclosing that Atkins had been financially indebted to him for fifteen years. The bench of officers immediately adjourned to consult with the governor, only to be told that the court could not be constituted without the colony’s Judge-Advocate. The officers immediately sided with Macarthur, their former superior in the NSW Corps. Atkins countered, demanding that the six officers be charged with treasonable offences. Bligh supported the decision. The die was cast.

For Bligh there was never greater evidence of Macarthur manipulating and controlling the colony for personal gain. He declared the action by the six officers to be mutinous behaviour and demanded in writing that Johnston, now ranked a major, meet with him so the matter could be dealt with accordingly. Johnston, who was at nearby Annandale, replied that he had been injured in an accident involving his gig and was unable to travel. From that moment Bligh was on his own.

On the morning of 26 January, twenty years to the day after the founding of the colony, Bligh ordered that Macarthur again be arrested and detained. Only hours later Johnston arrived at the jail and presented an order of his own that released the prisoner.

From that moment, Macarthur’s ‘mutiny’ was underway. His earlier attempts to influence Bligh’s recall to London had failed, so now he was taking matters into his own hands: the governor had to be overthrown by any means.

Macarthur returned to the Corps’ barracks in the heart of the settlement – at what is now Wynyard Square on the western side of George Street – and together with Johnston he wrote and co-signed a petition with eight others, none of whom were members of the Corps. It stated, in part:

The present alarming state of this colony, in which every man’s property, liberty, and life is endangered, induces us most earnestly to implore you instantly to place Governor Bligh under an arrest and to assume the command of the colony. We pledge ourselves, at the moment of less agitation, to come forward to support the measure with our fortunes and our lives.

Johnston, who claimed he was acting on behalf of all his officers and the colony’s ‘respectable inhabitants’, ordered his Corps to take up arms, and sent three officers to Government House with an order for Governor Bligh to resign. These officers were also to assure Bligh that there was no intention to harm him. The 400-strong regiment was assembled under arms and with bayonets fixed, then with flags flying and the band playing, they marched on the nearby Government House.

It was half past six in the evening of 26 January 1808, and still daylight when Bligh, dining with friends, received word of the uprising against him. His daughter, the now widowed Mary, took it upon herself to stride boldly to the gates of Government House and do her best to deter the entry of the Corps. ‘You traitors, you rebels, you have just walked over my husband’s grave and now come to murder my father,’ she protested until she was forcibly dragged away.

On arrival, the Corps waited in the grounds of Government House while officers began a determined search of the building in a bid to find their man. Bligh was eventually located: he was sorting through personal papers and confidential documents in a rear bedroom when the officers burst in and arrested him. The popular image of him hiding under a bed and being dragged out from underneath it was staunchly disputed by Bligh. He was indignant in his rebuttal, but in the days that followed it clearly suited the forces behind the rebellion to promote the idea of the deposed governor’s cowardice. With the insurrection complete and Bligh under house arrest, Johnston assumed the title of lieutenant-governor and declared martial law. Johnston promptly acquitted Macarthur of the charges brought against him by Bligh and he was appointed the inaugural ‘Colonial Secretary’.

Seventeen months after being sworn in, Bligh’s governorship was over. For the next six months Mary and her father remained under house arrest while a solution to their predicament could be found. Being so far from England and any hope of rescue, they were effectively political prisoners. Finally a deal was struck: HMS Porpoise, a twelve-gunner with a crew of sixty-five men, was put at Bligh’s disposal on the condition that he would sail back to England. He boarded the ship with Mary but on clearing Sydney Heads Bligh turned to starboard, setting a course for Hobart Town. He was determined not to give up without a fight.

Sailing up the Derwent River and anchoring off the remote settlement in August 1808, Bligh hoped he would be able to muster the support of Lieutenant-Governor David Collins, to overthrow those who had usurped him. But it was not to be. Collins sent a communiqué to Sydney stating that Bligh had not sailed to England, instead he and his daughter were there. Collins had shown his hand: he had sided with the insurrectionists. Bligh had another enemy in his midst.

From that moment there was a remarkable stand-off between the pair. Collins tried to force Bligh to leave Hobart by cutting off all opportunities for the provisioning of Porpoise. Bligh was now completely isolated but he stood firm, hoping to receive word that support was coming from England. ‘I remained on board my vessel getting some trivial supplies from the captains of ships,’ he wrote. ‘A few poor unfortunate settlers, who endeavoured to get off a few fowls and some mutton to my daughter, some were seized and flogged and one poor man received, I believe, 400 or 500 lashes and was imprisoned for the relief …’

Bligh remained resolutely stubborn and the stand-off continued for more than a year. Finally, in January 1810, he received a letter advising him that Governor Lachlan Macquarie had taken office in Sydney and had declared the 1808 rebellion illegal. Also, the British Colonial Office had condemned his overthrow as mutiny. ‘I shall be most happy to pay you every respect and attention in my power to bestow while you find it necessary to remain in the Settlement,’ wrote Macquarie. It was the news Bligh had been waiting for. He sailed back to Sydney and arrived in Port Jackson little more than two weeks after the new governor had taken office.

On the day of Bligh’s return, Macquarie arranged for the commander of his own 73rd Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice O’Connell, to lead a guard of honour at Government Wharf in salute of Bligh, and to escort him and Mary to Government House for a reception. Macarthur and Johnston were long gone. They had already fled Sydney and were in England by October 1808. Johnston was to face a court martial and Macarthur had escaped to England firm in the knowledge that if he remained in Sydney he would almost certainly be arrested and charged for his role in the events that led to Bligh’s overthrow. The associated charge of sedition could have seen him face a lengthy jail term in Australia, but he knew he could remain in immunity in England, so he stayed there for the next eight years. Eventually, the British Government dropped the charges.

Back in Sydney Bligh made plans for himself and Mary to return home. Macquarie, too, was looking forward to the day when he saw the stern of HMS Hindostan, the ship that would carry Bligh back to England. He had had enough of Bligh being on his turf and was keen to see him leave. His departure would allow Macquarie to get on with the job of governing the colony without the division caused by the former governor’s presence in the community.

A few days before Bligh and Mary were to leave he was astounded when Lieutenant-Colonel O’Connell proposed an offer of marriage to Mary. ‘I gave him a flat denial because I could not believe it – I retired with her, when I found she had approved of his addresses and given her word to him,’ he wrote to Betsy from Hindostan while sailing home. Conflicted and surprised, he had given his consent wishing his daughter every happiness. More than two years earlier Mary had endured the sad loss of her husband, John. He died as a result of consumption on 4 January 1808 – just twenty-two days before Bligh was deposed.

Bligh’s planned departure celebrations evolved into wedding festivities for Mary and O’Connell, a man he summed up in his poignant letter to Betsy: ‘Nothing can exceed the esteem and high character he has.’

On 12 May 1810, just shy of five years after he had first arrived, Bligh left Sydney. On October 25 that same year, Hindostan, along with the two naval ships that had sailed in convoy from the colony, HMS Dromedary and Porpoise, reached Spithead. Bligh went ashore as soon as he could and immediately set out for London to see Betsy and his much-loved daughters. His family had brought him emotional stability in an often turbulent life. He lived for them: their welfare and financial security were paramount as he worked his way towards the top in naval ranks.

In February 1811, nine months after he returned home, the then all but retired Bligh was elevated to Rear-Admiral of the Blue Squadron, backdated twelve months. Sadly, though, the time he spent with his wife was short: his happiness was shattered when Betsy passed away on 15 April 1812, aged fifty-nine. She was buried in the nearby churchyard at St Mary’s Church in Lambeth.

The heavy silence in the family home that came with Betsy’s absence would prove too much for Bligh to bear. A year after her passing he officially retired on a naval pension and moved to a country residence, the Manor House, in Farningham, Kent, with his four unmarried daughters – Elizabeth, Jane, Frances and Anne. Over the next two years Bligh did his best to enjoy the relaxation that came with the lush countryside of Kent, a far cry from the tempestuous and often threatening ocean he had shared his life with for more than forty years. Some consolation came in May 1814 when he was advised that he had been promoted to Vice-Admiral of the Blue, but without Betsy by his side, they were lonely years. His daughters could not compensate for the fact that his great love, and steadfast supporter, was no longer there.

Bligh’s life mellowed over the following years and compressed into the quiet comfort of the reading room at his home where he was surrounded by hundreds of heavily bound, dark-covered books and an intriguing array of curiosities, all symbolic of a life spent at sea. Many years later a local, Dr. Alfred Gatty, revealed how as a young boy he would visit Bligh at Farningham: the Admiral would have him sit on his knee while he told the young lad stories, some based around the memento Bligh wore around his neck – a blue ribbon with a pistol ball hanging from it. It was the ball he used as a weight when sharing out the rations of rotten bread and water during the voyage in the open boat, a quarter of a century earlier.

By 1817 Bligh was diagnosed as suffering from a serious illness, possibly cancer. In December that year, however, he was pleasantly distracted from his failing health when he had the pleasure of seeing his daughter Elizabeth marry a cousin, Richard Bligh. Within days of Elizabeth’s wedding, while visiting doctors in Bond Street, London, Bligh collapsed and died. He was laid to rest alongside his Betsy in the churchyard at St Mary’s.

When he passed away Britain was still ten years from enjoying the peace that had been so desperately fought for since 1792. Ironically, it was a battle with the French as an ally, not an enemy, which achieved this: the defeat off Pylos, in Greece, of a Turkish force that was out to prevent Greece from gaining independence. This same battle brought to an end the era of great conflicts fought under sail; within twenty years naval fleets included two new elements – power and steam.

Bligh played no small part in this historic period where the Royal Navy ensured that Britannia ruled the waves in a decisive and spectacular fashion; so one can only wonder, if it had not been for the Bounty mutiny and the heavy penalty it placed on his career, might he have been another Lord Nelson – the Royal Navy’s youngest ever captain and the man who led his country to impressive victories in some of the most notable sea battles of all time? We will never know; but I do believe Bligh was one of the most accomplished seafarers of all time.

His personality combined complexities with cleverness: he was a principled man of incredibly strong character. He did have his shortcomings but what was then seen as acceptable conduct in the eighteenth century navy is now, two centuries later, seen as being cruel, harsh and unacceptable.

So what sort of man does Bligh’s story reveal? The man was tough – he had to be if he was to control a crew that included reprobates, rogues and ragamuffins sailing into the unknown and into battle. For the same reason his tongue would lash hard with coarse and demeaning words of the day, often ignited by incompetence and insolence: the captain’s men had to realise that dereliction of duty, when it came to shipboard tasks, could imperil the ship and its crew. And yes, he made enemies, primarily because he stood apart, and he stood for what he believed in; so powerful men like Banks recognised, respected and continued to promote him.

Was Bligh the cruel tyrant he is so often made out to be? I don’t think so. He preferred encouragement over punishment and health over hardship. And, whereas Nelson became one the world’s greatest naval leaders through grand victories in battle, Bligh’s legacy to maritime history is more subtle – an explorer in every sense; an exceptional marine surveyor, cartographer and navigator; a strong leader of men in battle, and above everything else, a bona fide master mariner. Bligh was a complex modern hero and a sailor that anyone with more salt water than blood in their veins would trust with their life at the height of the most ferocious of storms. Yet, in the end, the headstone on his grave said little about the man. Alongside brief references to his triumphs it carried a moving memorial to the twin boys he and Betsy lost. His daughter Anne, to whom he and Betsy were devoted, was later buried alongside her parents.

Bligh’s simple epitaph hardly does justice to the sweep of his extraordinary life – but it is what mattered to him. If however, there was one last thing that would have riled this man who was meticulous about everything he did, with an assiduous attention to detail, it was that the age chiselled into his tombstone is incorrect. He was actually sixty-three when he died.

Sacred

To the memory of

WILLIAM BLIGH, Esq., F.R.S.

Vice-Admiral of the Blue

THE CELEBRATED NAVIGATOR

WHO FIRST TRANSPLANTED THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE

FROM OTAHEITE TO THE WEST INDIES.

BRAVELY FOUGHT THE BATTLE OF HIS COUNTRY;

AND DIED BELOVED, RESPECTED AND LAMENTED,

ON THE 7TH DAY OF DECEMBER 1817

AGED 64