The Unconventional Courier June 2023

Correlations by Ian C. Smith

Unable to defend himself, Fletcher of the tattooed arse constructs huts of vegetation and yard, cultivating his semi-tropical garden in a mutineers’ allotment on a little known and maddeningly more difficult to find island of the remote Pacific in residence with one of several native women and various scoundrels.

Even from that distance he has allies with clout.

Rumour, gossip, abounds.

We all love a mystery, each with an opinion. Nobody knows where Fletcher and his makeshift mob are, nor has heard from Bligh’s launch crew.

Some scoff at the idea of so many ordered into an open boat, armed and provisioned, allowed to make their way home, however hazardous, without putting up a fight, the shame of this.

Several survivors of the incident-riddled launch odyssey are silenced, dead in the East Indies where tropical diseases scythe Europeans.

Others stranded there by Bligh who couldn’t wait to be disencumbered of them are now debauched, drunken, threatening, even mutinous.

Bligh writes to families of some of the original crew, expressing his feelings towards these shocked innocent people’s loved ones, whether calumnious or praiseworthy.

Fletcher’s fame, or infamy, puts Cockermouth on the map. Bounty’s voyage was financed to cultivate breadfruit as a profit-skimming basic slave diet.