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Updated: June 20, 2025
Then they continued their journey, making their way through Torres Straits by a channel still known as Bligh's Passage, and taking a week from the time of sighting the Australian coast to the time of leaving it. A couple of incidents that happened at this time show how it was that Bligh kept his men so well in hand.
After Lieutenant Ball had signified his business, and the service he was sent on, a number of frivolous enquiries were made respecting the setlement at New South Wales, and much astonishment was expressed, that we came from that country and could not tell what became of the Bounty, Lieutenant Bligh's Ship.
They landed here in 1790, fifteen men, and twelve women. Nine of the men were mutineers; all the others were Otaheitans. Captain Beachey visited the island in 1825, and found about sixty persons on it, the descendants of Captain Bligh's men. Pitcairn's Isle is a little spot not more than seven miles in circumference, with an abrupt rocky coast.
It couldn't be many minutes, I said, before the first man was out on our trail; and there I was right, for one of them came leaping out of the wood straight into Peter Bligh's arms before I'd spoken another word. Poor devil it was the last good-night for him in this world for Peter passes him on, so to speak, and he went headlong into the pond without any one knowing how he got there.
Johnston caused Bligh's commission and all his papers to be sealed up, informed the governor that he would be kept a prisoner in his own house, and leaving a strong guard of soldiers, marched the rest of his inebriated command back to barracks, with the same parade of band-playing and pretence of dignity.
Bligh's "Instructions" from the Crown contained a clause which has an important bearing on his administration. It was as follows:
Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God; but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if he sought the method there....
In doing this, I have endeavoured to show not only the fact of Captain Bligh's general unpopularity, and the readiness of the people to rise against him, and the probability that they would be joined by the soldiery, but also the causes of that unpopularity, founded on the general conduct of the governor." The court came to the following decision:
Labillardiere, in his Voyage in Search of La Pérouse, says that one of the officers of the Pandora assured some of the people of the La Pérouse expedition, whom they had met at the Cape, that Bligh's ill-treatment of the Bounty's people was the cause of the mutiny.
After describing the seizure and securing of Captain Bligh's person in his cabin, Christian is made to thus conclude his account of the revolt:
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