Crozier raises his arm - his left, the one without the hand - and lays it over Raju in response to his shivering.
He should be sleeping, but he won’t until Raju’s comfortable and stops his shivering. He’ll tell him about someplace warm and tropical, and perhaps it’ll transport them both for a little while.
“It’s best to begin with the story of the Bounty,” he says, voice low and relaxed, blatantly ignoring Raju’s suggestion. “You must know it. A famously cruel captain and a crew that’s finally suffered all the abuses it can stand. It didn’t begin that way though, as the sailors who lived through it would recount later. Bligh, the captain, and Christian, the head mutineer, were initially on good, even friendly terms.”
Crozier continues, describing the day-to-day of the crew of the Bounty with details only a sailor could know. He tells the story of the drunken surgeon, and floggings that eventually became more and more frequent in the journey. All was well in the initial stretch of the voyage though, a typically strict time at sea under the usual Royal Navy guidance, structured watches and calisthenics, horrible food, boredom. But then there was Tahiti, and the crew got their first taste of freedom.
The story gets a little bawdy, and Crozier even chuckles quietly when he describes the check for venereal diseases when they left port some months later. The crew was sorry to say goodbye to the bonny lasses and fresh food of the island, and things only got worse from there.
“Well, as you know Fletcher Christian reached the end of his rope with the paranoid Captain Bligh. They set upon the Captain in the middle of the night. Under threat of murder they bodily placed him, a very sad amount of supplies, and the remaining crew loyal to Bligh on a jolly boat and cut him adrift. The mutineers kept the Bounty for themselves of course, and turned her back around to Tahiti.”
From here Crozier speaks a little more softly, a little quieter. From there the story becomes one of Bligh’s treacherous open-boat journey on the sea, the Royal Navy hunting down and trying the mutineers, and the legacy left behind by the mutineers and their Tahitian families. When he reaches the point that it’s clear he’ll enter the story next he pauses.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-06-09 04:01 pm (UTC)Crozier raises his arm - his left, the one without the hand - and lays it over Raju in response to his shivering.
He should be sleeping, but he won’t until Raju’s comfortable and stops his shivering. He’ll tell him about someplace warm and tropical, and perhaps it’ll transport them both for a little while.
“It’s best to begin with the story of the Bounty,” he says, voice low and relaxed, blatantly ignoring Raju’s suggestion. “You must know it. A famously cruel captain and a crew that’s finally suffered all the abuses it can stand. It didn’t begin that way though, as the sailors who lived through it would recount later. Bligh, the captain, and Christian, the head mutineer, were initially on good, even friendly terms.”
Crozier continues, describing the day-to-day of the crew of the Bounty with details only a sailor could know. He tells the story of the drunken surgeon, and floggings that eventually became more and more frequent in the journey. All was well in the initial stretch of the voyage though, a typically strict time at sea under the usual Royal Navy guidance, structured watches and calisthenics, horrible food, boredom. But then there was Tahiti, and the crew got their first taste of freedom.
The story gets a little bawdy, and Crozier even chuckles quietly when he describes the check for venereal diseases when they left port some months later. The crew was sorry to say goodbye to the bonny lasses and fresh food of the island, and things only got worse from there.
“Well, as you know Fletcher Christian reached the end of his rope with the paranoid Captain Bligh. They set upon the Captain in the middle of the night. Under threat of murder they bodily placed him, a very sad amount of supplies, and the remaining crew loyal to Bligh on a jolly boat and cut him adrift. The mutineers kept the Bounty for themselves of course, and turned her back around to Tahiti.”
From here Crozier speaks a little more softly, a little quieter. From there the story becomes one of Bligh’s treacherous open-boat journey on the sea, the Royal Navy hunting down and trying the mutineers, and the legacy left behind by the mutineers and their Tahitian families. When he reaches the point that it’s clear he’ll enter the story next he pauses.
“And tomorrow I’ll tell you the rest.”