review of
A. Bertram Chandler's The Big Black Mark
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 18, 2016


"DEDICATION: To William Bligh" (p 4). This is the 2nd bk by Chandler that's dedicated to Bligh, the 1st was The Anarch Lords in my review of wch ( “Taking the “Lords”.. ..out of Anarchy”: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/442383-taking-the-lords ) I wrote:

"The "DEDICATION":

""For Vice-Admiral William Bligh R.N., one-time commanding officer of the H.M.S. Bounty, one-time Governor of New South Wales, with belated apologies for the participation of an ancestral Grimes in the Rum Rebellion of 1808 A.D." - p 4

"Right off the Batman (subverted sports metaphor) Chandler has me wondering what he's up to & whether he's being ironic again.

""The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the south Pacific on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain Lieutenant William Bligh and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Bligh meanwhile completed a voyage of more than 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) in the launch to reach safety, and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice.

""Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. A five-month layover in Tahiti, during which many of the men lived ashore and formed relationships with native Polynesians, proved harmful to discipline. Relations between Bligh and his crew deteriorated after he began handing out increasingly harsh punishments, criticism and abuse, Christian being a particular target. After three weeks back at sea, Christian and others forced Bligh from the ship. Twenty-five men remained on board afterwards, including loyalists held against their will and others for whom there was no room in the launch.

""Bligh reached England in April 1790, whereupon the Admiralty despatched HMS Pandora to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured in Tahiti and imprisoned on board Pandora, which then searched without success for Christian's party that had hidden on Pitcairn Island. After turning back toward England, Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, with the loss of 31 crew and 4 prisoners from Bounty. The 10 surviving detainees reached England in June 1792 and were court martialled; 4 were acquitted, 3 were pardoned, and 3 were hanged.

""Christian's group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time only one mutineer, John Adams, remained alive. Almost all his fellow mutineers, including Christian, had been killed, either by each other or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams; descendants of the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts live on Pitcairn into the 21st century. The generally accepted view of Bligh as an overbearing monster and Christian as a tragic victim of circumstances, as depicted in well-known film accounts, has been challenged by late 20th- and 21st-century historians from whom a more sympathetic picture of Bligh has emerged." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty

"Since I'd only been ever-so-slightly acquainted w/ the history of this mutiny from the 1935 &/or 1962 movies, both of wch I think were sympathetic to the mutineers, I suspected Chandler of pulling some tongue-in-cheek. As it is, he's apparently in the crew of "late 20th- and 21st-century historians from whom a more sympathetic picture of Bligh has emerged." I wasn't expecting that so it piqued my interest.

"More from Chandler on Bligh:

""In long ago Australia, however, there had been three classes of colonist—the wealthy squatters, the small farmers and the laborers who, in the very early days, had been convicts. More than one governor had sided with the little men against the big landowners. Some of them had been socially ostracized by the self-made aristocracy. One of them, the immensely capable but occasionally tactless Bligh, had been deposed by his own garrison, the New South Wales Corps, the officers of which were already squatters or in the process of becoming such." - p 121

""He recalled having read somewhere that Bligh—the much and unjustly maligned Bligh—had been, by the standards of his time, an exceptionally humane captain. He had put his crews on three watches, four hours on and eight hours off." - p 172

"""But that wouldn't be the same, Agatha. Look at what happened in New South Wales. Governor Bligh was deposed—and then what could he do? He got no support from his Lieutenant Governor in Tasmania. He returned to England and was, to all intents and purposes, swept under the mat. Oh, Major Johnston was, eventually, brought to trial but received little more than a rap over the knuckles—and that after leading an armed mutiny!["]" - p 181

"HHmm.. That's quite a different story from the one presented in the films."

The Big Black Mark is about a mutiny against Chandler's ongoing hero Grimes.

"Grimes could not help overhearing snatches of conversation. The old bastard is putting us all up Shit Creek without a paddle. And, He's always been fantastically lucky, but he's bound to come to a real gutser one day. I only hope that I'm not around when he does! And, He mus think that he's a reincarnation of Nelson—turning a blind eye to his orders! With the reply, A reincarnation of Bligh, you mean!" - p 73

""I still don't believe that dingo of yours had a racial memory," said Grimes.

""Suit yourself, Captain. Suit yourself. But he has. An' he has a soft spot for ye, believe it or not, even though he thinks o' ye as a latter-day Bligh. Even—or because. He remembers that it was Bligh who stood up for the convicts against the sodgers when he was the governor o' New Outh Wales. After all, that was what the Rum Rebellion was all about."" - p 120

""Mutiny?" asked Grimes quietly.

""Yes. Mutiny. We owe the Survey Service nothing. From now on we're looking after ourselves."" - p 169

""But it's good advice. I tell you John, that you'll be lucky to keep your rank after the court-martial. Ot your commission even."

""Bligh kept his," said Grimes. "And then he rose to admiral's rank."

""Bligh? Who was he? I can't remember any Admiral Bligh in the Survey Services."" - p 189

& why was there a mutiny? B/c Grimes has been put in charge of a spaceship populated by malcontents, a spaceship no-one else wd be willing to be in charge of if they cd avoid it.

"Lieutenant Commander Brabham was the first lieutenant. He was some 10 years older than Grimes, but he would never get past his present rank. He had been guilty of quite a few Survey Service crimes. (Grimes, too, had often been so guilty—but Grimes's luck was notorious.) He was reputed to carry an outsize chip on his shoulder. Grimes had never been shipmates with him, but he had heard about him." - p 8

Grimes grunts. As a writerly thing, I like this.

""Those are your officers, Commander," said the admiral.

""Mphm," grunted Grimes. He added hastily, "Sir."

"The admiral's thick, white eyebrows lifted over his steely blue eyes. He frowned heavily, and Grimes's prominent ears flushed.

""Don't grunt at me, young man. We may be the policemen of the galaxy, but we aren't pigs. Hrrmph.["]" - p 9

The ongoing psionic-communcations-officer-w/-dog's-brain-amplifier is in Chandler's bks again & again & this is no exception but Chandler ups the ante by having the telepath accidentally kill the dog's brain:

"["]So ivery night I'd pour a drop, just a drop, mind ye, just a drop o' the precious whiskey into Terrence's tank . . . he liked it, as God's me guide. He loved it, an' he wanted it. An' wouldn't ye want it if the sweet brain of ye was bare an' naked in a goldfish bowl, a-floatin' in weak beef tea?"

""Mphm."

""An one cursed night me hand shook, an' I give him half the bottle. But he went happy, a-dreamin' o' green fields an' soft green hills an' a blue sky with little, white fleecy clouds like the ewe lambs o' God himself. . . . I only hope that I go as happy when me time comes."" - p 20

There're irish accents galore in The Big Black Mark. Grimes finds a planet populated by a lost colony of humans. As his spaceship lands, it's greeted on the radio by the Mayor of the nearby town.

"A familiar voice came from the speaker of the control room transceiver. "That's a noisy bitch yer've got there, Skip. Sounds like umpteen tons of old tin cans fallin' downstairs. Just as well yer didn't come in at sparrer fart."" - p 137

Chandler manages to have the lost colony be a commentary on the formal vs the informal.

"When the instructions were over the mayor said, "Natterin' to you on the radio, Skip, I never dreamed that you were such a stuffed shirt. All o' yer are stuffed shirts. Looks like Earth ain't changed since out ancestors had the sense to get the hell out."

""And this, I suppose," said Grimes, "is one of those worlds like Liberty Hall, where you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard."

""You said it, Skip, you said it!" exclaimed Mavis, bursting into delighted laughter." - p 142

"Vinegar Nell, who was kept busy refilling glasses and passing around dishes of savories. She, alone of all those present, seemed not to approve of the informality, the use of given names rather than titles and surnames. There was Jock, the man in the khaki shorts-and-shirt uniform who had assisted the mayor from the coach and who was City Constable. There was Pete, with a floral shirt over the inevitable shorts and sandals, who was president of the Air Pilot's Guild. There was Jimmy , similarly attired, who was master of the Seamen's Guild." - p 143

Grimes even unwittingly gets high.

"He accepted the slim, brown cylinder from the doctor, nonetheless, and a light from the attentive Sally.

"Not bad, he thought, inhaling deeply. Not bad. Must be a local tobacco.

"He turned to Mavis and said, "You certainly do yourselves well on this world, darling." She seemed to have changed, to have become much younger—and no less attractive. It must, he thought, be the effect of the firelight. And how had he ever thought of her abundant hair as silver? It was platinum-blond." - pp 150-151

""What I'm getting at is this. What is your opinion of it all as a physician?"

""I'd say, Captain, that we were all under the influence of a combined relaxant and aphrodisiac."" - p 155

Chandler's bks are full of strife but, thankfully, they're full of egalitarianism too.

"Botany Bay was a good world, but speedily Grimes came to the conclusion that the sooner Discovery lifted off from its surface and headed for Lindisfarne Base the better. She had never been and never would be a taut ship—and, in any case, Grimes hated that expression—but now standards of efficiency and discipline were falling to a deplorably low level. Rank meant nothing to the people of Botany Bay. In their own ships—air and surface—the captain was, of course, still the captain, but every crew member was entitled to officer status, an inevitable consequence of automation. Their attitudes were rubbing off on the ratings, petty officers, and junior officers of the spaceship." - p 158

Even the resident homicidal maniac is positively affected.

"The Mad Major had been very well behaved on Botany Bay. People like him should smoke those cigars all the time. Make love not war." - p 162

In short, this lost colony is a product of the anti-authoritarianism of their Australian ancestors.

""You must remember," Grimes told him, "that these Lost Colonists are descended from other colonists, and that those other colonists have always distrusted brassbound authority, and often with good reason. Who else would make a folk hero out of a bushranger like Ned Kelly?"

""You've Australian blood yourself, Grimes, haven't you? That accounts for your own attitude toward authority. My authority, specifically."" - p 218

I've been trying to read these inter-related bks in order but I've been acquiring them out-of-order so the orderly reading hasn't been happening. This one apparently precedes The Rim of Space (my review's here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1658671846 ) wch I read earlier b/c by then Grimes had resigned.

""Grimes, you'll pay for this. This is a big black mark in your Service record that'll never be erased!"

"This was so, Grimes knew. It would be extremely unwise for him to return to Lindisfarne to face court-martial. He would resign, here and now, by Carlottigram. After that? The Imperial Navy, if they'd have him? With his record, probably not.

"The Rim Worlds? Rim Runners would take anybody, as long as he had some qualifications and rigor mortis hadn't set in." - p 224

I've been giving most of these Chandler bks 3 star ratings wch isn't bad but also isn't super-enthusiastic. Don't misunderstand, I've been enjoying these very much, I'm just not finding them the greatest literature in the world. ( )

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/0879977264/0879977264.htm