Note 107 — Chapter IX

A midshipman on board the Bounty, Peter Heywood, who really took no part in the mutiny other than not offering to accompany Captain Bligh, and who surrendered himself to the Pandora by swimming off to that ship when she arrived at Tahiti, was afterwards tried for his life in London under very affecting circumstances. He might quite easily have been sentenced to death but for the unflagging efforts of his sister Nessy, a young girl with some gifts as a poetess, who resided in the Isle of Man. The journey of Nessy Heywood to London, the way in which she petitioned and interviewed ministers and secretaries of state, and ultimately so worked on the feelings of the great people in the capital, that although her brother was convicted he was afterwards pardoned and restored to the naval service, is as much worthy to be made the subject of an historical novel as the conduct of Jeanie Deans in the Heart of Midlothian. Unhappily Nessy wore herself out in this struggle, and a few months after her brother's restoration to liberty died of consumption. Peter Heywood afterwards distinguished himself in the naval wars with France, became a post-captain, and died in 1831.