CHAPTER VI

THE COURT-MARTIAL

If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make, or endeavour to make, any mutinous assembly, upon any pretence whatsoever, every person offending herein, and being convicted thereof, by the sentence of the Court-martial, shall suffer DEATH.

     Naval Articles of War, Art. 19.

The Court assembled to try the prisoners on board his Majesty’s ship Duke, on the 12th September, 1792, and continued by adjournment from day to day (Sunday excepted) until the 18th of the same month.[24]

PRESENT

     Vice-Admiral Lord Hood, President. 
     Capt.  Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, Bart.,
       " John Colpoys,
       " Sir George Montagu,
       " Sir Roger Curtis,
       " John Bazeley,
       " Sir Andrew Snape Douglas,
       " John Thomas Duckworth,
       " John Nicholson Inglefield,
       " John Knight,
       " Albemarle Bertie,
       " Richard Goodwin Keats.

The charges set forth that Fletcher Christian, who was mate of the Bounty, assisted by others of the inferior officers and men, armed with muskets and bayonets, had violently and forcibly taken that ship from her commander, Lieutenant Bligh; and that he, together with the master, boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, and other persons (being nineteen in number), were forced into the launch and cast adrift;—­that Captain Edwards, in the Pandora, was directed to proceed to Otaheite, and other islands in the South Seas, and to use his best endeavours to recover the said vessel, and to bring in confinement to England the said Fletcher Christian and his associates, or as many of them as he might be able to apprehend, in order that they might be brought to condign punishment, &c.  That Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Charles Norman, Joseph Coleman, Thomas Ellison, Thomas M’Intosh, Thomas Burkitt, John Millward, William Muspratt, and Michael Byrne, had been brought to England, &c., and were now put on their trial.

Mr. Fryer, the master of the Bounty, being first sworn, deposed—­

That he had the first watch; that between ten and eleven o’clock Mr. Bligh came on deck, according to custom, and after a short conversation, and having given his orders for the night, left the deck; that at twelve he was relieved by the gunner, and retired, leaving all quiet; that at dawn of day he was greatly alarmed by an unusual noise; and that, on attempting to jump up, John Sumner and Matthew Quintal laid their hands upon his breast and desired him to lie still, saying he was their prisoner; that on expostulating with them, he was told, ’Hold your tongue, or you are a dead man, but if you remain quiet there is none on board will hurt a hair of your head’; he further deposes, that on raising himself on the