Paradise in Chains by Diana Preston

Author:Diana Preston [Preston, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781632866127
Goodreads: 33590622
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2017-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

Neither Bligh nor the Admiralty had any intention that the mutineers should be allowed to live out their lives amid the pleasures of the South Seas. In early November 1790, the Admiralty dispatched Captain Edward Edwards aboard the twenty-four gun HMS Pandora to hunt them down. Edwards was a harsh disciplinarian. He had himself suppressed an incipient mutiny among his own crew aboard HMS Narcissus off the North American coast nine years earlier, following which five of the would-be mutineers had been hanged in New York and two others severely flogged, one receiving five hundred lashes and the other two hundred. Among the Pandora’s 140-man crew was Thomas Hayward, who had survived the open-boat journey with Bligh. Newly promoted from his previous rank of midshipman to third lieutenant, he was expected to be useful to the mission both for his knowledge of Tahiti—believed by Bligh to be the mutineers’ destination—and his ability to identify the individual mutineers.

Edwards’s orders were to take HMS Pandora to the South Seas to endeavor to recover the Bounty and there hunt down “and bring in confinement to England … Fletcher Christian and his associates.” The list of “mutineers” appended to Edwards’s orders made no distinction between active mutineers, bystanders, and those detained against their will. All were to be “as closely confined as may preclude all probability of their escaping, having however proper regard to the preservation of their lives, that they may be brought home to undergo the punishment due to their demerits.”

Specifically, Edwards was to sail first to Tahiti to see whether the mutineers were still there. If not, he was to enquire discreetly of the islanders about the whereabouts of the Bounty and her crew without explaining his reasons until he had discovered whether the Tahitians knew Bligh had been dispossessed of his ship. If any mutineers were still on Tahiti, his orders included authority “to detain such of the chiefs as you may be able to get hold of” as hostages and to dispatch “a strong party well armed to go in quest of the mutineers.” If he drew a blank at Tahiti, Edwards was to sweep the neighboring Society Islands before proceeding to the Friendly Islands and searching there. Then, “having succeeded or failed,” before passing south of Java and heading home he was to sail through and survey the Torres Strait so that in future ships could take that route more confidently to Port Jackson.

Ever since Bligh’s return with the news of the failure of the breadfruit expedition the West Indian plantation owners had been pressing Joseph Banks and the Admiralty for a second voyage to bring breadfruit plants to the Caribbean to feed their slaves. By early 1791 Bligh knew one was to take place and that he would command it, a mark of considerable trust and belief in him in the aftermath of the mutiny. In early February he wrote to Lieutenant Francis (Frank) Godolphin Bond, the son of his much older half-sister, offering him the post of first lieutenant on the voyage, which Bond accepted.

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