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Episode: Reason, Wrath and Rebellion on the High Seas

Author: Pushkin Industries
Duration: 00:41:14

Episode Shownotes

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.

Summary

In this episode of 'Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford,' we explore the life of Captain William Bligh during the infamous mutiny on HMS Bounty in April 1789. Initially presented as a rational leader inspired by Captain James Cook, Bligh's approach deteriorated due to insubordination and discontent among his crew. Although he aimed to foster fairness, his methods grew harsher, ultimately leading to mutiny led by Fletcher Christian. The episode highlights the delicate balance between authority and emotional perceptions, illustrating the challenges of leadership under stress, and connects these historical events to broader themes of fairness and decision-making as discussed in David Bodanis's book, 'The Art of Fairness.'

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Reason, Wrath and Rebellion on the High Seas) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:06 Speaker_02
Pushkin.

00:00:17 Speaker_00
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00:00:32 Speaker_00
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00:00:48 Speaker_02
April 1789, 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.

00:01:03 Speaker_02
But if someone had been listening closely, they'd 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.

00:01:23 Speaker_02
Lieutenant Fletcher Christian has organized most of the crew, who detest their captain, 34-year-old William Bly. They drag Bly from his cabin, tying his wrists behind his back. On deck, he struggles to get free.

00:01:39 Speaker_02
Fletcher Christian blocks him, pressing a bayonet to his chest. In England, they'd been friends. Now, glaring at each other, that's over. Pistols are at hand, and the crew calls for Christian to blow Bly's brains out.

00:01:58 Speaker_02
Bly yells back at Christian, telling him he must stop, that in England, didn't he remember? Christian had held Bly's own children on his knee. After what's happened on this voyage, however, Christian doesn't care.

00:02:13 Speaker_02
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.

00:02:54 Speaker_02
This episode is the third in a series exploring the famous idea that nice guys finish last, inspired by David Badanus's book The Art of Fairness. And we'll hear a bit from David Badanus himself later. But first, the mutiny on the bounty.

00:03:14 Speaker_02
It's not only an astonishing story in its own right, it also sheds light on the question of whether nice guys finish last or first. Let's start with Captain William Bly.

00:03:29 Speaker_02
Several movies have been made about the mutiny, and Bly is often painted as a cruel, petty tyrant. Just how cruel and petty he really was is something we'll look at closely.

00:03:41 Speaker_02
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.

00:03:58 Speaker_02
He developed his artistic abilities and was especially drawn to painting watercolour landscapes. And he discovered that he loved mathematics. That was big. Bly was awed at the sophisticated men of Britain's royal society.

00:04:15 Speaker_02
They were heirs to Sir Isaac Newton and the other great rational minds that were transforming the world.

00:04:23 Speaker_02
His ambition and his mathematical skill came together when he was lucky enough, barely past 20, to get a position as sailing master on one of the voyages that Captain James Cook was undertaking.

00:04:37 Speaker_02
Cook was the greatest explorer of the age and exactly the sort of man Bly wanted to model himself on. Other sea captains often treated their men with staggering cruelty.

00:04:50 Speaker_02
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 slaveholds.

00:05:07 Speaker_02
Men from the lowest 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 wonders.

00:05:27 Speaker_02
If you listened to our last episode about the Empire State Building, you'll recognise this idea. It's just what construction manager Paul Starrett believed over a century later.

00:05:38 Speaker_02
Here, in the late 18th century, the 22-year-old Bly 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 only a few men, had gone before.

00:05:57 Speaker_02
Bly travelled with him deep into the Pacific, and also up to the Arctic, rising to be the main navigator on board. Bligh's young friend, Fletcher Christian, also came to share Cook's vision for how to run a ship.

00:06:15 Speaker_02
He was 10 years younger than Bligh, tall and dark-haired, and from a notably higher social class. His older brother was a fellow at Cambridge.

00:06:26 Speaker_02
But he too was interested in science, in rational approaches, and that brought an affinity Bly didn't have with most others.

00:06:36 Speaker_02
Several 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.

00:06:49 Speaker_02
Then in 1787, Bly was in his early 30s, Christian in his early 20s, Bly was given the command for a new sort of mission. Tahiti had a tree called the breadfruit tree, which produced nutritious large fruit. If he could collect

00:07:09 Speaker_02
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 forced to labour for them.

00:07:25 Speaker_02
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.

00:07:41 Speaker_02
He'd show that he too could run everything through logic and reason, rather than primitive impulse. The men under his command would not be brutalized into submission.

00:07:53 Speaker_02
Instead, they'd be shaped by the use of rational incentives, rewarded when they did well and punished when they fell short. Bly was given command of a fast, three-masted sailing ship, HMS Bounty.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
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.

00:08:23 Speaker_02
They also converted the captain's room into a huge nursery for the breadfruit seedlings they would be transporting to the Caribbean.

00:08:31 Speaker_02
There were skylights, and a stove to keep the new plants warm, even a clever recycling system for the fresh water that drained out. In October 1787, they finally set sail.

00:08:48 Speaker_02
Before departure, Fletcher Christian spent time with Bly's family and played with his children. Quite likely, they travelled to the ship together. The voyage started as well as both had imagined.

00:09:02 Speaker_02
Bly created an easier watch schedule because, as he put it, It adds much to their contempt and cheerfulness. porpoises swam alongside the boat. One afternoon, a vast cloud of butterflies blew past, to everyone's delight.

00:09:25 Speaker_02
There was dancing and music on the deck when the weather was good, for Bly had brought a fiddler along.

00:09:33 Speaker_02
Bly's ideas were put to a sterner test when the weather got worse, and late at night in the South Atlantic, a catastrophic wave poured tonnes of seawater in. Bligh rose to the challenge.

00:09:48 Speaker_02
He selflessly vacated his cabin, turning it over to the use of those poor fellows who had wet berths. He arranged soaked wet clothes to be dried on the stove.

00:10:00 Speaker_02
Fletcher Christian remained at Bligh's side, and control and kindness ensured everything ran smoothly. Almost everything, that is.

00:10:13 Speaker_02
Well into their voyage, the sailing master informed Bly that one of the ordinary sailors, a 20-year-old named Matthew Quintle, had been insolent.

00:10:26 Speaker_02
The Royal Navy had a clear command structure, so although Bly didn't see Quintle's insolence with his own eyes, he had to accept this report. He was disappointed.

00:10:38 Speaker_02
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.

00:10:58 Speaker_02
Matthew Quintel's shirt was stripped off and his arms tied tight. The Cat O' Nine Tales 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.

00:11:17 Speaker_02
This was an excruciating sentence. But when the flogging was done, that was it. Quintle was resentful, of course, but the rest of the long journey was easy. There were no more floggings.

00:11:36 Speaker_02
Bly had been angry at Quintle for disrupting his perfectly organised system, but now his temper was gone. The ship was back to steady running, hour after hour, cutting through the water, its big sails catching powerful winds and pulling them along.

00:11:57 Speaker_02
Finally, after nearly 28,000 miles, they arrived in Tahiti. It was October 1788. They'd been at sea for a full year. The bay they settled in was magnificent. Canoes raced to their ship, eager for trade.

00:12:16 Speaker_02
And by sunset, there were hogs, fruits and bright new textiles on board. Bligh's men were delighted. In England, they'd been among the lowest of the low, most of them underweight, disfigured from fights or accidents. Here, though, they were as gods.

00:12:37 Speaker_02
In the next few days, a new rhythm started up. Bligh 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 onboard nursery.

00:12:53 Speaker_02
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.

00:13:06 Speaker_02
Bligh had brought his watercolour materials and was delighted that he would have so much time to draw the 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.

00:13:24 Speaker_02
Bligh is content. The crew is content. But what will Bligh do as time goes on and that crew is no longer under his control? Cautionary tales will return in just a moment.

00:13:49 Speaker_02
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, HMS Bounty, entirely uncared for.

00:14:06 Speaker_02
At one point, Bly 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.

00:14:23 Speaker_02
The men in the scouting boat that travelled 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 bow dragged along a reef.

00:14:44 Speaker_02
They were stuck, which 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.

00:15:03 Speaker_02
The storm was rocking the ship against the sharp reef. If they didn't get the ship off, it would be pushed harder and harder until it was holed through. Then it would take in water and sink.

00:15:18 Speaker_02
Bly 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 1788, and soon all order began to break down. The crew were in heaven here.

00:15:38 Speaker_02
Many seemed to have settled into steady relationships, playing with the new stepchildren they'd acquired. Most still slept on board and spent only the daytime with these new families.

00:15:51 Speaker_02
But some would spend longer, go 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.

00:16:09 Speaker_02
Late one night, they took supplies and an entire arms chest and quietly left the ship. They were soon tracked down, but the officer of the watch had slept right through it. Bly lashed the three deserters when they were brought back.

00:16:27 Speaker_02
He was just as angry at the officer, putting him in irons for over a week. Then, Bly found out that no one had been bringing the spare sails out for regular airing. That was a greater degree of danger entirely.

00:16:42 Speaker_02
Every one of his officers, every one of the ordinary sailors too for that matter, knew how crucial taking care of the sails was. They'd need them for the near year of sailing to get back home.

00:16:53 Speaker_02
But they'd been left to mildew, and some were even beginning to rot. Bly wrote, scarce any neglect of duty can equal the criminality of this. He realised they had to get off this blasted island before matters got worse.

00:17:10 Speaker_02
But the breadfruit saplings still weren't ready, so they had several more months to wait. Bly grew ever more exasperated. Sir Isaac Newton's vision of a clean, logical universe was so clear, so obvious. Bly had made it come true on the voyage out.

00:17:30 Speaker_02
Why were his men letting it collapse here? In the months before they left, he gave one of the sailors 12 hard lashes with a cat o' nine tails for insolence. Another got 12 lashes for letting natives steal.

00:17:46 Speaker_02
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 had the considerate Bly gone?

00:18:08 Speaker_02
For a perspective on that question, there is no better person to ask than David Badanus, who wrote about the mutiny in his book The Art of Fairness. David, he began as a sensitive watercolour painter. He turned into a brute.

00:18:21 Speaker_02
Where did Bly as the defender of enlightened captainship go?

00:18:26 Speaker_01
Maybe that enlightened captain had never been there. Bly 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 it.

00:18:37 Speaker_01
The sailors, how he dealt with them, the sailors were a means to that end.

00:18:42 Speaker_02
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.

00:18:54 Speaker_01
That's exactly it. And Bly 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.

00:19:10 Speaker_01
But this abandonment, it seems so sudden. What's happening is a flip from one equilibrium to another. When things were going well, Bly extended fairness and generosity. The sailors responded with good cheer and hard work.

00:19:25 Speaker_01
But when they got to Tahiti and they started resenting any discipline, it began a downward spiral. The sailors were sullen. That made Bly harsh. That made the sailors more sullen. And that made Bly even harsher. So it's a feedback loop.

00:19:41 Speaker_01
Exactly, a feedback loop. In the last episode, we talked about the ancient Rabbi Hillel's 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 only for others.

00:19:57 Speaker_01
All of us struggle with the balance, with getting it right. And the great insight, I think, is that there are no fixed answers. Why are there no fixed answers? I think it's because being fair or equitable, it's not a static disposition.

00:20:12 Speaker_01
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.

00:20:25 Speaker_02
So if Bly had never gone to Tahiti, maybe the problem would never have arisen?

00:20:30 Speaker_01
That would have been perfect, but that's not how life works. We rarely have complete control over where we end up. And when Bly saw his sailor slip away from the proper behavior that he had in mind, he became so furious that he overshot.

00:20:46 Speaker_02
Thank you, David. Please stick around. I am going to want your advice again, I am sure. Finally, the breadfruit saplings had grown enough. Bly's men loaded them on board, and they weighed anchor, the 4th of April, 1789.

00:21:05 Speaker_02
Bly knew he had to get the ship operating as 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.

00:21:22 Speaker_02
He also switched them to shipboard rations, knowing the fresh stock they'd brought from Tahiti would be needed later. Morale was going to be important. I need to nurse my people with care and attention, he wrote.

00:21:37 Speaker_02
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.

00:21:49 Speaker_02
And just as before, he'd vacate his own bunk 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'd done on the Atlantic run.

00:22:04 Speaker_02
But the time in Tahiti had changed the men far more than he could grasp. After six months in paradise, who cared about a fiddler? And since the men had been changed, that would change Bly too.

00:22:22 Speaker_02
Within a week at sea, Bly had ordered another flogging of a seaman, whom he charged with neglect of duty.

00:22:30 Speaker_02
Normally, he could have expected his officers to support him without hesitation in that, but something was different, notably with his old friend, Fletcher Christian. He was not the same man as he'd been on the voyage out. The reason?

00:22:46 Speaker_02
Christian had spent almost every night on shore and was leaving behind a woman he'd been close with and who was now pregnant with their child. Bligh was frustrated, and that poured out. He cursed his men.

00:23:02 Speaker_02
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, Mr. Christian was sure to bear the brunt of the captain's anger.

00:23:16 Speaker_02
Christian hated it, begging Bligh to stop. But Bligh was 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.

00:23:37 Speaker_02
When Bly cursed, he really cursed. Later, when the Admiralty learned more of how Bly spoke when angry, he was officially reprimanded for his immoderate use of language.

00:23:51 Speaker_02
This is staggering, given what was considered acceptable for sea captains in the 1700s. The conflict boiled over when they were 19 days out.

00:24:05 Speaker_02
Coconuts were an important source of fresh water, and Bly 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 the 23rd, Bly noticed that the pile had shrunk.

00:24:24 Speaker_02
Who had been stealing? One after another, the officers said 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.

00:24:42 Speaker_02
Bly started swearing once again. God damn you! I'll sweat you for it! You can all go to hell! This was very far from the calm Captain Cook he'd once admired. Nothing made sense to him. Sensible procedures had worked perfectly on the voyage out.

00:24:59 Speaker_02
Why couldn't they continue that way? Fletcher Christian tried to intervene, but that just made Bly angrier. He stormed his cabin. According to the carpenter, a William Purcell, Christian was in tears. What's the matter, Mr Christian? he asked.

00:25:19 Speaker_02
Can you ask me and hear the treatment I receive? Christian answered. Purcell tried to console him. saying that he too had suffered Bligh's tongue-lashings. But that missed a difference between the two men.

00:25:35 Speaker_02
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.

00:25:53 Speaker_02
Christian couldn't bear to imagine this humiliation. His brother was a Cambridge Don, 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.

00:26:12 Speaker_02
Bligh was wild with rage. Christian was sick with fear. The journey ahead was due to last 12 more months. Cautionary Tales will return after the break. Most of the crew of the bounty was on Fletcher Christian's side.

00:26:43 Speaker_02
They couldn't bear to leave Tahiti behind, nor did they want a year stuck on board with the increasingly violent Captain Bly. But to mutiny against the captain was immensely risky.

00:26:59 Speaker_02
Every sailor in Britain knew that the nation depended on foreign trade, that depended on the navy, and the navy depended on orders being followed. Break that, and everything would crumble.

00:27:15 Speaker_02
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 brought back in chains and condemned.

00:27:32 Speaker_02
and then hanged, their bodies left to rot, dangling, as a warning to anyone else. Despite the incredible danger, most of the crew decided they had to get rid of Captain Bly.

00:27:47 Speaker_02
Whence the mutiny we began with very early in the morning on Tuesday, April the 28th, 1789. Fletcher Christian Several other conspirators got hold of the ship's muskets and distributed them to their fellow mutineers. Then they went to Bly's cabin.

00:28:09 Speaker_02
Before long, pandemonium had broken out, the entire ship awake and the captain held at gunpoint. That's when Bly called out to Christian, for God's sake, drop it. You've danced my children on your knee. But it was no use.

00:28:26 Speaker_02
Christian ensured that Bly and the other crewmen the mutineers weren't convinced about were pushed into the small, open launch, bobbing alongside. One of those with Bly called up, pleading for Fletcher Christian to stop.

00:28:42 Speaker_02
You know, Christian calmly replied, that Captain Bly has treated me like a dog. I've been in hell.

00:28:51 Speaker_02
Christian must have felt some guilt, for he let Bly and the 18 men with him take 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.

00:29:08 Speaker_02
Matthew Quintle, the young man Bly had flogged first on the voyage out from Britain, now had his chance. He was 100% on Christian's side and grabbed the gun back. The bounty sailed off.

00:29:25 Speaker_02
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 sails raised to catch the breeze, its deck high and majestic above the water.

00:29:44 Speaker_02
Their own launch was completely different. It was small, crowded, and rose 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.

00:30:01 Speaker_02
Everyone's assumption was that leaving Bly and these loyalists in the boat was simply a delayed death sentence. The nearest European settlement was Dutch Timor, over 3,000 miles away.

00:30:16 Speaker_02
No open boat like this small launch had ever crossed such a distance, not least without any proper map. Yet, facing such hardship, Captain William Bly was in his element.

00:30:30 Speaker_02
He had a mission, a hard one admittedly, but he also had some tools, oars and a compass, and materials to keep up a mast, and 18 men. Yelling and cursing would do nothing here, but calm analysis and rational, consistent action, he began a journal.

00:30:52 Speaker_02
As soon as I had time to reflect, Bly wrote, I found my mind most wonderfully supported and began to conceive hopes. Timor was 3,000 miles away. London, 12,000. Get there. Explain what happened to the Admiralty, and you could start again.

00:31:16 Speaker_02
Almost instantly, the old structure of command reappeared. That's because everyone in the boat knew that only Bly had even the faintest chance of navigating their way back to safety.

00:31:30 Speaker_02
His personality flipped back, for in this setting, there was nothing to thwart his desire to show benevolent rationality could work.

00:31:39 Speaker_02
Bligh 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 bay. He encouraged his men to tell stories about their past, joining in to tell his own.

00:31:56 Speaker_02
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.

00:32:10 Speaker_02
Best of all, he helped the men sew a raggedy Union Jack flag out of scraps of signal flags found at the bottom of the launch. It was a reminder of home and another way of boosting their confidence.

00:32:24 Speaker_02
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, the men heard a strange roaring sound.

00:32:40 Speaker_02
Well, I realised 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.

00:32:53 Speaker_02
He had them row parallel to the reef, as fast as possible, 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.

00:33:11 Speaker_02
There, safe discipline quickly broke down and the helpful, encouraging William Bly became once again a furious man. Admittedly, he was provoked.

00:33:24 Speaker_02
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.

00:33:35 Speaker_02
Almost immediately, one sailor started a fire that blew out of control, sparking a grass blaze that was visible for miles.

00:33:44 Speaker_02
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.

00:33:54 Speaker_02
At another island, after Bly explained they needed to share any food they found, one man tried secretly to go hunting just on his own. Bly beat him when he found out. Then the carpenter, William Purcell, also went out foraging.

00:34:11 Speaker_02
And when he came back, he insisted even more that he wasn't going to share food he'd found. Bly yelled at him. Purcell yelled back. Bly had had enough. I determined to strike a final blow, and either to preserve my command or die in the attempt.

00:34:29 Speaker_02
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 men tried to call him off, he threatened them with death if they tried to intervene.

00:34:48 Speaker_02
Luckily, Purcell the carpenter gave in before anyone was killed. And then, when they all returned to the launch, everything flipped back again.

00:34:59 Speaker_02
No one could start unapproved fires on their tiny boat, no one was going to secretly search for their own food, and everyone depended on Bly to get them back.

00:35:10 Speaker_02
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 men and tenderly taking care of those who fell ill.

00:35:28 Speaker_02
Until, that is, they finally arrived in the safely populated island of Timor, with its large European settlement. Bligh had accomplished one of the greatest feats of open boat navigation ever recorded.

00:35:44 Speaker_02
But once on the way back to England, he and his men began arguing again, so much that Bly ended up having the carpenter Purcell and another sailor arrested at Bayonet Point and held in irons for almost a month. When they finally reached Britain,

00:36:04 Speaker_02
The Royal Navy sent out teams to hunt the mutineers. A few were caught and ended up being hanged in London.

00:36:14 Speaker_02
Fletcher Christian and several of the others got away, safe at the isolated Pitcairn Island, where some of their descendants survive to this day.

00:36:26 Speaker_02
Bligh himself undertook a second trip to Tahiti, this time with a substantial armed marine guard to complete his mission of collecting breadfruit saplings.

00:36:38 Speaker_02
Since there was no threat to his authority, those voyages went well, and he was back to being as reasonable and helpful as he'd been at his best. So, what are the lessons?

00:36:56 Speaker_02
Well, this and the last two episodes of Cautionary Tales, Investigating Fairness, drew on my friend David Badanus's book, The Art of Fairness. And David is back with me now.

00:37:07 Speaker_02
David, after everything you've read and written about Captain Bly, what did you make of him as a person?

00:37:15 Speaker_01
You know, at first, I thought the way Bly 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.

00:37:30 Speaker_01
And that's where I saw that something we've both thought about comes up. What's that? Well, in both the writings we do, we work hard to tease out rational rules. It's the Enlightenment ideal that Captain Cook had.

00:37:43 Speaker_01
It's what William Bly had too, when he wasn't acting up. For them, it was about ventilation and sleeping schedules and the like. For us, it's about behavioral economics. Exactly.

00:37:53 Speaker_01
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 cautionary tales. But what makes the final step happen?

00:38:04 Speaker_01
What makes people actually engage with those insights and especially when they're under stress?

00:38:10 Speaker_02
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.

00:38:20 Speaker_02
Loyal subscribers who subscribe to Pushkin Plus will have heard the story of the Tenerife air crash. There was a plane on fire on the runway and some people got out and some people just froze.

00:38:31 Speaker_02
One of the explanations for why some people got out was because they'd thought about, well, what happens if there is a problem? Where are the emergency exits? What would I do?

00:38:39 Speaker_02
If you thought about it, your mind under pressure may grab one of these useful scripts.

00:38:44 Speaker_02
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.

00:38:52 Speaker_02
So thinking through, you know, I'm going to have this conversation with a doctor about this diagnosis that I'm worried about. How do I want that conversation to go?

00:39:01 Speaker_02
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 Bly didn't really think it through.

00:39:13 Speaker_02
That was one of his problems. He didn't think through or didn't seem to think through 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?

00:39:23 Speaker_01
You know what it was? Bly 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 five

00:39:36 Speaker_01
far away in the distance, there's plateaus stretching on, but you can't see him. For Bly, those plateaus were the consequences. He wasn't thinking about the consequences. He had this rule.

00:39:47 Speaker_01
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 him bobbing up and down in a little boat in the sea.

00:39:59 Speaker_02
Well, 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 Badanus' writings.

00:40:11 Speaker_02
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 Badanus. Join us next time on Cautionary Tales.

00:40:28 Speaker_02
Portionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. This miniseries is based on David Badanus's book, The Art of Fairness, the power of decency in a world turned mean, and it was written with David Badanus himself.

00:40:44 Speaker_02
For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. The show is produced by Alice Fiennes with Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script.

00:41:00 Speaker_02
Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutteridge, Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright.

00:41:08 Speaker_02
The show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey, and Owen Miller. Portionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

00:41:24 Speaker_02
It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It does really make a difference to us.

00:41:35 Speaker_02
And if you want to hear the show ad-free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm.

00:41:51 Speaker_00
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00:42:05 Speaker_00
When you purchase or lease a new Subaru during the Subaru Share the Love event, Subaru and its retailers donate a minimum of $300 to charity.

00:42:14 Speaker_00
By the end of this year's event, Subaru and its retailers will have donated nearly $320 million to national and hometown charities. To learn more, go to Subaru.com slash share. Subaru, more than a car company.