Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (23 page)

The situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to Potulniy’s. He came from
a naval background, and already as a sixteen-year-old he had been accepted to attend the Frunze Military Academy. He did his apprenticeship aboard a number of warships, and when the
Storozhevoy’s
keel was laid he was tapped to be the ship’s first commander.

That was a big opportunity for Potulniy to prove himself. A lot of things were happening in the world in 1974. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was at its height, the United States had beaten Russia to the moon, and already the seeds of the people’s discontent with Moscow were like brush fires, easy to spot but difficult to extinguish.

And there were a lot of similarities between Christian and Sablin. Both men had been born to well-to-do families; both knew what they wanted to do very early on—Christian went to sea at sixteen, and Sablin applied for and was accepted to the Frunze Military Academy at the same age. Both were about the same height and build, both had dark hair and complexions, and both men were described by friends as being mild, open, humane, generous, and sometimes a little conceited.

Bligh and his crew were to sail the
Bounty
down to Tahiti in the South Pacific via Cape Horn at the southern tip of the Americas to take on as many breadfruit plants as they could carry and bring them to the West Indies. The plantation owners wanted something cheap to feed their slaves, and breadfruit, which grew in Polynesia but not in the West Indies, was just the thing. This trip was just as much political as it was humanitarian. The plantation owners were a rich and therefore a powerful political faction, and the king wanted to appease them.

The
Bounty
had started her life as a coal ship named
Bethia.
And despite the bad luck associated with changing a ship’s name, as soon as the collier had been converted into a warship she got a new name. In effect Bligh and his crew were the first to sail the
Bounty,
as Potulniy and his crew were the first to sail the
Storozhevoy.

At 215 tons, the
Bounty
was ninety feet on deck and was armed with four four-pounders and ten swivel guns. Because space had been
made to carry the breadfruit plants, there wasn’t a lot of room aboard for the young crew, who ranged in age from fourteen to thirty-nine.

Like with Potulniy and his crew there was a certain distance between Bligh and his sailors. It was a gap that was filled by Sablin aboard the
Storozhevoy
and by Christian aboard the
Bounty.
The ordinary crewmen liked and respected those officers, who both had sympathetic ears.

Bligh had learned early in his career that ships are run by men and that men needed to be well cared for if they were to do their jobs well. To combat scurvy, a disease resulting from deficiency of vitamin C that was very common in those days, Bligh made sure that sauerkraut was served at every meal. And he also knew that exercise was vitally important, so he brought aboard a blind fiddler named Michael Byrne to play music to which the men could dance. No one liked it, but the crew
was
kept fit. Just like the Russian farm boys aboard the
Storozhevoy
exercising every day up on deck, it was one of those systems in the military that worked.

The
Bounty’s
crew bitched about the food and they bitched about the exercise, but Bligh just stamped around on deck and swore at them. He wasn’t going to give any consideration to their complaints. He was the captain and that was the end of it. If they wanted to grumble, they could bitch to Christian for all Bligh cared.

But Bligh, like Potulniy, wasn’t a bad man, even though he was mostly aloof from his crew. For instance, he split the ship’s company into three watches, instead of the normal two, which was unusual for that day. It made duty much easier. The men could get some rest between watches. And after trying to get around Cape Horn for nearly thirty days, being pushed back into the Atlantic by storm after storm, he thanked his crew for a valiant effort, then turned tail and headed for the Pacific by the longer, but easier, route across the Atlantic and around the southern tip of Africa.

The
Bounty
arrived in Tahiti in the late fall of 1788 and had to remain at anchor for nearly six months until it was the proper season to
harvest the immature breadfruit plants. This was Bligh’s big mistake. Six months with no sea duty, at an island filled with good-looking and very willing Polynesian women, for whom white men were a novelty, corrupted the crew. Compared to England, and especially compared to life aboard ship, Tahiti was a paradise. Many of the men had girlfriends, and in six months a lot of the relationships were just as strong as any new marriage. When it was time to leave, a lot of the men didn’t want to go. A few of them even deserted, hiding up in the hills, where they hoped to wait it out until the
Bounty
sailed away.

But Bligh would have none of that. He took a party and searched the island, finally rounding up the deserters after three weeks of tromping through the mountains and jungles. But he was a humane man. Instead of flogging them and then hanging them from the yardarms, as was the practice, he just had them flogged.

The
Bounty
finally weighed anchor in the spring of 1789, loaded to the gills with breadfruit plants and a very unhappy crew, miserable that they were being made to leave paradise. Bligh stormed around the deck, swearing and bitching, especially at Christian, all day long, every day, and yet each night Christian was invited to dine with the suddenly civilized captain.

Like Potulniy, who never suspected that Sablin would turn against him, Bligh never had the slightest suspicion that Christian would lead a mutiny. Such an act was utterly unthinkable.

A couple of weeks out from Tahiti, Christian decided to build a raft, jump ship, and somehow try to make it back to Tahiti, where he’d had a warm relationship with the chief’s daughter. He confided in one of the midshipmen, who warned that there were sharks in the water.

“Anyway, if you want to do something like that, why not do away with the old man and take the ship?” the midshipman may have said. “Most of the crew would be with you, sir.”

Christian ran the idea past a few of the crewmen, who agreed. That early morning of April 28, 1789, Christian broke into the arms chest, distributed the weapons to his supporters, and arrested Bligh.

The captain, still in his nightshirt, was brought up on deck, and the assembled crew was asked who wanted to get off the ship with Bligh. Thirty of them raised their hands, and Bligh pleaded that he had a wife and four children and asked for some kind of mercy.

“It’s too late for that,” Christian told the captain. “You have forced us through hell these past weeks, and now there’s no turning back.”

Some of the men who wanted to go with Bligh were forced to stay behind, because there was no room for them aboard the captain’s gig. So Bligh and eighteen of his crew were set adrift with enough food and water for only five days.

Sablin knew the story, of course, and the next parts must have given him some pause. Captain Bligh made it back to civilization after a forty-eight-day voyage in which he had to ration the food and battle storms, losing only one man when they tried to come ashore for provisions on an island filled with cannibals.

For that tremendous feat of seamanship Bligh was court-martialed, acquitted, promoted to captain, and given command of HMS
Providence,
plus an escort vessel,
Assistant,
and was sent back to Tahiti for more breadfruit. This time without trouble.

Bligh, on the one hand, wrote a couple of successful books about the
Bounty
mutiny and then was involved in two other mutinies, including one while he was governor of New South Wales in Australia in 1805. Bligh died in 1817, with the rank of Vice-Admiral of the Blue, a well-decorated hero.

The mutineer Christian, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He conned the
Bounty
back to Tahiti, where they picked up the Tahitian women and a few Tahitian men, and eventually they made their way to the remote island of Pitcairn, where he burned the ship to the waterline to prevent anyone from escaping and reporting their whereabouts.

The Polynesian men and the white crew were unhappy almost from the start. And within less than three years five of the original
Bounty
crew, including Fletcher Christian, and all the Polynesian men, were murdered.

Then, one by one, the Tahitian women killed all but two of the original mutineers, leaving only John Adams and Ned Young. Young died of natural causes in 1800.

The officers and midshipmen looking down the barrel of the gun in the midshipmen’s dining hall could not even guess at what prospects Sablin was facing, except that all of them knew that an invisible line had been crossed that would change all of their lives forever.

No matter what choice any of them made.

Even the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice is specific on this point:

Gindin has made his choice and is waiting for the other officers to make theirs—white or black. Some of them seem to have calmed down a little. Maybe they think that this is some sort of a joke after all, or maybe it’s simply that they are whistling as they pass the graveyard, gallows humor. Among the others only Lieutenant Sergey Kuzmin, the sonar systems officer from BCH-3, acts like he’s taking Sablin’s insane proposal seriously. Kuzmin had a bad marriage that will end in a divorce, but it hasn’t soured him on women, and he and Gindin often talked about the day they would settle down with a wife.

Kuzmin is the same height as Sablin, only his hair is blond and he has a tiny mustache. He walks up to the table and faces their
zampolit
eye to eye and drops a black game piece into the basket. Sablin doesn’t have the same reaction he had with Gindin; maybe it’s because he expected Kuzmin to vote against the mutiny or thought that because Gindin was a Jew and hated the system there was more hope.

Kuzmin comes back to his seat, and one by one all the officers cast their votes. Besides Gindin and Kuzmin, those voting against mutiny include Captain Lieutenant Nikolay Proshutinsky, who is commander of BCH-3, Senior Lieutenants Smirnov and Vinogradov, and Warrant Officers Gritsa, Khokhlov, and Zhitenev.

Which leaves Lieutenant Dudnik going along with the mutiny and midshipmen Viktor Borodai, Gomenchuk, and Kalinichev also each dropping a white backgammon piece into the basket.

Everyone has voted now, except for Gindin’s roommate and best friend, Firsov, who slowly gets to his feet and approaches the table where Sablin is standing. Vladimir is clutching a backgammon piece in his right hand so tightly his knuckles have turned white. No one is making any noise now, not because they are concerned about Firsov’s vote but because all of them are finally beginning to realize the enormity of what is happening. Gindin just wants his friend to drop the black piece into the basket and find out what happens next.

Firsov reaches over the basket and drops the game piece. But his body is blocking Gindin from seeing the color—white or black. When Firsov turns around to face the room it is impossible to tell from his expression how he voted, but Gindin is worried because Vladimir is not returning to his seat. He stands at Sablin’s left as if he wants to say something, as if he wants to explain to Gindin what he’s just done.

“This vote shows who is with us and who is against us,” Sablin says. He doesn’t seem as sure of himself as he did just two minutes ago. In fact, he seems resigned, which as far as Gindin is concerned is another bad sign. “I am giving you one last chance to change your minds. This is the most important decision of your lives.”

“It’s the most important decision of your life, Captain,” Gindin says from where he’s gone back to his seat at one of the tables. “You’ll kill us all if you go though with a mutiny. You should know this.”

“I’m doing this not to kill you, but to save your lives!” Sablin cries passionately. “You must be able to see this. Our government must be
thrown out before it’s too late for all of us. We need another revolution, the time is now, and this ship will be the spark that begins it.”

Gindin is at a loss for words, finally. Maybe this is a test after all.

At length Sablin nods. He understands the situation, probably better than anyone else in the room, although his idealism will probably be his undoing. “I will ask those officers who voted against me not to stand in our way.”

No one moves a muscle; no one says a word.

He nods again. “Very well. I would like everyone who voted against us to leave the room.”

Still no one makes a move. “We were afraid of our own shadows,” Gindin recalls. And he wanted to find out how Firsov had voted.

Finally someone stands up, Gindin can’t remember who, but then he is on his feet with the others, and they shuffle out from behind the tables and timidly approach the door they came through. “We didn’t know where we were supposed to go,” Gindin says. “Certainly not to our duty stations. Maybe back to our quarters, or perhaps up on deck where we could have a smoke and talk about what was happening.” Sablin said they would not be leaving Riga until morning, so there was still time to do something. What that might be no one had a clue, but at least they had overnight to figure something out.

But Firsov is not joining the officers leaving the midshipmen’s dining hall. His backgammon piece was white. He has voted to go with Sablin. Firsov has voted to mutiny.

“I could not believe my eyes,” Gindin says of that moment. “It felt as if a speeding train had just run through my head.” Thoughts and emotions tumble end over end in his gut. A dozen questions he hasn’t even been able to form yet are seething to the surface from some cauldron deep within his Russian soul. He feels confused, betrayed, deceived, more frightened than he’s ever been to this point in his life. Why had Vladimir chosen to side with Sablin? It made no sense. Was Vladimir completely out of his mind? Was he flustered? “Maybe he was trying to save his own life,” Gindin muses.