Michael Byrne Michael Byrne was born in
Kilkenny,
Ireland, in 1761. He went to sea as an
able seaman at the age of 19. He had served on five naval ships by 1787, when he was signed as an
able seaman by
Captain Bligh on the Bounty, primarily to play the fiddle. Bligh wrote, "I had great difficulty before I left England to get a man to play the violin and I preferred at last to take one two-thirds blind than come without one," and described him as being "5 feet 6 inches high. Fair complexion and is almost blind. Plays the fiddle. Has the mark of an issue in the back of his neck." During the
mutiny on 28 April 1789, Byrne was notably the sole able seaman who was a loyalist, but he remained on the ship with the mutineers, apparently because his near-blindness added to his confusion. He was put ashore on
Tahiti by
Fletcher Christian. He gave himself up voluntarily when the
Pandora arrived in 1791, and subsequently survived
the wreck of the Pandora. He was acquitted of mutiny at
court-martial in 1792. He later served with Bligh's nephew,
Francis Bond, on the
Prompte; his subsequent fate is unknown.
Thomas Ellison Thomas Ellison (1772 – 29 October 1792) was an
able seaman. After participating in the mutiny, he remained in
Tahiti rather than continuing on to the
Pitcairn Islands, and in 1791 voluntarily turned himself in to the seamen of
HMS Pandora to face justice in England. He was
court-martialed at
Spithead in September 1792, sentenced to death, and
hanged on 29 October. Questions continue as to the degree of Ellison's culpability in the mutiny. Ellison, although he was only 15 years old when he was mustered aboard captain
William Bligh's armed vessel
Bounty as it sailed from
Spithead for
Tahiti, was already an experienced able seaman who had seen service in the
merchant navy under Bligh in the
West Indies. He was short () and was described as dark-haired and fair-skinned. In records of the outbound voyage, Bligh praised the lad as "improving" and "is a very good Boy and will do very well." Bligh also instructed his clerk, John Samuel, to teach "Writing and Arithmetick" to the illiterate teenager. During the Mutiny on the
Bounty on 28 April 1789, Ellison was standing his watch as the ship's
wheelsman, which gave him a vantage point to view the personal confrontation between Captain Bligh and
Fletcher Christian at the heart of the mutiny. Ellison described himself as continuing to obey the captain's orders to "clap the helm down". However, the young seaman then handed control of the helm to a mutineer, John Mills, and left the scene to ask for advice from a loyal crewman, Lawrence LeBogue. When the time came for Ellison to tell his story at his
court-martial, he tried to portray this incident as an attempt to establish his loyalty; but LeBogue – who would within minutes be set adrift with Bligh in the ship's boat – was less than helpful or sympathetic to the confused youth: In his court-martial testimony, the loyal
midshipman Thomas Hayward, who had also witnessed the mutiny, claimed to see young Ellison holding a
bayonet and saying of Bligh, "Damn him, I will be
sentry over him." Hayward also said he saw Ellison in a crowd of mutineers that were jeering their powerless ex-captain and "publicly insulting" him. John Hallett Claimed that Ellison remarked that Bligh would be put ashore and that he would be allowed back on ship. Ellison in turn claimed that Hayward and Hallet were crying and lost control of themselves. In all the testimony only Haywood claimed that Ellison was a guard over Bligh and used insulting language; yet Bligh in his own narrative did not mention Ellison standing guard nor insulting him. Unfortunely for Ellison three of the Loyal suriviors [Cole; Purcell, and Smith] recalled seeing him armed with a musket and bayonet. Able seaman Ellison was seriously outranked by Hayward, who had been promoted to
lieutenant, and had no means to hire counsel for his defence or to impeach this damning testimony. As a forlorn hope, the doomed man wrote out a paper for the Judge Advocate, pleading his case and describing the mutiny from his point of view. In this paper he concluded: I hope, honorable Gentlemen, yo'll be so Kind as to take my Case into Consideration as I was No more than between Sixteen and Seventeen Years of age when this of [sic] done. Honourable Gentlemen, I leave my self at the Clemency and Mercy of this Honourable Court. In the
1935 film, Fryer was played by
DeWitt Jennings, while
Eddie Byrne portrayed him in the 1962
Mutiny on the Bounty.
Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed him in the 1984 film
The Bounty.
John Hallett John Hallett (1772–1794) was a
midshipman on the
Bounty. He was only 15 when he signed on, and 17 at the time of the mutiny; he accompanied Captain
William Bligh on his open boat voyage to the
Dutch East Indies. After his return to England he was promoted to
lieutenant. He died on 1 December 1794 in
Bedford, England, aged 22.
Thomas Hayward Thomas Hayward (1767–1798?) was a sailor present during the mutiny. He was born in
Hackney, where his father, Francis Hayward M.D., was a noted physician. Hayward's oldest sister, Ann, was a close friend of Betsy Betham, who married
William Bligh. Through Betsy, Hayward managed to obtain a position as a
midshipman on the
Bounty. His service on the
Bounty seems to have been lacklustre, but he remained loyal to Bligh and a staunch opponent of
Fletcher Christian, who disliked him immensely. He was the second person ordered into the boat carrying the loyalists, the first being Bligh himself. Heywood also disliked Hayward, calling him a 'worldling', raised a little in society, as a result of which he typically affected airs and graces beyond his station. Upon returning to England with Bligh, Hayward set out as third lieutenant under Captain
Edward Edwards on . Although they succeeded in finding some of the mutineers on Tahiti, and Hayward evidently performed well, it was an unfortunate voyage, ending with
Pandora shipwrecked, and for the second time in as many years Hayward found himself without a ship, in an open boat making for safety. He eventually returned to England with other survivors from the
Pandora, after which his career is uncertain. It has been suggested, based mainly on nearly illegible papers, that Hayward commanded the sloop
HMS Swift. If so, he drowned when the ship was lost with all hands in a typhoon in the South China Sea in 1797 or 1798. Hayward is not to be confused with
Peter Heywood – a fellow
Bounty midshipman – because of their similar-sounding names.
William McCoy William McCoy (c.1763 – 20 April 1798) was a Scottish sailor who was with
Fletcher Christian on the voyage from
Tahiti to
Pitcairn Island, settling there in January 1790. McCoy had one consort,
Teio, and fathered two children, Daniel and Catherine. After three years, a conflict broke out between the Tahitian men and the mutineers, resulting in the deaths of all the Tahitian men, Fletcher Christian (
Manx), and four of the Englishmen. McCoy (Scottish) was one of the survivors. McCoy discovered how to distill alcohol from the sweet syrup of the ti tree root. He,
Matthew Quintal, and some of the women would lie around all day in a drunken stupor. On 20 April 1798, while drunk, he killed himself by tying a stone to his neck and leaping off a cliff.
William Muspratt William Muspratt (1759–1797) was an
able seaman (AB) on His Majesty's Armed Ship
Bounty. After participating in the mutiny, he was
court-martialed at
Spithead in September 1792, and sentenced to death, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. He returned to active service in the British navy, and probably perished in 1797 aboard
HMS Bellerophon. On the books of the
Bounty, Muspratt is listed not only as an able seaman but also as the ship's
tailor. His status as a craftsman did not grant any special privileges and, like the other AB's of the ship's crew, Muspratt was subject to the discipline of the ship's captain,
William Bligh. Upon the ''Bounty's'' landfall in
Tahiti in late 1788, Muspratt soon fell foul of his commanding officers and was sentenced in December to a dozen lashes with the
cat o' nine tails for "neglect of duty." The seaman appears to have responded to this treatment by attempting to desert the ship, for on 5 January 1789, he absconded with two shipmates. All were recaptured and Muspratt was re-sentenced to four dozen additional lashes. , 1862. From Left to right:John Adams 1827-1897 son of George Adams; John Quintal 1820-1912 son of Arthur Quintal; George Adams 1804-1873 son of John Adams; Arthur Quintal 1795-1873 son of Matthew Quintal McCoy discovered a means of distilling alcohol from one of the island's fruits. He and Quintal quickly descended into alcoholism, often abusing and bullying both the Polynesian men and women, including his consort Tevarua. Rosalind Young, a descendant of
Ned Young, relayed a story handed down to her that Tevarua went fishing one day and failed to catch enough fish to satisfy him. He punished her by biting off her ear. He may have been drunk at the time, because he and William McCoy were drunk most of the time, consuming the ti-root brandy that McCoy had succeeded in distilling. Tevarua fell – or, some believe, killed herself by leaping – off a cliff in 1799. After McCoy killed himself, Quintal became increasingly erratic. He demanded to take Isabella, Fletcher Christian's widow, as his wife, and threatened to kill Christian's children if his demands were not granted. Ned Young and John Adams invited him to Young's home and overpowered him, then killed him with an axe. Quintal's descendants reside on
Norfolk Island to this day. A descendant,
Malcolm Champion, was a swimmer in the
1912 Summer Olympics, becoming
New Zealand's first ever gold medalist.
Ned Young sketch of
Susan Young, the only surviving Tahitian woman on Pitcairn's Island
Edward "Ned" Young (c. 1762 – 25 December 1800), was a British sailor, mutineer and co-founder of the mutineers'
Pitcairn Island settlement. Young was born on the
West Indian island of
Saint Kitts. He apparently came from a poor family, but he did attend school. An 1825 Royal Navy biography reports that he was the nephew of Sir
George Young, Baronet. He joined the crew of the
Bounty as a
midshipman. Young was asleep during the mutiny, and did not wake until after it was over. Thus, he neither participated in the mutiny nor was able to fight against it or join Bligh and others who left the ship in a long boat. Young was the only crew member to sleep through this ordeal. However, he soon fully supported Christian and the mutineers, and that he would never attempt to return to England. He joined Christian on the voyage to Pitcairn. On Pitcairn, Young took charge of the distillery and brewed a primitive alcohol. In October 1793, when conflict broke out between the mutineers and the four surviving Tahitian men, Young slept through most of this battle as well, and was protected by a Tahitian woman who largely supported the mutineers. Young did help to hunt down and kill Neho, one of the Tahitian men. The other three surviving mutineers were
Matthew Quintal,
William McCoy and
John Adams. Young was accepted as the leader of the island, and Adams became his friend and deputy, though some sources seem to indicate that the two men had an equal amount of power. They gained much more respect than McCoy and Quintal, who became alcoholics. Quintal became increasingly alcoholic and threatened to kill the entire community; Adams and Young killed Quintal to prevent this from happening, making themselves the only two surviving mutineers. It was after this episode that the distillery was shut down by Young. Meanwhile, they had established
fruit plantations and had many children by their Tahitian wives. In 1799 Young began to experience
asthma. At about the same time, he became more religious. The other islanders converted to
Christianity, and Young taught Adams and several of the children to read and write. Young's health became progressively worse and eventually he died of asthma, but Adams continued his work of educating the women and children, taking control over leadership of the island, and lived to see the island rediscovered by American and British ships. Many of Young's and the mutineers' descendants continue to live on Pitcairn Island or
Norfolk Island. ==References==