itcairn
Island. And yet, while every incident in the moving story, even to the
evidence in the famous court-martial, has been discussed over and over
again, there has been lying in the Record Office for more than a century
an autograph manuscript, written by one of the principal actors in the
drama, which no one has thought it worth while to print.

Though the story of the mutiny is too well known to need repeating in
detail, it is necessary to set forth as briefly as possible its relation
to the history of maritime discovery in the Pacific. In the year 1787,
ten years after the death of Captain Cook in Hawaii, a number of West
India merchants in London, stirred by the glowing reports of the natural
wealth of the South Sea Islands brought home by Dampier and Cook,
petitioned the government to acclimatize the bread-fruit in Jamaica. A
ship of 215 tons was purchased into the service and fitted out under the
direct superintendence of Sir Joseph Banks, who named her the _Bounty_,
and recommended William Bligh, one of Cook's officers, for the command.
It was a new departure. The object of most of the earlier government
expeditions to the South Seas had been the advancement of geographical
science and natural history; the voyage of the _Bounty_ was to turn
former discoveries to the profit of the empire.

Bligh was singularly ill-fitted for the command. While he had undoubted
ability, his whole career shows him to have been wanting in the tact and
temper without which no one can successfully lead men; and in this
venture his own defects were aggravated by the inefficiency of his
officers. He took in his cargo of bread-fruit trees at Tahiti, and there
was no active insubordination until he reached Tonga on the homeward
voyage. At sunrise on April 28th, 1789, the crew mutinied under the
leadership of Fletcher Christian, the Master's Mate, whom Bligh's
ungoverned temper had provoked beyond endurance. The seamen had other
motives. Bligh had kept them far too long at Tahiti, and during the five
months they had spent at the island, every man had formed a connection
among the native women, and had enjoyed a kind of life that contrasted
sharply with the lot of bluejackets a century ago. Forcing Bligh, and
such of their shipmates as were loyal to him, into the launch, and
casting them adrift with food and water barely sufficient for a week's
subsistence, they set the ship's course eastward, crying "Huzza for
Tahiti!" There followed an