Bligh’s cave

revisited

The Danielssons’ story about Captain Bligh’s cave (PIM, June ’B5) has brought a response from Suva journalist and publisher, Kim Gravelle, who, in 1975, accompanied Bill Verity on part of his epic re-enactment of Bligh’s journey. They cal led at the cave, which was photographed and de scribed in Kim’s story, “In the Wake of Bligh.”

Verity’s voyage of 3200 miles was the first re-enact ment of Bligh’s incredible voyage, but much less well known than the better-fin anced effort in 1983 by Captain William Ware.

Gravelle says the rigors of the trip are burned into his memory, and he remembers well as they circled Tofua, heading to the northwest side, looking for the cave and the stony beach re corded in Bligh’s log. Bligh’s Beach has no sand, just big,

black lava stones, some of them as big as a man’s head.

It was these boulders with which the islanders killed John Norton. Bligh and his men arrived at dawn, but on the day Kim and Bill Verity ploughed ashore through the swell in a borrowed outrigger canoe the stones were burning hot, blistering Kim’s bare feet “Palangi feet,” he says the locals call them.

“Going up that beach I almost never touched the ground,” said Kim. “And still I got blistered.”

And, as he was working on the finer aspects of the Gravelle fire-dance show, Bill Verity, aided by a pair of shoes, was walking the beach, hands aloft, a dazed look in his eyes, drinking in the atmosphere of history.

“It’s the most beautiful thing ever to happen to me,” he says. Staff Writer.

The island of Kau, seen from Bligh’s Beach. Bill Verity’s Bounty Launch is in the centreground.