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When Fortune Frowns |
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Most people
are aware of the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Few, however, know what
happened to the mutineers. They did not all sail to Pitcairn Island;
indeed only nine of them did, leaving sixteen in Tahiti by their own choice. The
Royal Navy was not about to let them remain at large and sent an armed frigate,
HMS Pandora, to the Pacific to capture them and return them to England
for trial. When Fortune Frowns is the story of this voyage, the
capture of the remaining mutineers, and the perilous and disastrous return voyage
to England. Storms, tropical islands, monotony, and shipwreck all figured into
the epic tale, unearthed and carefully researched by award-winning maritime author William
H. White. A well crafted conclusion to one of the most heinous and well known
stories of the Age of Sail.
When Fortune Frowns“... great
historical fiction – a fascinating (and true) story, scrupulously
researched and fleshed out with characters who have the ring of
authenticity.”
James L. Nelson
Weaving fact with fiction has produced a wonderfully engaging yarn of the sea and the era of wooden sailing vessels.
It is autumn 1790 when Captain Edward Edwards takes command of HMS Pandora, a 24-gun Royal Navy Porcupine-class frigate bound for the South Seas. Her mission: locate and capture the mutineers who seized His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty, and set Captain William Bligh and eighteen loyal officers and seamen adrift, and recover the lost vessel.
In When Fortune Frowns, William H. White skillfully tells the story of HMS Pandora through the eyes of Lieutenant Edward Ballantyne, a fictional character, who joins the ship’s company under Captain Edwards in Portsmouth Harbour as she is about to sail. Ballantyne’s English dialect voice adds an authenticity to his narrative, which White says came “from spending a great deal of time with British people in Cayman – learning phrasing and expressions that they used, and that an American would likely not.”
Although technically a novel, When Fortune Frowns sticks to documented facts concerning Pandora, Captain Edwards, and the actual historical figures who took part in the Bounty mutiny and the ensuing events over a period of five years. Early on, as Ballantyne strolls through the Georgian-period Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth in search of Pandora, the aroma of Stockholm tar and canvas wafts off the pages. “It’s all coming back,” the young lieutenant says to himself. “... the smells, the language, the hustle and bustle of a busy yard. Like coming home again!”
And indeed it is for readers of the sea. The Royal Dockyard scene had been written prior to his visit there to read Pandora’s original log in the Naval Archives. “After I walked through those huge wooden gates and toured the yard,” White recalls, “I realized I had to rewrite the whole scene to ‘get it right,’ thus stirring the memory of people who had also visited.”
The events surrounding the Bounty mutiny continue to resonate well over two centuries after Fletcher Christian and his band of mutineers disappeared with the ship in the Great South Seas. William White’s detailed and vivid account of HMS Pandora’s adventures is a delightful addition to the Bounty’s literature and legend.
Map courtesy of Paul Garnett
