He had a pair of ship's pistols loaded, and ammunition in his cabin--a firm resolution might have made a good use of them.

After he had sent twice or thrice to Christian to be allowed to come on deck, he was at last permitted, and his question then was, "Will you let me remain in the ship ?"--"No." "Have _you_ any objection, Captain Bligh ?" I whispered to him to knock him down--Martin is good (this is the man who gave the shaddock), for this was just before Martin was removed from me.
Christian, however, pulled me back, and sent away the master, with orders to go again to his cabin, and I saw no more of him, until he was put into the boat.

He afterwards told me that he could find nobody to act with him; that by staying in the ship he hoped to have retaken her, and that, as to the pistols, he was so flurried and surprised, that he did not recollect he had them.' This master tells a very different story respecting the pistols, in his evidence before the court-martial.
Whatever, therefore, on the whole, may have been the conduct of Bligh towards his officers, that of some of the latter appears to have been on several occasions provoking enough, and well calculated to stir up the irascible temper of a man, active and zealous in the extreme, as Bligh always was, in the execution of his duty.

Some excuse may be found for hasty expressions uttered in a moment of irritation, when passion gets the better of reason; but no excuse can be found for one, who deeply and unfeelingly, without provocation, and in cold blood, inflicts a wound on the heart of a widowed mother, already torn with anguish and tortured with suspense for a beloved son, whose life was in imminent jeopardy: such a man was William Bligh.

This charge is not loosely asserted; it is founded on documentary evidence under his own hand.