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Authors: Caroline Alexander
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journal. These were the women who had lived with the Bounty ’s mutineers, and their children.
“One call’d herself Peggy Stewart, after Mr. Stewart, one of the Bounty’s midshipmen, and her child which was very beautiful was called Charlotte,” wrote Bell. “[A]nother’s name was Mary MacIntosh and the other’s Mary Bocket [Burkett].”
Following this first meeting, Peggy Stewart frequently came to visit, often bringing small gifts and always inquiring after her husband. At length, it was time for the ships to depart, and she came to make her affectionate and tearful farewell.
“Just before she went away, she came into my Cabbin,” wrote Bell, “and ask’d me the same question she had often done, whether I thought Stewart would be hung.” Deeply moved, he replied that he didn’t know—perhaps not.
“She then said ‘If he is alive when you return, tell him that you saw his Peggy and his little Charlotte, and that they were both well, and tell him to come to Otaheite, and live with them, or they will be unhappy.’ She then burst into Tears and with the deepest regret forced herself into her Canoe and as long as we could see her she kept waving her hand.” The next ship that came from Tahiti brought word that Peggy had pined away and died of a broken heart.
BOUNTY
England, 1787
The passion for exploration and discovery, the hunger to learn all things about all aspects of the physical world, the great and preposterous optimism that held that such truths were in fact discoverable—these remarkable traits that so characterized the British eighteenth century were embodied by one remarkable eighteenth-century man, the admired, en-vied and uniquely influential Sir Joseph Banks. Banks was forty-four years old in 1787, and already a national treasure, as powerful in his way as any member of government. And it was the interest of Banks, more than any other consideration, that ensured that the government undertook the Bounty ’s breadfruit mission to the South Seas.
Banks had been born in 1743, to a prosperous and well-connected landowning family. Somehow he had managed to be educated at both Eton and Harrow and at Oxford, although under a tutor he had privately hired from Cambridge. He was only eighteen when his father died and he had inherited the first of his estates, and from this time, for the remainder of his life, Banks was the master of his own destiny. From an early age he had shown a passion for natural history, above all botany, and this he now pursued. At the age of twenty-one, having established himself in London society, where he quickly became the friend of distinguished men some decades his senior, Banks set out for a summer of botanizing along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. Returning with a professionally compiled collection of novel specimens never before seen in Europe, and the basis of what would become his world-famous herbarium, he was, at twenty-three, elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Still restless, still implausibly young, Banks then decided that his next venture in gentlemanly inquiry would be with Lieutenant James Cook in the Pacific.
The first of what would be Cook’s three magnificent voyages left England in the Endeavour in August 1768. The primary objective was to enable British astronomers to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, but after accomplishing such observations, the expedition was to proceed in search of the fabled Southern continent, surveying New Zealand and other islands en route. Banks was footing the bill for his own passage as well as that of his considerable entourage—his colleague and employee Dr. Daniel Solander, a distinguished Swedish naturalist and disciple of Linnaeus, two artists to make records of what was seen, his secretary, four servants and his two greyhounds. It was popularly rumored that Banks’s expenses for the trip had cost him some ten thousand pounds.
Cook’s first voyage
“One call’d herself Peggy Stewart, after Mr. Stewart, one of the Bounty’s midshipmen, and her child which was very beautiful was called Charlotte,” wrote Bell. “[A]nother’s name was Mary MacIntosh and the other’s Mary Bocket [Burkett].”
Following this first meeting, Peggy Stewart frequently came to visit, often bringing small gifts and always inquiring after her husband. At length, it was time for the ships to depart, and she came to make her affectionate and tearful farewell.
“Just before she went away, she came into my Cabbin,” wrote Bell, “and ask’d me the same question she had often done, whether I thought Stewart would be hung.” Deeply moved, he replied that he didn’t know—perhaps not.
“She then said ‘If he is alive when you return, tell him that you saw his Peggy and his little Charlotte, and that they were both well, and tell him to come to Otaheite, and live with them, or they will be unhappy.’ She then burst into Tears and with the deepest regret forced herself into her Canoe and as long as we could see her she kept waving her hand.” The next ship that came from Tahiti brought word that Peggy had pined away and died of a broken heart.
BOUNTY
England, 1787
The passion for exploration and discovery, the hunger to learn all things about all aspects of the physical world, the great and preposterous optimism that held that such truths were in fact discoverable—these remarkable traits that so characterized the British eighteenth century were embodied by one remarkable eighteenth-century man, the admired, en-vied and uniquely influential Sir Joseph Banks. Banks was forty-four years old in 1787, and already a national treasure, as powerful in his way as any member of government. And it was the interest of Banks, more than any other consideration, that ensured that the government undertook the Bounty ’s breadfruit mission to the South Seas.
Banks had been born in 1743, to a prosperous and well-connected landowning family. Somehow he had managed to be educated at both Eton and Harrow and at Oxford, although under a tutor he had privately hired from Cambridge. He was only eighteen when his father died and he had inherited the first of his estates, and from this time, for the remainder of his life, Banks was the master of his own destiny. From an early age he had shown a passion for natural history, above all botany, and this he now pursued. At the age of twenty-one, having established himself in London society, where he quickly became the friend of distinguished men some decades his senior, Banks set out for a summer of botanizing along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. Returning with a professionally compiled collection of novel specimens never before seen in Europe, and the basis of what would become his world-famous herbarium, he was, at twenty-three, elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Still restless, still implausibly young, Banks then decided that his next venture in gentlemanly inquiry would be with Lieutenant James Cook in the Pacific.
The first of what would be Cook’s three magnificent voyages left England in the Endeavour in August 1768. The primary objective was to enable British astronomers to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, but after accomplishing such observations, the expedition was to proceed in search of the fabled Southern continent, surveying New Zealand and other islands en route. Banks was footing the bill for his own passage as well as that of his considerable entourage—his colleague and employee Dr. Daniel Solander, a distinguished Swedish naturalist and disciple of Linnaeus, two artists to make records of what was seen, his secretary, four servants and his two greyhounds. It was popularly rumored that Banks’s expenses for the trip had cost him some ten thousand pounds.
Cook’s first voyage
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