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Morrison of the Bounty
May. 6th, 2011 12:23 am
While I was home in Stornoway earlier this week I managed to slip away for an hour to do some book shopping and I found a couple of interesting titles one of which is Morrison of the Bounty: A Scotsman Famous but Unknown by James Shaw Grant. This is the story of James Morrison of Stornoway who was one of the very first Leodhasachs, or Lewismen, to volunteer for the Royal Navy in 1779. Morrison was an educated and literate man descended from the Breves, the hereditary judges of the Lords of the Isles and also from the famous blind harper Ruairidh Dhall Morrison. Morrison had the misfortune to serve aboard HMS Bounty as Boatswain's Mate and was court martialled and found guilty for his alleged role in the mutiny though he was later reprieved and continued his naval career. A journal from this period, purportedly written by Morrison, survives in the Mitchell Library in Sydney and is apparently the source of many subsequent retellings of the story of the famous mutiny in print and on film. What I find really extraordinary though is that several years after the mutiny Morrison served under Sir Edward Pellew as gunner aboard his flagship Tonnant. Shaw Grant also suggests that when Pellew was promoted to Rear Admiral and appointed to the East Indies station in 1804 he secured a position for Morrison as gunnery instructor aboard the Cambridge at Plymouth.
Morrison however ended up following Pellew out to the East Indies when he sailed with Rear Admiral Troubridge aboard the Blenheim the following year. Troubridge had been given orders to take command of half of the East Indies station, but as there was no corresponding order for Pellew to give up his command he refused and instead appointed Troubridge as commander of his own squadron with charge of a lucrative part of the station. The Admiralty initially took the line that Pellew had acted illegally by disobeying a direct order but they subsequently agreed he had acted entirely properly and fully exonerated him. Troubridge was hastily reappointed to the Cape of Good Hope but on the way from the East Indies to the Cape his flagship the Blenheim was lost with all hands including the Lewis gunner James Morrison.
