![]() ![]() If they could speak to you they'd say, "Let us choose to do our duty willingly, not the choice of a slave, but the choice of free Englishmen." They ask only the freedom that England expects for every man. I speak in their names, in Fletcher Christian's name, for all men at sea. I don't speak here for myself alone or for these men you condemn. No finer man ever lived."īyam: I don't try to justify his crime, his mutiny, but I condemn the tyranny that drove 'im to it. ![]() ![]() God knows he's judged himself more harshly than you could judge him.īyam: I say to his father, "He was my friend. Fletcher Christian's still free.īyam: Christian lost, too, milord. That's why you hate him, hate his friends. A story of greed and tyranny, and of anger against it, of what it cost.īyam: One man, milord, would not endure such tyranny.īyam: That's why you hounded him. A story of a man who robbed his seamen, cursed them, flogged them, not to punish but to break their spirit. But there's another story, Captain Bligh, of ten cocoanuts and two cheeses. Since I first sailed on the Bounty over four years ago, I've know how men can be made to suffer worse things than death, cruelly, beyond duty, beyond necessity.īyam: Captain Bligh, you've told your story of mutiny on the Bounty, how men plotted against you, seized your ship, cast you adrift in an open boat, a great venture in science brought to nothing, two British ships lost. Lord Hood: Have you anything to say before the sentence of this court is passed upon you?īyam: Milord, much as I desire to live, I'm not afraid to die. ![]()
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