The endless voyage of HMS Bounty

Books

Mutiny And Romance In The

SOUTH SEAS A Companion to the Bounty Adventure, by Sven Wahlroos.

Salem House Publishers, Massachusetts, 1989. 497 pages.

U 5522.50. Isbn 0-88162-395-4.

Reviewed by Norman Douglas

THERE is just a possibility that Cap tain William Bligh, not a particu larly modest man by most accounts, might be a little embarrassed by now at the remarkable industry generated by his modest breadfruit gathering voyage two centuries ago.

Since then the voyage and the mutiny resulting from it have inspired more than 2500 books and long articles, at least five semi-fictional movies and umpteem shorter cinematic works and who knows how many incidental refer ences to the event in obscure publica tions.

Well, Sven Wahlroos should know, since he is the author of the latest attempt to establish the “true story” of what happened on the Bounty, and much of this work is devoted to provid ing that kind of detail. Just when you were beginning to think that your shelf of Bounty literature was already rather strained, along comes this 497-page account, not the first psychological study of the causes of the mutiny, but the first, so we are told, study by a professional

psychologist.

Why should a practising and presum

ably successful psychologist undertake

yet another ploughing of this well-tilled field?

Because, in addition to his professional qualifications, Dr Wahlroos is a Bounty buff, a devotee with an almost obsessive interest in any and everything to do with the ship, its captain, its crew and the itinerary of its voyage. This aspect of his interest becomes very apparent less than halfway through the book: of its almost 500 pages, more than 230 are devoted to what Dr Wahlroos calls “a companion”, a collection- of information arranged alphabetically which is intended to ex

plain the passing

or obscure refer ence in the usual Bounty literature, but which on clos er inspection con tains a great deal of trivia, not all of it accurate. Some of Dr Wahlroo’s enthusiasm for his subject, and perhaps some of the quality of the

book, may be gleaned from this extract from his acknowledgments (written in verse) as he recalls the occasion at the Adventurers Club that led him to write it:

“Write a book,” they said, “on the Mutiny”

Write a book on Adventure, Sven.

For we all like to read of romance at sea And the Bounty should sail again ”

Where came it from, this idea to write About Christian and about Bligh?

Was it South seas music that play ed in the night Or had drinks made some Club members high?

As Dr Wahlroos himself remarks on page 38 in reference to Lord Byron’s The Island, “such a poem deserves a

mutiny”.

All this could be amusing stuff if only it didn’t actually take itself quite so

seriously. The psychological study con

sists of a month by month account (though there is a bit of fudging at times) of the voyage and its aftermath, from November 1787 to September 1793; a chronicle, in other words, with

some presumably psychological insights

thrown in to enliven it.

A major problem here seems to be that since Dr Wahlroos has relied on secondary and tertiary sources as well as primary ones, the clinical assessments have to be treated with some reserve. So does the language in which they are ex pressed. Christian, during the incident

involving the alleged stealing of coconuts

on the ship, is said to have been “suffer ing from a brief reactive psychosis”. On page 162 he is described as having been “unstable and psychologically thin skinned”. Dr Wahlroos’ Californian prac tice may benefit from diagnoses like these; it is unlikely that the cause of scholarship will. In the epilogue to the chronicle (p 203) Dr Wahlroos delivers the punch-line to his investigation. “ . . . the mutiny on the Bounty was caused by the interaction between Bligh and Christian .” (His italics).

But perhaps buffs should be assessed on the quality and scope of their buffery rather than on their pretensions to re search. Since most of the book consists of the “encyclopaedia” or “companion” this is probably where Dr Wahlroos’ real strength lies. Truth to say, there is some recondite and curious material here, from the definition of a “flip” to a chro nology of Tahiti that includes “the most important dates in (its) history”, the lat ter’s value somewhat reduced by the omission of any reference to the two Au stralian films of the Bounty mutiny which were partly filmed on Tahiti years before Hollywood got the idea, though the American films are mentioned.

The handling of place names, a fea ture of this section, is also inconsistent.

In the entry on Fiji, for instance, one finds the spellings Lakemba and Nadi within a few short paragraphs of each other. We are also informed here that Bligh is considered “by the Fijians at least, as the principal discoverer of Fi jian”. Which Fijians did Dr Wahlroos consult?

For all that, the first class production and enviably attractive appearance of this book probably guarantees that it will find at market, especially since practical ly all other non-fiction books on the sub ject are now out of print. And if it helps to introduce more readers to the end lessly fascinating Pacific Islands and their history it will have served a very useful purpose indeed.

In the meantime, now that we have had Bligh and Christian historicised, fic tionalised, homosexualised and psycho analysed, one may well wonder what treatment they will be subjected to next.

That, to borrow a non-psychological observation from Dr Wahlroos, is “up to

speculation”. □

Wahlroos: specula tion?