AWRF 2012: Captain Bligh

Who better than Georgia Prince, Manager of Auckland Libraries' Sir George Grey Special Collections, Regional Heritage and Research, could we ask to tell us about "Bligh", one of this festival's hit events?
 
In this session Anne Salmond was talking to Paul Diamond about the most notorious of all the Pacific explorers, Captain William Bligh of ‘The Mutiny on the Bounty” fame. Bligh is the subject of her latest book, Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas, the last in her trilogy of books on Pacific voyaging.

As she said, most people want to know why she picked Captain Bligh as her subject. First, she described the key moments in her research which gave her sympathy and insight into this complex man. One was reading his tender and affectionate letters to his wife Betsy, and the other was reading his vitriolic annotations in the margins of the official account of the last voyage of Captain Cook. He absolutely disagreed with this account of Cook’s death ( he was there) and objected strongly to the credit for the charts he had produced as Cook’s Master being given to his superior officer, Lieutenant King. As a librarian, I found hearing about the value of research moments like these both illuminating and satisfying.

In Bligh’s defence, she talked about the impossible situation Bligh was put into by the organiser of the Bounty voyage, Joseph Banks, and how it was “a mutiny waiting to happen”. Bligh had no way of enforcing his authority, apart from verbal abuse, and he never understood when to hold his tongue. But she also talked about his remarkable ability as an ethnographer and observer of Tahitian customs, as well as his amazing feat of navigating from Tonga to Batavia (Jakarta) in an over-filled open boat with little food, water or navigational instruments.

An amazing story which kept us all us fascinated and entertained. As Paul Diamond said in his concluding remarks, “None of these are dead stories”.

AWRF10: Anne Salmond & Thomas Keneally

Ana from Readers Services enjoyed Anne Salmond and Thomas Keneally's stories at their first AWRF 2010 event, ie the pure state (Kim-less) one. She shares a few with us.

Two historians talking about two different countries but with one thing in common: they are both passionate about history, and like to bring forgotten stories back to life.

Anne Salmond went to Auckland University to study Maori history and Anthropology. There she met Eruera and Amiria Stirling, an amazing couple, and spent a long time with them talking and listening to people recounting oral history and talking about their ancestors on the marae.

Thomas Keneally was a schoolteacher in Sydney and was studying law but gave up everything to become a writer. He said he did this because he was ignorant and didn’t know much about publishing houses. He likes writing novels because he says he can tell lies if he wants.

They took turns presenting, and switched between Australia and New Zealand. What they do as historians is “time travelling” because, as Salmond says, you look at a map many times and try to guess where Captain Cook’s ship was positioned, but this is not enough. “You need to go to the places and smell the smells”. Keneally agrees with her, but this got him into trouble when he was writing “Towards Asmara” about the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and he had to go there, even though, he says, he is a coward.

Salmond said that New Zealand and Australia were very different countries before the Europeans arrived. She has always been very curious about the first meeting between Maori and Europeans, when Captain Cook’s ship “The Endeavour” arrived. He came to shore with other sailors in small boats, having left four sailors guarding the ship, but they were surprised by Maori and attacked with spears. One of the Maori was shot. And that's the way it was, in those days.

Keneally pointed out that New Zealand had the Treaty of Waitangi but there was never a treaty in Australia. In Australia the Aboriginals had a “land title”. There were two reactions by the Aboriginals to becoming an occupied people. On the one hand, they wanted to “enchant” the Europeans away, make them disappear. On the other, they wanted to attack them.

Keneally spent a long time researching and writing about Irish convicts, and told how “even very obscure Irish peasants become alive for you” until "they are drinking beer with you".  For Salmond, too, after reading all the logs of Captain Cook and his adventures the people in his voyages become a presence.