September 27, 2024 • 41 mins
Early morning, April 1789. Captain Bligh is abruptly dragged from his cabin. Wrists bound, bayonet pressed to his chest, he and a few loyal sailors are forced into a tiny launch and set adrift on the vast Pacific Ocean. This far from land, no-one is likely to survive for long.
History remembers Captain Bligh as a cruel, petty tyrant. The reality is more complicated. Bligh championed rational thought and showed his men great kindness on that famous voyage on the Bounty - yet it ended in mutiny. So what went wrong?
This is the third episode in a four-part series about fairness. It's based on David Bodanis' excellent book The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency In A World Turned Mean.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. April seventeen eighty nine, early morning, a British ship
and crew have been sailing home from Tahiti for three weeks.
It's quiet on board, just wind and slapping light waves.
(00:35):
But if someone had been listening closely, that have heard whispers, lightly,
hurrying footsteps, and then, about an hour before dawn, an
explosion of noise. This is HMS Bounty, and one of
the most famous mutinies in history is underway. Lieutenant Fletcher
(00:56):
Christian has organized most of the crew who detest their captain,
thirty four year old William Blind. They drag Blithe from
his cabin, tying his wrists behind his back on deck.
He struggles to get free, and Fletcher Christian blocks him,
pressing a bayonet to his chest. In England they've been friends.
(01:19):
Now glaring at each other. That's over. Pistols are at hand,
and the crew calls for Christian to blow Bli's brains out.
Bly yells back at Christian, telling him he must stop that.
In England, didn't he remember Christian had held Bli's own
children on his knee after what's happened on this voyage, However,
(01:42):
Christian doesn't care. He forces Bly into a tiny, overloaded
launch out on the vast Pacific. This far from land,
no one is likely to survive for long. I'm Tim
Harford and you're listening to cautionary Tales. This episode is
(02:28):
the third in a series exploring the famous idea that
nice guys finish last, inspired by David Bandanas's book The
Art of Fairness. And we'll hear a bit from David
Bandanas himself later. But first, the mutiny on the Bounty.
It's not only an astonishing story in its own right,
(02:50):
it also sheds light on the question of whether nice
guys finish last or first. Let's start with Captain William Bly.
Several movies have been made about the mutiny, and Bly
is often painted as a cruel, petty tyrant. Just how
cruel and tea he really was is something we'll look
(03:11):
at closely. Certainly, before he became Captain of the Bounty,
William Bly was a generally quiet, thoughtful fellow. He came
from a fairly humble family, just an inch above the
working classes. Joining the Navy when he was still a
teenager was a good way to rise. He developed his
artistic abilities and was especially drawn to painting watercolor landscapes,
(03:36):
and he discovered that he loved mathematics. That was big
Bly was awed at the sophisticated men of Britain's royal society.
They were heirs to Sir Isaac Newton and the other
great rational minds that were transforming the world. His ambition
and his mathematical skill came together when he was lucky
(03:58):
enough barely passed twenty to get a position as sailing
master and one of the voyages that Captain James Cook
was undertaking. Cook was the greatest explorer of the age
and exactly the sort of man BLI wanted to model
himself on. Others Sea captains often treated their men with
(04:20):
staggering cruelty. On one British ship, the captain ruled that
the last man to make it down from the mast
was to be whipped. However quickly the descent took place.
Cook was the opposite. The ships he explored with weren't
going to be festering slave holds. Men from the lowest
(04:40):
ranks of society might tend to be impulsive, but could
be redeemed. There would be good light below deck, healthy
food and fresh air. Treat them well, treat them fairly,
and they'd perform wanders. If you listen to our last
episode about the Empire State Building, you'll recognize this idea.
(05:04):
It's just what construction manager Paul Starrett believed. Over a
century later. Here in the late eighteenth century, the twenty
two year old Bli saw Captain Cook demonstrate the power
of this fairness on a global voyage. Cook's mission really
was to boldly go where no man, or at least
(05:26):
only a few men, had gone before. Bly traveled with
him deep into the Pacific and also up to the Arctic,
rising to be the main navigator on board. Bly's young
friend Fletcher Christian, also came to share Cook's vision for
how to run a ship. He was ten years younger
(05:48):
than bl tall and dark haired, and from a notably
higher social class. His older brother was a fellow at Cambridge,
but he too was interested in science, in rational approaches,
and that brought an affinity Blie didn't have with most others.
(06:09):
Years after the expedition with Cook, when Bly was briefly
captaining in the merchant Service, Bly and Christian got on
very well on a voyage to the West Indies. Then,
in seventeen eighty seven, bl was in his early thirties
Christian in his early twenties, Bly was given the command
(06:30):
for a new sort of mission. Tahiti had a tree
called the breadfruit tree, which produced nutritious, large fruit. If
he could collect living samples and transport them to the Caribbean,
that would help feed the landowners there, and also, this
cruel side of empire, feed the captured Africans who were
(06:54):
forced to labor for them. Like most Britons of his time,
Bly was able to put that slavery out of his mind. Instead,
he was focused on what he felt was a great opportunity.
In this new mission, he would follow the model of
the revered Captain Cook. He'd show that he too could
(07:15):
run everything through logic and reason rather than primitive impulse.
The men under his command would not be brutalized into submission. Instead,
they'd be shaped by the use of rational incentives, rewarded
when they did well and punished when they fell short.
(07:35):
Blyh was given command of a fast, three masted sailing ship,
HMS Bounty. He immediately set about putting his rational principles
into practice. Fletcher Christian was happy to join him, and
together they modified the ship, using the latest science to
create good airflow and lighting. They also converted the captain's
(07:57):
room into a huge nursery for the breadfruit seedlings they
would be transporting to the Caribbean. There were skylights and
a stove to keep the new plants warm, even a
clever rec cycling system for the fresh water that drained out.
In October seventeen eighty seven, they finally set sail. Before departure,
(08:21):
Fletcher Christian spent time with Bli's family and played with
his children. Quite likely they traveled to the ship together.
The voyage started as well as both had imagined. Bly
created an easier watch schedule, because, as he put it,
I have ever considered extra sleep among seamen as conducive
(08:43):
to health. It adds much to their content and cheerfulness.
Horpouses swam alongside the boat. One afternoon, a vast cloud
of butterflies blue passed to everyone's delight. There was dancing
and music on the deck when the weather was good,
for Bly had brought a fiddler along. Bly's ideas were
(09:06):
put to a sterner test when the weather got worse
and late at night in the South Atlantic, a catastrophic
wave poured tons of seawater in bly Rose to the challenge.
He selflessly vacated his cabin, turning it over to the
use of those poor fellows who had wet berths. He
(09:28):
arranged soaked wet clothes to be dried on the stove.
Fletcher Christian remained at Bly's side, and control and kindness
ensured everything ran smoothly, Almost everything that is well into
their voyage. The sailing master informed Bli that one of
(09:50):
the ordinary sailors, a twenty year old named Matthew Quintal,
had been insolent. The Royal Navy had a clear command structure,
so although Bli didn't see Quintal's insolence with his own eyes,
he had to accept this report. He was di appointed
(10:10):
until this afternoon. He wrote. I had hopes I could
have performed the voyage without punishment to anyone, but insolence
was a threat to the entire mission. He had to
maintain order, and that meant a vicious flogging. Matthew Quintal's
(10:31):
shirt was stripped off and his arms tied tight. The
Cato nine Tails was brought out, a fearsome whip with
nine knotted cords. It was designed to rip through the
skin and carve long slices where it fell. This was
an excruciating sentence, but when the flogging was done, that
(10:58):
was it. Quintal was resentful, of course, but the rest
of the long journey was easy. There were no more floggings.
Bligh had been angry at Quintal for disrupting his perfectly
organized system, but now his temper was gone.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The ship was.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Back to steady, running, hour after hour, cutting through the water,
its big sails, catching powerful winds and pulling them along. Finally,
after nearly twenty eight thousand miles, they arrived in Tahiti.
It was October seventeen eighty eight. They'd been at sea
(11:40):
for a full year. The bay they settled in was magnificent.
Canoes raced to their ship, eager for trade, and by
sunset there were hogs, fruits, and bright new textiles on board.
Bli's men were delighted. In England, there'd been among the
lowest of the low, most of them underweight, disfigured from
(12:02):
fights or accidents. Here, though, they were as gods. The
next few days a new rhythm started up. Ly went
ashore with the ship's botanist and made arrangements to locate
the breadfruit seedlings he needed. It would take several months
for them to grow enough to be brought to the
(12:23):
on board nursery, So the sailors dispersed into local villages,
taking up with local families, where they were quickly accepted.
They learned about surfing, flew kites, strolled along the perfect beaches.
Bly had brought his water color materials and was delighted
that he would have so much time to draw the
(12:44):
plant life and other scenes. He also wanted to improve
his own language skills and make what notes he could
on the culture. Life is good. Blye is content, The
crew is content. But what will Bly do as time
goes on and that crew is no longer under his control?
(13:10):
Cautionary tales will return in just a moment. So long
as Bly and his crew were focused entirely on the island,
the contrast with the life they'd left behind wasn't too
much of a problem. But they couldn't leave their ship,
(13:33):
HMS Bounty entirely uncared for. At one point, Bli brought
everyone back on board so they could move it from
their initial anchorage to another one nearby. But the lookout
was clumsy now, and the sailor who lowered weighted chains
to measure the depth was clumsy. The men in the
(13:56):
scouting boat that traveled immediately ahead of them were clumsy too.
Bly was supposed to be a master navigator. He was
proud of that, Yet now a sickening scrape as the
bounty's bough dragged along a reef. They were stuck, which
(14:18):
was embarrassing enough, not least because several of Bly's Tahitian
friends were on board. But then the weather began to change,
with dark clouds building quickly. There was a dangerous swell,
and that made everything worse. The storm was rocking the
ship against the sharp reef. If they didn't get the
(14:39):
ship off, it would be pushed harder and harder until
it was holed through. Then it would take in water
and sink. Blide did manage to float the ship free,
but the episode was dismaying. How could his men have
let this happen? By now, it was December seventeen eighty eight,
(15:03):
and soon all order began to break down. The crew
were in heaven. Here many seemed to have settled into
steady relationships, playing with the new step children they had acquired.
Most still slept on board and spent only the daytime
with these new families, but some would spend longer go
(15:26):
back to England, and all that would disappear. A few
weeks after the shift to a new anchorage, three of
the crew decided to make sure they weren't going to
be pulled away whatever happened. Late one night, they took
supplies and an entire arms chest and quietly left the ship.
(15:50):
They were soon tracked down, but the officer of the
watch had slept right through it. Bli lashed the three
deserters when they were brought back. He was just as
angry at the officer, putting him in irons for over
a week. Then Bli found out that no one had
been bringing the spare sales out for regular airing. That
(16:11):
was a greater degree of danger entirely. Every one of
his officers, every one of the ordinary sailors too, for
that matter, knew how crucial taking care of the sales was.
They'd need them for the near year of sailing to
get back home, but they'd been left to mill you
and some were even beginning to rot. Bli wrote, scarce
(16:32):
any neglect of duty can equal the criminality of this.
He realized they had to get off this blasted island
before matters got worse. But the breadfruit saplings still weren't ready,
so they had several more months to wait. Bly grew
ever more exasperated. So Isaac Newton's vision of a clean,
(16:54):
logical universe was so clear, so obvious. Bli had made
it come true on the voyage out, why were his
men letting it collapse here? In the months before they left?
He gave one of the sailor's twelve hard lashes with
a cat and nine tails for insolence. Another got twelve
(17:15):
lashes for letting natives steal a young cook's assistant, the
most innocuous of crewmen, was tied down and lashed for
neglecting his duty. Then the ship's butcher was just as
viciously flogged for suffering his cleaver to be stolen. Where
(17:37):
had the considerate Bly gone? For a perspective on that
question that there is no better person to ask than
David Bardanis, who wrote about the mutiny in his book
The Art of Fairness. David he began as a sensitive
watercolor painter. He turned into a brute. Where did Bli,
as the defender of enlightened captainship.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Go, Maybe that enlightened captain had never been there. Bli
cared about two things. He cared about his mission, and
he did indeed want to show that he could be
rational and scientific. But that was the sailors how he
dealt with them. The sailors were a means to that end.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
This reminds me of the old saying that someone who
believes that honesty is the best policy isn't actually an
honest person. An honest person is honest, whether or not
he believes that honesty is the best policy.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That's exactly it. And Bli is someone who believes that
fairness is the best policy. He's not wholeheartedly committed to it.
He just thinks it will work, it'll be efficient, and
when the going gets tough, he abandons his previous ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But this abandonment, it seems as sudden.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
What's happening is a flip from one equilibrium to another.
When things were going well, Bli extended fairness and generosity.
The sailors responded with good cheer and hard work. But
when they got to Tahiti and they started resenting any discipline,
it began a downward spiral. The sailors were sullen that
(19:06):
made Bly harsh, that made the sailors more so, and
that made Bly even harsher. So it's a feedback loop,
exactly a feedback loop. In the last episode, we talked
about the ancient Rabbi Hillales great question of who are we,
and the idea was that it's not enough to only
be for yourself, but it's not enough either to exist
(19:27):
only for others. All of us struggle with the balance,
with getting it right. And the great insight I think is,
if there are no fixed answers.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Why are the non fixed answers?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I think it's because being fair or equitable it's not
a static disposition. It's not a part of our personality
or a set of rules that we can automatically follow.
It's a process, and it's a process that depends on
our circumstances. We all try to hold steady, to be constant,
but it's hard.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Well. So if Bly had never gone to Tahiti, maybe
the problem would never have arisen.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
That would have been perfect, but that's not how life works.
We rarely have complete control over whi we end up.
And when Bli saw his sailors slip away from the
proper behavior that he had in mind. He became so
furious that he overshot.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Thank you, David, please stick around. I am going to
want your advice again, I am sure. Finally the breadfruit
saplings had grown enough, Bli's men loaded them on board,
and they weighed anchor the fourth of April seventeen eighty nine.
Blind knew he had to get the ship operating as
(20:40):
well as it had before. They'd be crossing half the
planet to get to the Caribbean with just one stop
at Cape Town along the way. He had the men
practice hard raising and shortening the sails on the masts.
He also switched them to shipboard rations, knowing the fresh
stock they'd brought from Tahiti would be needed later. Morale
(21:03):
was going to be important. I need to nurse my
people with care and attention, he wrote. Luckily, he still
had the fiddler, so there'd be music in the long
free hours on board. He explained, there would be the
same generous schedule, with more sleeping time than other ships,
and just as before, he had vacate his own bunk
(21:24):
for anyone who'd been caught up in storms on deck
and needed a dry place to rest. All of that
was just what he had done on the Atlantic run.
But the time in Tahiti had changed the men far
more than he could grasp. After six months in paradise,
(21:45):
who cared about a fiddler? And since the men had
been changed, that would change Bli too. Within a week
at sea, Fly had ordered another flogging of a seaman,
whom he charged with neglect of duty. Normally he could
have expected his officers to support him without hesitation in that,
(22:07):
but something was different, notably with his old friend Fletcher Christian.
He was not the same man as had been on
the voyage out the reason. Christian had spent almost every
night on shore and was leaving behind a woman he
had been close with and who was now pregnant with
their child. Bligh was frustrated, and that poured out he
(22:32):
cursed his men. Perhaps his pain was all the more
sharp for the loss of his friendship with Fletcher Christian.
One of the crew remembered. Whatever fault was found, mister
Christian was sure to bear the brunt of the captain's anger.
Christian hated it, begging Bli to stop, but bly was
(22:54):
past listening. In his log he wrote, such neglectful and
worthless petty officers I believe never were in a ship
as are in this harsher punishment would be needed. He
swore where when Bli cursed, he really cursed. Later, when
the Admiralty learned more of how Bli spoke when angry,
(23:17):
he was officially reprimanded for his immoderate use of language.
This is staggering given what was considered acceptable for sea
captains in the seventeen hundreds. The conflict boiled over when
they were nineteen days out. Coconuts were an important source
(23:39):
of fresh water, and Bli had a huge pile stacked
between the guns on the top deck. The officers were
responsible for guarding them. But then on the morning of
April twenty third, Bli noticed that the pile had shrunk.
Who had been stealing one after another? The officers said
(24:00):
they had no idea. Clearly, however, one or more of
them knew something. This was infuriating. They were defending each
other over remaining loyal to their captain. Bli started swearing
once again, God damn you, I'll sweat you for it.
You can all go to hell. This was very far
(24:22):
from the calm Captain Cook he had once admired. Nothing
made sense to him. Sensible procedures had worked perfectly on
the voyage out. Why couldn't they continue that way? Fletcher
Christian tried to intervene, but that just made Bly angrier.
He stormed to his cabin. According to the carpenter, A
(24:44):
William Purcell, Christian was in tears. What's the matter, mister Christian,
He asked, Can you ask me and hear the treatment
I receive? Christian answered. Purcell tried to console him, saying
that he too had suffered Bly's tongue lashings, but that
(25:04):
missed a difference between the two men. Since Purcell was
a carpenter, he was protected by an Admiralty warrant that
kept him from being flogged, but Christian was only an
acting lieutenant. His actual rank of master's mate meant that
he could be whipped. Christian couldn't bear to imagine this humiliation.
(25:29):
His brother was at Cambridge Down for goodness sake. If
I should speak to Bly as you do, Christian told Purcell,
he would probably break me and perhaps flog me. It
would be the death of us both. Blih was wild
with rage, Christian was sick with fear. The journey ahead
(25:52):
was due to last twelve more months. Cautionary tales will
return after the break. Most of the crew of the
bounty was on Fletcher Christian side. They couldn't bear to
(26:16):
leave Tahiti behind, nor did they want a year stuck
on board with the increasingly violent Captain Blind. But to
mutiny against the captain was immensely risky. Every sailor in
Britain knew that the nation depended on foreign trade that
(26:37):
depended on the navy, and the navy depended on orders
being followed. Break that and everything would crumble As a result.
The Royal Navy would chase any mutineers to the ends
of the earth, however long it took. However, many ships
needed to be sent, and mutineers, when found, would be
(27:00):
brought back in chains and condemned, and then hanged, their
bodies left to rot, dangling warning to anyone else. Despite
the incredible danger, most of the crew decided they had
to get rid of Captain Blind. Whence the mutiny we
(27:21):
began with Very early in the morning on Tuesday, April
twenty eighth, seventeen eighty nine, Fletcher Christian and several other
conspirators got hold of the ship's muskets and distributed them
to their fellow mutineers. Then they went to Bly's cabin.
Before long pandemonium had broken out, the entire ship awake,
(27:46):
and the captain held at gunpoint. That's when Bli called
out to Christian, for God's sake, drop it. You've danced
my children on your knee. But it was no use.
Christian ensured that Bly and the other crew men the
mutineers weren't convinced about, were pushed into the small open launch.
(28:06):
Bobbing alongside. One of those with Bly called up, pleading
for Fletcher Christian to stop, you know. Christian calmly replied
that Captain Bly has treated me like a dog I've
been in hell. Christian must have felt some guilt that
he let Bly and the eighteen men with him take
(28:28):
a compass, water writing equipment, some cutlasses, and a few
other items. One of the men in the small launch
tried to keep a rifle. Matthew Quintal, the young man
Bly had flogged first on the voyage out from Britain,
now had his chance. He was one hundred percent on
(28:50):
Christian's side and grabbed the gun back. The bounty sailed off.
Christian was going to look for an isolated island someplace
the Royal navy would never find them. Bly and his
men could only watch it recede, its sales raised to
catch the breeze, its deck high and majestic above the water.
(29:16):
Their own launch was completely different. It was small, crowded,
and rows only inches above the waterline. They couldn't head
back to Tahiti, for it was likely Christian might head
there first, leaving some armed men as a precaution. Everyone's
assumption was that leaving blyh and these loyalists in the
(29:37):
boat was simply a delayed death sentence. The nearest European
settlement was Dutch Temor, over three thousand miles away. No
open boat like this small launch had ever crossed such
a distance, not least without any proper map. Yet, facing
(29:57):
such hardship, Captain William Bly was in his element. He
had a mission, a hard one, admittedly, but he also
had some tools, oars, and a company for materials to
keep up a mast, and eighteen men. Yelling and cursing
would do nothing here but calm, analysis and rational, consistent action.
(30:22):
He began a journal. As soon as I had time
to reflect, Bly wrote, I found my mind most wonderfully supported,
and began to conceive hopes t Moor was three thousand
miles away London twelve thousand. Get there, explain what happened
(30:43):
to the admiralty. He could start again Almost instantly, the
old structure of command reappeared. That's because everyone in the
boat knew that only Bligh had even the faintest chance
of navigating their way back to safety. His personality flipped back.
(31:04):
In this setting, there was nothing to thwart his desire
to show benevolent and rationality could work. Bly worked out
an ingenious way of stretching taut cloths above the launch's edge,
raising the sides by several inches to help keep the waves.
At day, he encouraged his men to tell stories about
(31:24):
their past, joining in to tell his own. At night,
he led boat wide singing. Bly also ensured their food
supplies were safely locked in the carpenter's chest, and created
scales from coconut shells to weigh it out. Best of all,
he helped the men sew a raggedy Union Jack flag
(31:47):
out of scraps of signal flags found at the bottom
of the launch. It was a reminder of home, and
in another way of boosting their confidence they would need it.
He said to properly identify themselves. When they reached port,
it worked well. After weeks of storms and constantly low rations,
(32:08):
the men heard a strange roaring sound. Bli realized this
meant they were almost upon the Great Barrier reef. They
needed to find an opening, and by now his men
were unified to do exactly what he ordered. He had
them row parallel to the reef as fast as possible,
(32:28):
till suddenly, when he identified what looked like an opening,
he had them turn hard to cut through it. Soon
they were in calmer water and came to an island. There,
safe discipline quickly broke down, and the helpful encouraging William
(32:49):
bly became once again a furious man. Admittedly he was provoked.
The prime rule he set out when they landed was
that they must keep any fires small in case potentially
dangerous locals saw their camp. Almost immediately, Sailor started a
(33:10):
fire that blew out of control, sparking a grass blaze
that was visible for miles. Another party had been sent
out for turtles, but as the fire raged, they ran
back to help put it out, and so they brought
back no food. At another island, after Bli explained they
needed to share any food they found. One man tried
(33:33):
secretly to go hunting just on his own. BLI beat
him when he found out. Then the carpenter, William Purcell,
also went out foraging, and when he came back, he
insisted even more that he wasn't going to share food
he'd found. Bly yelled at him. Pacell yelled back. Bly
(33:53):
had had enough. I determined to strike a final blow,
and either to preserve my command or die in the attempt.
Seizing a cutlass, I ordered him to take hold of
another and defend himself. That's Bly's version, but in a
crew member's account, Bly was almost crazed, and when the
(34:15):
men tried to call him off, he threatened them with
death if they tried to intervene. Luckily, Purcell the carpenter
gave in before anyone was killed. And then when they
all returned to the launch, everything flipped back again. No
one could start unapproved fires on their tiny boat, no
(34:35):
one was going to secretly search for their own food,
and everyone depended on Bly to get them back. Although
there were a few complaints at how low their rations were,
no problems more serious than that arose. The entire launch
went back to singing and storytelling, with Bly encouraging his
(34:55):
men and tenderly taking care of those who fell ill.
Until that is they finally arrived in the safely populated
island of Timor, with its large European settlement. Lye had
accomplished one of the greatest feats of open boat navigation
ever recorded, But once on the way back to England,
(35:18):
he and his men began arguing again, so much that
Bly ended up having the carpenter Percell and another sailor
arrested at bayonet point and held in irons for almost
a month. When they finally reached Britain, the Royal Navy
sent out teams to hunt the mutineers. A few were
(35:42):
caught and ended up being hanged in London. Fletcher, Christian
and several of the others got away safe at the
isolated Pitcairn Island, where some of their descendants survived to
this day. Blie himself undertook a second trip to Tahiti,
this time with a substantial armed marine guard to complete
(36:06):
his mission of collecting breadfruits links, since there was no
threat to his authority. Those voyages went well, and he
was back to being as reasonable and helpful as he
had been at his best, So what are the lessons? Well,
(36:29):
this and the last two episodes of Cautionary Tales Investigating
Fairness drew on my friend David bandanas book The Art
of Fairness, and David is back with me now. David,
after everything you've read and written about Captain BLI, what
would you make of him as a person?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You know, at first I thought the way Bligh changed
was pretty bizarre, but then I realized we all change
at least a little bit. It really does depend on circumstances.
The big question is how much? And that's where I saw.
That's something we've both thought about. Comes up.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Well? In both the writings we do we card to
tease out rational rules. It's the Enlightenment ideal that Captain
Cook had. It's what William Blyi had too when he
wasn't acting up for them. It was about ventilation and
sleeping schedules.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
And they're like, oh, for us, it's about behavior economics.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Exactly, And I wonder we try to find these insights,
these principles that can help people. It's in our books,
it's in all the Questionary Tales. But what makes the
final step happen? What makes people actually engage with those insights,
and especially when they're under stress.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, stress, I think is a key idea. It sounds
so simple, but sometimes you just need to mentally prepare
yourself for this. You need to mentally rehearse loyal as
subscribers who who subscribed to pushkin plus will have heard
the story of the Tenerief air crash. There was a
plane on fire on the runway and some people got
out and some people just froze. One of the explanations
(38:05):
for why some people got out was because they'd thought about, well,
what happens if there is a problem, where are they
emergency exits? What would I do? If you thought about it?
Your mind under pressure may grab one of these useful scripts.
If you haven't given it any thought and you're under
intense pressure, then your mind comes up with nothing and
it's just like you're spinning and you're in neutral. So
thinking through I'm going to have this conversation with a
(38:27):
doctor about this diagnosis that I'm worried about. How do
I want that conversation to go? Or somebody might phone
me and try to con me, or somebody might send
me an email and try to con me What am
I going to do if that happens. If you recognize
the patterns, it can really help. I guess Bli didn't
really think it through. That was one of his problems.
He didn't think through, or didn't seem to think through,
(38:48):
what is going to happen, if this is really going
to fall apart? What is going to happen if my
men don't respond to my rules?
Speaker 2 (38:55):
You know what it was? Bli had a single principle,
be rational and sensible. It would work for him, clearly,
it would work for everybody. All he thought about was
that rule. It's like standing on a mountain and far
far away in the disc since there's plateaus stretching on,
but you can't see him. For Blig, those plateaus were
the consequences. He wasn't thinking about the consequences he had
(39:18):
this rule. However, the way that other people felt when
he enacted the rule, that was not his problem. But
of course it came back to leave them Bob being
up and down in a little boat in the sea.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Where we have now had three episodes of cautionary tales.
We've investigated fairness in all three of them. We're going
to have one more. The final of this series looking
at one further story from David Bandanas's writings, and in
that story, we're going to see how one woman wielded
the techniques of fairness to shift the course of the
largest empire the world has ever seen. Thank you, David
(39:54):
berdanis join us next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales
is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This
mini series is based on David Bandanas's book Art of Fairness,
The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and
it was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full
(40:17):
list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford
dot com. The show is produced by Alice Fines, with
Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music for the
work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary
Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge,
Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The show wouldn't
(40:41):
have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly,
Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey
and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
It's recorded at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Garret.
If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
(41:04):
and review. It doesn't really make a difference to us
and if you want to hear the SHO show ad free,
sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on
Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus
Pushkin. April seventeen eighty nine, early morning, a British ship
and crew have been sailing home from Tahiti for three weeks.
It's quiet on board, just wind and slapping light waves.
(00:35):
But if someone had been listening closely, that have heard whispers, lightly,
hurrying footsteps, and then, about an hour before dawn, an
explosion of noise. This is HMS Bounty, and one of
the most famous mutinies in history is underway. Lieutenant Fletcher
(00:56):
Christian has organized most of the crew who detest their captain,
thirty four year old William Blind. They drag Blithe from
his cabin, tying his wrists behind his back on deck.
He struggles to get free, and Fletcher Christian blocks him,
pressing a bayonet to his chest. In England they've been friends.
(01:19):
Now glaring at each other. That's over. Pistols are at hand,
and the crew calls for Christian to blow Bli's brains out.
Bly yells back at Christian, telling him he must stop that.
In England, didn't he remember Christian had held Bli's own
children on his knee after what's happened on this voyage, However,
(01:42):
Christian doesn't care. He forces Bly into a tiny, overloaded
launch out on the vast Pacific. This far from land,
no one is likely to survive for long. I'm Tim
Harford and you're listening to cautionary Tales. This episode is
(02:28):
the third in a series exploring the famous idea that
nice guys finish last, inspired by David Bandanas's book The
Art of Fairness. And we'll hear a bit from David
Bandanas himself later. But first, the mutiny on the Bounty.
It's not only an astonishing story in its own right,
(02:50):
it also sheds light on the question of whether nice
guys finish last or first. Let's start with Captain William Bly.
Several movies have been made about the mutiny, and Bly
is often painted as a cruel, petty tyrant. Just how
cruel and tea he really was is something we'll look
(03:11):
at closely. Certainly, before he became Captain of the Bounty,
William Bly was a generally quiet, thoughtful fellow. He came
from a fairly humble family, just an inch above the
working classes. Joining the Navy when he was still a
teenager was a good way to rise. He developed his
artistic abilities and was especially drawn to painting watercolor landscapes,
(03:36):
and he discovered that he loved mathematics. That was big
Bly was awed at the sophisticated men of Britain's royal society.
They were heirs to Sir Isaac Newton and the other
great rational minds that were transforming the world. His ambition
and his mathematical skill came together when he was lucky
(03:58):
enough barely passed twenty to get a position as sailing
master and one of the voyages that Captain James Cook
was undertaking. Cook was the greatest explorer of the age
and exactly the sort of man BLI wanted to model
himself on. Others Sea captains often treated their men with
(04:20):
staggering cruelty. On one British ship, the captain ruled that
the last man to make it down from the mast
was to be whipped. However quickly the descent took place.
Cook was the opposite. The ships he explored with weren't
going to be festering slave holds. Men from the lowest
(04:40):
ranks of society might tend to be impulsive, but could
be redeemed. There would be good light below deck, healthy
food and fresh air. Treat them well, treat them fairly,
and they'd perform wanders. If you listen to our last
episode about the Empire State Building, you'll recognize this idea.
(05:04):
It's just what construction manager Paul Starrett believed. Over a
century later. Here in the late eighteenth century, the twenty
two year old Bli saw Captain Cook demonstrate the power
of this fairness on a global voyage. Cook's mission really
was to boldly go where no man, or at least
(05:26):
only a few men, had gone before. Bly traveled with
him deep into the Pacific and also up to the Arctic,
rising to be the main navigator on board. Bly's young
friend Fletcher Christian, also came to share Cook's vision for
how to run a ship. He was ten years younger
(05:48):
than bl tall and dark haired, and from a notably
higher social class. His older brother was a fellow at Cambridge,
but he too was interested in science, in rational approaches,
and that brought an affinity Blie didn't have with most others.
(06:09):
Years after the expedition with Cook, when Bly was briefly
captaining in the merchant Service, Bly and Christian got on
very well on a voyage to the West Indies. Then,
in seventeen eighty seven, bl was in his early thirties
Christian in his early twenties, Bly was given the command
(06:30):
for a new sort of mission. Tahiti had a tree
called the breadfruit tree, which produced nutritious, large fruit. If
he could collect living samples and transport them to the Caribbean,
that would help feed the landowners there, and also, this
cruel side of empire, feed the captured Africans who were
(06:54):
forced to labor for them. Like most Britons of his time,
Bly was able to put that slavery out of his mind. Instead,
he was focused on what he felt was a great opportunity.
In this new mission, he would follow the model of
the revered Captain Cook. He'd show that he too could
(07:15):
run everything through logic and reason rather than primitive impulse.
The men under his command would not be brutalized into submission. Instead,
they'd be shaped by the use of rational incentives, rewarded
when they did well and punished when they fell short.
(07:35):
Blyh was given command of a fast, three masted sailing ship,
HMS Bounty. He immediately set about putting his rational principles
into practice. Fletcher Christian was happy to join him, and
together they modified the ship, using the latest science to
create good airflow and lighting. They also converted the captain's
(07:57):
room into a huge nursery for the breadfruit seedlings they
would be transporting to the Caribbean. There were skylights and
a stove to keep the new plants warm, even a
clever rec cycling system for the fresh water that drained out.
In October seventeen eighty seven, they finally set sail. Before departure,
(08:21):
Fletcher Christian spent time with Bli's family and played with
his children. Quite likely they traveled to the ship together.
The voyage started as well as both had imagined. Bly
created an easier watch schedule, because, as he put it,
I have ever considered extra sleep among seamen as conducive
(08:43):
to health. It adds much to their content and cheerfulness.
Horpouses swam alongside the boat. One afternoon, a vast cloud
of butterflies blue passed to everyone's delight. There was dancing
and music on the deck when the weather was good,
for Bly had brought a fiddler along. Bly's ideas were
(09:06):
put to a sterner test when the weather got worse
and late at night in the South Atlantic, a catastrophic
wave poured tons of seawater in bly Rose to the challenge.
He selflessly vacated his cabin, turning it over to the
use of those poor fellows who had wet berths. He
(09:28):
arranged soaked wet clothes to be dried on the stove.
Fletcher Christian remained at Bly's side, and control and kindness
ensured everything ran smoothly, Almost everything that is well into
their voyage. The sailing master informed Bli that one of
(09:50):
the ordinary sailors, a twenty year old named Matthew Quintal,
had been insolent. The Royal Navy had a clear command structure,
so although Bli didn't see Quintal's insolence with his own eyes,
he had to accept this report. He was di appointed
(10:10):
until this afternoon. He wrote. I had hopes I could
have performed the voyage without punishment to anyone, but insolence
was a threat to the entire mission. He had to
maintain order, and that meant a vicious flogging. Matthew Quintal's
(10:31):
shirt was stripped off and his arms tied tight. The
Cato nine Tails was brought out, a fearsome whip with
nine knotted cords. It was designed to rip through the
skin and carve long slices where it fell. This was
an excruciating sentence, but when the flogging was done, that
(10:58):
was it. Quintal was resentful, of course, but the rest
of the long journey was easy. There were no more floggings.
Bligh had been angry at Quintal for disrupting his perfectly
organized system, but now his temper was gone.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The ship was.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Back to steady, running, hour after hour, cutting through the water,
its big sails, catching powerful winds and pulling them along. Finally,
after nearly twenty eight thousand miles, they arrived in Tahiti.
It was October seventeen eighty eight. They'd been at sea
(11:40):
for a full year. The bay they settled in was magnificent.
Canoes raced to their ship, eager for trade, and by
sunset there were hogs, fruits, and bright new textiles on board.
Bli's men were delighted. In England, there'd been among the
lowest of the low, most of them underweight, disfigured from
(12:02):
fights or accidents. Here, though, they were as gods. The
next few days a new rhythm started up. Ly went
ashore with the ship's botanist and made arrangements to locate
the breadfruit seedlings he needed. It would take several months
for them to grow enough to be brought to the
(12:23):
on board nursery, So the sailors dispersed into local villages,
taking up with local families, where they were quickly accepted.
They learned about surfing, flew kites, strolled along the perfect beaches.
Bly had brought his water color materials and was delighted
that he would have so much time to draw the
(12:44):
plant life and other scenes. He also wanted to improve
his own language skills and make what notes he could
on the culture. Life is good. Blye is content, The
crew is content. But what will Bly do as time
goes on and that crew is no longer under his control?
(13:10):
Cautionary tales will return in just a moment. So long
as Bly and his crew were focused entirely on the island,
the contrast with the life they'd left behind wasn't too
much of a problem. But they couldn't leave their ship,
(13:33):
HMS Bounty entirely uncared for. At one point, Bli brought
everyone back on board so they could move it from
their initial anchorage to another one nearby. But the lookout
was clumsy now, and the sailor who lowered weighted chains
to measure the depth was clumsy. The men in the
(13:56):
scouting boat that traveled immediately ahead of them were clumsy too.
Bly was supposed to be a master navigator. He was
proud of that, Yet now a sickening scrape as the
bounty's bough dragged along a reef. They were stuck, which
(14:18):
was embarrassing enough, not least because several of Bly's Tahitian
friends were on board. But then the weather began to change,
with dark clouds building quickly. There was a dangerous swell,
and that made everything worse. The storm was rocking the
ship against the sharp reef. If they didn't get the
(14:39):
ship off, it would be pushed harder and harder until
it was holed through. Then it would take in water
and sink. Blide did manage to float the ship free,
but the episode was dismaying. How could his men have
let this happen? By now, it was December seventeen eighty eight,
(15:03):
and soon all order began to break down. The crew
were in heaven. Here many seemed to have settled into
steady relationships, playing with the new step children they had acquired.
Most still slept on board and spent only the daytime
with these new families, but some would spend longer go
(15:26):
back to England, and all that would disappear. A few
weeks after the shift to a new anchorage, three of
the crew decided to make sure they weren't going to
be pulled away whatever happened. Late one night, they took
supplies and an entire arms chest and quietly left the ship.
(15:50):
They were soon tracked down, but the officer of the
watch had slept right through it. Bli lashed the three
deserters when they were brought back. He was just as
angry at the officer, putting him in irons for over
a week. Then Bli found out that no one had
been bringing the spare sales out for regular airing. That
(16:11):
was a greater degree of danger entirely. Every one of
his officers, every one of the ordinary sailors too, for
that matter, knew how crucial taking care of the sales was.
They'd need them for the near year of sailing to
get back home, but they'd been left to mill you
and some were even beginning to rot. Bli wrote, scarce
(16:32):
any neglect of duty can equal the criminality of this.
He realized they had to get off this blasted island
before matters got worse. But the breadfruit saplings still weren't ready,
so they had several more months to wait. Bly grew
ever more exasperated. So Isaac Newton's vision of a clean,
(16:54):
logical universe was so clear, so obvious. Bli had made
it come true on the voyage out, why were his
men letting it collapse here? In the months before they left?
He gave one of the sailor's twelve hard lashes with
a cat and nine tails for insolence. Another got twelve
(17:15):
lashes for letting natives steal a young cook's assistant, the
most innocuous of crewmen, was tied down and lashed for
neglecting his duty. Then the ship's butcher was just as
viciously flogged for suffering his cleaver to be stolen. Where
(17:37):
had the considerate Bly gone? For a perspective on that
question that there is no better person to ask than
David Bardanis, who wrote about the mutiny in his book
The Art of Fairness. David he began as a sensitive
watercolor painter. He turned into a brute. Where did Bli,
as the defender of enlightened captainship.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Go, Maybe that enlightened captain had never been there. Bli
cared about two things. He cared about his mission, and
he did indeed want to show that he could be
rational and scientific. But that was the sailors how he
dealt with them. The sailors were a means to that end.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
This reminds me of the old saying that someone who
believes that honesty is the best policy isn't actually an
honest person. An honest person is honest, whether or not
he believes that honesty is the best policy.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That's exactly it. And Bli is someone who believes that
fairness is the best policy. He's not wholeheartedly committed to it.
He just thinks it will work, it'll be efficient, and
when the going gets tough, he abandons his previous ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But this abandonment, it seems as sudden.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
What's happening is a flip from one equilibrium to another.
When things were going well, Bli extended fairness and generosity.
The sailors responded with good cheer and hard work. But
when they got to Tahiti and they started resenting any discipline,
it began a downward spiral. The sailors were sullen that
(19:06):
made Bly harsh, that made the sailors more so, and
that made Bly even harsher. So it's a feedback loop,
exactly a feedback loop. In the last episode, we talked
about the ancient Rabbi Hillales great question of who are we,
and the idea was that it's not enough to only
be for yourself, but it's not enough either to exist
(19:27):
only for others. All of us struggle with the balance,
with getting it right. And the great insight I think is,
if there are no fixed answers.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Why are the non fixed answers?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I think it's because being fair or equitable it's not
a static disposition. It's not a part of our personality
or a set of rules that we can automatically follow.
It's a process, and it's a process that depends on
our circumstances. We all try to hold steady, to be constant,
but it's hard.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Well. So if Bly had never gone to Tahiti, maybe
the problem would never have arisen.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
That would have been perfect, but that's not how life works.
We rarely have complete control over whi we end up.
And when Bli saw his sailors slip away from the
proper behavior that he had in mind. He became so
furious that he overshot.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Thank you, David, please stick around. I am going to
want your advice again, I am sure. Finally the breadfruit
saplings had grown enough, Bli's men loaded them on board,
and they weighed anchor the fourth of April seventeen eighty nine.
Blind knew he had to get the ship operating as
(20:40):
well as it had before. They'd be crossing half the
planet to get to the Caribbean with just one stop
at Cape Town along the way. He had the men
practice hard raising and shortening the sails on the masts.
He also switched them to shipboard rations, knowing the fresh
stock they'd brought from Tahiti would be needed later. Morale
(21:03):
was going to be important. I need to nurse my
people with care and attention, he wrote. Luckily, he still
had the fiddler, so there'd be music in the long
free hours on board. He explained, there would be the
same generous schedule, with more sleeping time than other ships,
and just as before, he had vacate his own bunk
(21:24):
for anyone who'd been caught up in storms on deck
and needed a dry place to rest. All of that
was just what he had done on the Atlantic run.
But the time in Tahiti had changed the men far
more than he could grasp. After six months in paradise,
(21:45):
who cared about a fiddler? And since the men had
been changed, that would change Bli too. Within a week
at sea, Fly had ordered another flogging of a seaman,
whom he charged with neglect of duty. Normally he could
have expected his officers to support him without hesitation in that,
(22:07):
but something was different, notably with his old friend Fletcher Christian.
He was not the same man as had been on
the voyage out the reason. Christian had spent almost every
night on shore and was leaving behind a woman he
had been close with and who was now pregnant with
their child. Bligh was frustrated, and that poured out he
(22:32):
cursed his men. Perhaps his pain was all the more
sharp for the loss of his friendship with Fletcher Christian.
One of the crew remembered. Whatever fault was found, mister
Christian was sure to bear the brunt of the captain's anger.
Christian hated it, begging Bli to stop, but bly was
(22:54):
past listening. In his log he wrote, such neglectful and
worthless petty officers I believe never were in a ship
as are in this harsher punishment would be needed. He
swore where when Bli cursed, he really cursed. Later, when
the Admiralty learned more of how Bli spoke when angry,
(23:17):
he was officially reprimanded for his immoderate use of language.
This is staggering given what was considered acceptable for sea
captains in the seventeen hundreds. The conflict boiled over when
they were nineteen days out. Coconuts were an important source
(23:39):
of fresh water, and Bli had a huge pile stacked
between the guns on the top deck. The officers were
responsible for guarding them. But then on the morning of
April twenty third, Bli noticed that the pile had shrunk.
Who had been stealing one after another? The officers said
(24:00):
they had no idea. Clearly, however, one or more of
them knew something. This was infuriating. They were defending each
other over remaining loyal to their captain. Bli started swearing
once again, God damn you, I'll sweat you for it.
You can all go to hell. This was very far
(24:22):
from the calm Captain Cook he had once admired. Nothing
made sense to him. Sensible procedures had worked perfectly on
the voyage out. Why couldn't they continue that way? Fletcher
Christian tried to intervene, but that just made Bly angrier.
He stormed to his cabin. According to the carpenter, A
(24:44):
William Purcell, Christian was in tears. What's the matter, mister Christian,
He asked, Can you ask me and hear the treatment
I receive? Christian answered. Purcell tried to console him, saying
that he too had suffered Bly's tongue lashings, but that
(25:04):
missed a difference between the two men. Since Purcell was
a carpenter, he was protected by an Admiralty warrant that
kept him from being flogged, but Christian was only an
acting lieutenant. His actual rank of master's mate meant that
he could be whipped. Christian couldn't bear to imagine this humiliation.
(25:29):
His brother was at Cambridge Down for goodness sake. If
I should speak to Bly as you do, Christian told Purcell,
he would probably break me and perhaps flog me. It
would be the death of us both. Blih was wild
with rage, Christian was sick with fear. The journey ahead
(25:52):
was due to last twelve more months. Cautionary tales will
return after the break. Most of the crew of the
bounty was on Fletcher Christian side. They couldn't bear to
(26:16):
leave Tahiti behind, nor did they want a year stuck
on board with the increasingly violent Captain Blind. But to
mutiny against the captain was immensely risky. Every sailor in
Britain knew that the nation depended on foreign trade that
(26:37):
depended on the navy, and the navy depended on orders
being followed. Break that and everything would crumble As a result.
The Royal Navy would chase any mutineers to the ends
of the earth, however long it took. However, many ships
needed to be sent, and mutineers, when found, would be
(27:00):
brought back in chains and condemned, and then hanged, their
bodies left to rot, dangling warning to anyone else. Despite
the incredible danger, most of the crew decided they had
to get rid of Captain Blind. Whence the mutiny we
(27:21):
began with Very early in the morning on Tuesday, April
twenty eighth, seventeen eighty nine, Fletcher Christian and several other
conspirators got hold of the ship's muskets and distributed them
to their fellow mutineers. Then they went to Bly's cabin.
Before long pandemonium had broken out, the entire ship awake,
(27:46):
and the captain held at gunpoint. That's when Bli called
out to Christian, for God's sake, drop it. You've danced
my children on your knee. But it was no use.
Christian ensured that Bly and the other crew men the
mutineers weren't convinced about, were pushed into the small open launch.
(28:06):
Bobbing alongside. One of those with Bly called up, pleading
for Fletcher Christian to stop, you know. Christian calmly replied
that Captain Bly has treated me like a dog I've
been in hell. Christian must have felt some guilt that
he let Bly and the eighteen men with him take
(28:28):
a compass, water writing equipment, some cutlasses, and a few
other items. One of the men in the small launch
tried to keep a rifle. Matthew Quintal, the young man
Bly had flogged first on the voyage out from Britain,
now had his chance. He was one hundred percent on
(28:50):
Christian's side and grabbed the gun back. The bounty sailed off.
Christian was going to look for an isolated island someplace
the Royal navy would never find them. Bly and his
men could only watch it recede, its sales raised to
catch the breeze, its deck high and majestic above the water.
(29:16):
Their own launch was completely different. It was small, crowded,
and rows only inches above the waterline. They couldn't head
back to Tahiti, for it was likely Christian might head
there first, leaving some armed men as a precaution. Everyone's
assumption was that leaving blyh and these loyalists in the
(29:37):
boat was simply a delayed death sentence. The nearest European
settlement was Dutch Temor, over three thousand miles away. No
open boat like this small launch had ever crossed such
a distance, not least without any proper map. Yet, facing
(29:57):
such hardship, Captain William Bly was in his element. He
had a mission, a hard one, admittedly, but he also
had some tools, oars, and a company for materials to
keep up a mast, and eighteen men. Yelling and cursing
would do nothing here but calm, analysis and rational, consistent action.
(30:22):
He began a journal. As soon as I had time
to reflect, Bly wrote, I found my mind most wonderfully supported,
and began to conceive hopes t Moor was three thousand
miles away London twelve thousand. Get there, explain what happened
(30:43):
to the admiralty. He could start again Almost instantly, the
old structure of command reappeared. That's because everyone in the
boat knew that only Bligh had even the faintest chance
of navigating their way back to safety. His personality flipped back.
(31:04):
In this setting, there was nothing to thwart his desire
to show benevolent and rationality could work. Bly worked out
an ingenious way of stretching taut cloths above the launch's edge,
raising the sides by several inches to help keep the waves.
At day, he encouraged his men to tell stories about
(31:24):
their past, joining in to tell his own. At night,
he led boat wide singing. Bly also ensured their food
supplies were safely locked in the carpenter's chest, and created
scales from coconut shells to weigh it out. Best of all,
he helped the men sew a raggedy Union Jack flag
(31:47):
out of scraps of signal flags found at the bottom
of the launch. It was a reminder of home, and
in another way of boosting their confidence they would need it.
He said to properly identify themselves. When they reached port,
it worked well. After weeks of storms and constantly low rations,
(32:08):
the men heard a strange roaring sound. Bli realized this
meant they were almost upon the Great Barrier reef. They
needed to find an opening, and by now his men
were unified to do exactly what he ordered. He had
them row parallel to the reef as fast as possible,
(32:28):
till suddenly, when he identified what looked like an opening,
he had them turn hard to cut through it. Soon
they were in calmer water and came to an island. There,
safe discipline quickly broke down, and the helpful encouraging William
(32:49):
bly became once again a furious man. Admittedly he was provoked.
The prime rule he set out when they landed was
that they must keep any fires small in case potentially
dangerous locals saw their camp. Almost immediately, Sailor started a
(33:10):
fire that blew out of control, sparking a grass blaze
that was visible for miles. Another party had been sent
out for turtles, but as the fire raged, they ran
back to help put it out, and so they brought
back no food. At another island, after Bli explained they
needed to share any food they found. One man tried
(33:33):
secretly to go hunting just on his own. BLI beat
him when he found out. Then the carpenter, William Purcell,
also went out foraging, and when he came back, he
insisted even more that he wasn't going to share food
he'd found. Bly yelled at him. Pacell yelled back. Bly
(33:53):
had had enough. I determined to strike a final blow,
and either to preserve my command or die in the attempt.
Seizing a cutlass, I ordered him to take hold of
another and defend himself. That's Bly's version, but in a
crew member's account, Bly was almost crazed, and when the
(34:15):
men tried to call him off, he threatened them with
death if they tried to intervene. Luckily, Purcell the carpenter
gave in before anyone was killed. And then when they
all returned to the launch, everything flipped back again. No
one could start unapproved fires on their tiny boat, no
(34:35):
one was going to secretly search for their own food,
and everyone depended on Bly to get them back. Although
there were a few complaints at how low their rations were,
no problems more serious than that arose. The entire launch
went back to singing and storytelling, with Bly encouraging his
(34:55):
men and tenderly taking care of those who fell ill.
Until that is they finally arrived in the safely populated
island of Timor, with its large European settlement. Lye had
accomplished one of the greatest feats of open boat navigation
ever recorded, But once on the way back to England,
(35:18):
he and his men began arguing again, so much that
Bly ended up having the carpenter Percell and another sailor
arrested at bayonet point and held in irons for almost
a month. When they finally reached Britain, the Royal Navy
sent out teams to hunt the mutineers. A few were
(35:42):
caught and ended up being hanged in London. Fletcher, Christian
and several of the others got away safe at the
isolated Pitcairn Island, where some of their descendants survived to
this day. Blie himself undertook a second trip to Tahiti,
this time with a substantial armed marine guard to complete
(36:06):
his mission of collecting breadfruits links, since there was no
threat to his authority. Those voyages went well, and he
was back to being as reasonable and helpful as he
had been at his best, So what are the lessons? Well,
(36:29):
this and the last two episodes of Cautionary Tales Investigating
Fairness drew on my friend David bandanas book The Art
of Fairness, and David is back with me now. David,
after everything you've read and written about Captain BLI, what
would you make of him as a person?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You know, at first I thought the way Bligh changed
was pretty bizarre, but then I realized we all change
at least a little bit. It really does depend on circumstances.
The big question is how much? And that's where I saw.
That's something we've both thought about. Comes up.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Well? In both the writings we do we card to
tease out rational rules. It's the Enlightenment ideal that Captain
Cook had. It's what William Blyi had too when he
wasn't acting up for them. It was about ventilation and
sleeping schedules.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
And they're like, oh, for us, it's about behavior economics.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Exactly, And I wonder we try to find these insights,
these principles that can help people. It's in our books,
it's in all the Questionary Tales. But what makes the
final step happen? What makes people actually engage with those insights,
and especially when they're under stress.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, stress, I think is a key idea. It sounds
so simple, but sometimes you just need to mentally prepare
yourself for this. You need to mentally rehearse loyal as
subscribers who who subscribed to pushkin plus will have heard
the story of the Tenerief air crash. There was a
plane on fire on the runway and some people got
out and some people just froze. One of the explanations
(38:05):
for why some people got out was because they'd thought about, well,
what happens if there is a problem, where are they
emergency exits? What would I do? If you thought about it?
Your mind under pressure may grab one of these useful scripts.
If you haven't given it any thought and you're under
intense pressure, then your mind comes up with nothing and
it's just like you're spinning and you're in neutral. So
thinking through I'm going to have this conversation with a
(38:27):
doctor about this diagnosis that I'm worried about. How do
I want that conversation to go? Or somebody might phone
me and try to con me, or somebody might send
me an email and try to con me What am
I going to do if that happens. If you recognize
the patterns, it can really help. I guess Bli didn't
really think it through. That was one of his problems.
He didn't think through, or didn't seem to think through,
(38:48):
what is going to happen, if this is really going
to fall apart? What is going to happen if my
men don't respond to my rules?
Speaker 2 (38:55):
You know what it was? Bli had a single principle,
be rational and sensible. It would work for him, clearly,
it would work for everybody. All he thought about was
that rule. It's like standing on a mountain and far
far away in the disc since there's plateaus stretching on,
but you can't see him. For Blig, those plateaus were
the consequences. He wasn't thinking about the consequences he had
(39:18):
this rule. However, the way that other people felt when
he enacted the rule, that was not his problem. But
of course it came back to leave them Bob being
up and down in a little boat in the sea.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Where we have now had three episodes of cautionary tales.
We've investigated fairness in all three of them. We're going
to have one more. The final of this series looking
at one further story from David Bandanas's writings, and in
that story, we're going to see how one woman wielded
the techniques of fairness to shift the course of the
largest empire the world has ever seen. Thank you, David
(39:54):
berdanis join us next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales
is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This
mini series is based on David Bandanas's book Art of Fairness,
The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and
it was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full
(40:17):
list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford
dot com. The show is produced by Alice Fines, with
Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music for the
work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary
Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge,
Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The show wouldn't
(40:41):
have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly,
Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey
and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
It's recorded at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Garret.
If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
(41:04):
and review. It doesn't really make a difference to us
and if you want to hear the SHO show ad free,
sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on
Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus
Host
Tim Harford
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
This is Gavin Newsom
I’m Gavin Newsom. And, it’s time to have a conversation. It’s time to have honest discussions with people that agree AND disagree with us. It's time to answer the hard questions and be open to criticism, and debate without demeaning or dehumanizing one other. I will be doing just that on my new podcast – inviting people on who I deeply disagree with to talk about the most pressing issues of the day and inviting listeners from around the country to join the conversation. THIS is Gavin Newsom.