Utterly Useless Royal Navy Geekery - Six Degrees of Jack Aubrey Edition

Captain Peter Heywood - The Crucial Link

Cathy the Cake-Eater noted that yesterday was an important date in the exploratory career of the great Captain James Cook. She then threw down the challenge for me to link Captain Cook with Patrick O'Brian's Lucky Jack Aubrey.

Bring. It. On.

There is no direct link between Cook and Aubrey - Cook died in Hawaii in February, 1779, over twenty years before the beginning of the Aubrey/Maturin cycle. However, there is a chain of reference.

You see, the master of Cook's ship for his second and third voyages, HMS Resolution, was none other than William Bligh. Although Bligh is chiefly remembered nowadays (perhaps somewhat unjustly) for driving the crew of HMAV Bounty to mutiny in 1787, the fact is that he was an absolutely brilliant navigator, a set of skills he developed under Cook. (When Fletcher Christian put him off the Bounty at Tahiti in an open boat with 18 other loyalists, Bligh managed to steer the boat on a 3600 mile course to Timor using no maps or charts and no instruments other than an sextant and a pocket watch.)

Anyhoo, one of the mutineers was a young first-voyage midshipman named Peter Heywood. Heywood and some of the mutineers stayed on Tahiti while Christian and his friends sailed off to another island. Those who stayed on Tahiti eventually were picked up by HMS Pandora, which had been sent to hunt for the Bounty. Heywood and the other mutineers were kept in an iron cage on the deck of the Pandora. When she hit a reef and sank, he barely managed to get out alive.

Back in England, Heywood was court-martialled and sentenced to death. However, he received a pardon and was reinstated in the Royal Navy, where he eventually rose to the rank of post captain.

Now to the link: O'Brian has Heywood join Aubrey and Maturin for a long dinner as they are getting ready to set out on their own voyage to the South Seas and Australia. (I believe this occurs in The Thirteen Gun Salute, although it may be a bit later in the series.) Heywood recounts the story of the Bounty and his own subsequent adventures, together with more general observations about Bligh's background (including his voyages with Cook), personality and navigational prowess. (Aubrey is sailing in part to deal with another mutiny against Bligh, who is now governor of New South Wales. This time, it is a cabal of army officers.)

So there you have it. And remember, I was asked this time.