BLIGH William, Admiral
£5,288
Auction: 1 February 2005 at 11:00 GMT
Description
A narrative of the mutiny, on board His Majesty's ship Bounty; and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew, in the ship's boat, from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies ... 1st edition, engraved fldg. frontis., pp. [iv], 88, with 3 engraved charts of which 2 are fldg., 19th century half calf, marbled boards, wear to head and tail, corners rubbed, endpapers, the first fldg. plate and title a little spotted, some spotting and offsetting in conjunction with the charts, otherwise a good copy with wide margins (30.5 x 24 cms), 4to., London: George Nicol, 1790
Note: Ferguson 71
The infamous voyage of the Bounty, which was an expedition to transplant breadfruits from Tahiti to the West Indies, concluded with Fletcher Christian's mutiny on 28 April 1789 with Bligh and eighteen men being cast adrift in the Bounty's launch (illustrated as the fldg. frontis.) in the uncharted seas of the South Pacific. The open launch made a remarkable voyage over 3618 nautical miles from the Friendly Isles to Timor, with only one loss of life.
The mutineers returned to Tahiti where some of them were subsequently captured. A party of them, however, migrated to the Pitcairn Islands and founded a small colony which was not discovered until 1808. There was then only one survivor of the original mutiny and he lived on until 1829.
This publication predates Bligh's full account of the voyage by two years. Bligh was anxious to have an account of the mutiny itself available to safeguard his own reputation and in order to present copies to the Lords of the Admiralty before the court-martial of the mutineers, to absolve himself from blame.