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Lot Essay
Bligh was married to Elizabeth Betham in February 1781 shortly after his return from Cook's third and last circumnavigation on which he had served with distinction as Master on the Resolution. Elizabeth came from a distinguished and influential Scottish family. Her father, Richard Betham, a graduate of Glasgow University and friend of John Hume and Adam Smith, was Customs Officer at Douglas, Isle of Man. The two had first met years earlier, probably when the young midshipman Bligh was patrolling the Irish Sea out of Douglas sloop Ranger.
Ten days after their wedding, Bligh was appointed to his next ship as master of the Belle Pule and saw action in the North Sea squadron under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. By November, with the war in America running down, he was laid off on half pay and returned home to the Isle of Man. Through Elizabeth's uncle, Duncan Campbell, a wealthy merchant and ship owner, he gained employment as a civilian sea captain trading to the West Indies and through her family too he was thrown together with Fletcher Christian, a Cumberland man of Manx origin. Christian's cousin had married into the Taubman family of Castletown in the Isle of Man and the Taubmans were close friends of the Bethams. In 1784 Captain Taubman recommended Fletcher Christian, a midshipman recently unemployed, to Bligh. Christian became Bligh's protg first on Campbell's Britannia and from the autumn of 1787 on the Bounty. It was again indirectly through Elizabeth that Bligh won command of H.M. Armed Vessel Bounty as her uncle, Duncan Campbell, had induced Sir Joseph Banks to put his name forward to the Admiralty. The voyage of the Bounty (its purpose to transport breadfruit seedlings from Tahiti to the West Indies to provide cheap food for the Plantation Slaves) ended in Fletcher Christian's calamitous mutiny in 1789. Cast adrift, Bligh survived the mutiny thanks to his extraordinary navigational skills, and was at home with Elizabeth in the summer of 1790. She bore him six daughters and supported him throughout the remainder of his eventful and difficult career and died in April 1812, shortly after he had returned from his ill-fated Governorship of New South Wales.
John Webber's portrait of Elizabeth dates to a year after her marriage to Bligh. Webber sailed with Bligh as the official artist on Cook's third voyage and may have produced the portrait as a wedding gift to his colleague. Though primarily a landscape painter, Webber's important portrait of Captain James Cook (included in the sale of the artist's estate in these Rooms 14/15 June, 1793) and Captain James King are dated to the same year (R. Joppien and B. Smith, The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, New Haven and London, 1988, III, Catalogue, 3.452 and 3.456).
There is a later portrait of Elizabeth in pastels by John Russell R.A. (included in the 1989 exhibition, no. 192) and Russell had exhibited a portrait in pastels of William Bligh at the Royal Academy in 1791 (no. 188) in the aftermath of the Bounty mutiny. This latter portrait (included in the 1989 exhibition, no. 191) was engraved by J. Cond and appeared as the frontispiece for Bligh's A Voyage to the South Sea etc. published in 1792. (G. Callender, The Portraiture of Bligh in the Mariner's Mirror, 1936, 22, pp. 172-178)
Ten days after their wedding, Bligh was appointed to his next ship as master of the Belle Pule and saw action in the North Sea squadron under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. By November, with the war in America running down, he was laid off on half pay and returned home to the Isle of Man. Through Elizabeth's uncle, Duncan Campbell, a wealthy merchant and ship owner, he gained employment as a civilian sea captain trading to the West Indies and through her family too he was thrown together with Fletcher Christian, a Cumberland man of Manx origin. Christian's cousin had married into the Taubman family of Castletown in the Isle of Man and the Taubmans were close friends of the Bethams. In 1784 Captain Taubman recommended Fletcher Christian, a midshipman recently unemployed, to Bligh. Christian became Bligh's protg first on Campbell's Britannia and from the autumn of 1787 on the Bounty. It was again indirectly through Elizabeth that Bligh won command of H.M. Armed Vessel Bounty as her uncle, Duncan Campbell, had induced Sir Joseph Banks to put his name forward to the Admiralty. The voyage of the Bounty (its purpose to transport breadfruit seedlings from Tahiti to the West Indies to provide cheap food for the Plantation Slaves) ended in Fletcher Christian's calamitous mutiny in 1789. Cast adrift, Bligh survived the mutiny thanks to his extraordinary navigational skills, and was at home with Elizabeth in the summer of 1790. She bore him six daughters and supported him throughout the remainder of his eventful and difficult career and died in April 1812, shortly after he had returned from his ill-fated Governorship of New South Wales.
John Webber's portrait of Elizabeth dates to a year after her marriage to Bligh. Webber sailed with Bligh as the official artist on Cook's third voyage and may have produced the portrait as a wedding gift to his colleague. Though primarily a landscape painter, Webber's important portrait of Captain James Cook (included in the sale of the artist's estate in these Rooms 14/15 June, 1793) and Captain James King are dated to the same year (R. Joppien and B. Smith, The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, New Haven and London, 1988, III, Catalogue, 3.452 and 3.456).
There is a later portrait of Elizabeth in pastels by John Russell R.A. (included in the 1989 exhibition, no. 192) and Russell had exhibited a portrait in pastels of William Bligh at the Royal Academy in 1791 (no. 188) in the aftermath of the Bounty mutiny. This latter portrait (included in the 1989 exhibition, no. 191) was engraved by J. Cond and appeared as the frontispiece for Bligh's A Voyage to the South Sea etc. published in 1792. (G. Callender, The Portraiture of Bligh in the Mariner's Mirror, 1936, 22, pp. 172-178)