Hordern House Rare Books
Captain William Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty: The Robert and Mary Anne Parks Collection
Captain William Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty is a companion volume to Captain James Cook, the Greatest Discoverer released by Hordern House in 2008. Sumptuously illustrated in colour and black & white, this catalogue contains 133 rare books, manuscripts, paintings and prints fully described and individually priced. Six months in the making, this work will become a reference on Captain Bligh and a landmark of its kind. Chiefly from the collection of Bob and Mary Anne Parks, the catalogue is comprehensive and extensive. Highlights include; original and evocative manuscript material by Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian: the two magnificent aquatints of Bligh, his officers and crew being cast adrift from HMS Bounty and Transplanting the Bread Fruit trees from Otahite: the legendary rarity, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court Martial held at Portsmouth, 1792: accounts of the official narrative of the voyage and the subsequent mutiny, to name just a few. Quarto; bound in cloth with colour dust jacket, with bibliography of principal reference and an index.
Quarto, 124 pages, bound in cloth with colour dustjacket. 133 items fully described and illustrated in colour throughout, with bibliography of principal references and an index.
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Australian: $45 (Approx. US $41, Euro €30)
ISBN 9781875567560
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Michael Stillman's Review for Americana Exchange: Hordern House of Australia has issued a new catalogue, though this spectacular presentation has more the appearance of a fine press book than a bookseller's catalogue. Offered are selections from the collection of Robert and Mary Anne Parks of Michigan. Last year, Hordern House offered books from the Parks' collection of the great explorer James Cook. This latest collection is an homage to one of the most controversial men to sail the seas. Some see him as one of the bravest, most skillful navigators ever to captain a ship. Others see him as a tyrant deserving of the mutiny that made his reputation. The title of this catalogue/book is Captain William Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh's first significant role at sea came when he served as Master on the aforementioned Captain Cook's last voyage. From there, he floundered around a bit before being given command of the Bounty in 1787. Its mission was to gather breadfruit trees in Tahiti and transport them to the Caribbean, where it was hoped they would provide a bountiful and inexpensive food source for the slaves. However, a late and difficult start forced him to turn back from an attempt around the horn of South America, and take the long route east. It was an inauspicious start. Bligh was a demanding and verbally unpleasant personality, which angered some of his men, though it appears he was less physically abusive than the typical captain of his day. Nevertheless, after picking up the trees and heading to the Caribbean, a group of his men, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied. They may have preferred the relaxing and pleasant life of Tahiti to the hardships of following Captain Bligh and living at sea. The mutineers seized control of the ship, depositing Bligh and 18 loyal seamen on a 23-foot boat for what must have appeared almost certain death. Instead, Bligh navigated one of the most remarkable voyages in seafaring history, 3,600 miles in the small boat to safety on the Dutch island of Timor. Eventually he made it back home, and a group of the mutineers was captured in Tahiti and returned to England for trial, while the remainder, including Christian, moved on to live out their days (for most, not too many) on Pitcairn Island. Bligh was court-martialed on return, but acquitted. He was then given command of another ship, and this time successfully transported the breadfruit to the Caribbean. Ironically, the slaves refused to eat the stuff, so the mission failed in its purpose. Bligh would command several more vessels, and have a distinguished if not particularly notable career. In 1806, he took to land when appointed Governor of New South Wales, and in another irony, local officials mutinied. Once again, Bligh was exonerated, but with his position lost, he remained in England. He died in 1817. Here are a few of the 133 items pertaining to Bligh offered by Hordern House. Item 7 is the first edition of Bligh's account of his crew's mutiny and his unlikely escape: A Narrative of the Mutiny, on board His Majesty's Ship Bounty... Published in 1790, it retells Bligh's harrowing tale, naturally, from the point of view of the Captain. Priced at AU $24,500 (Australian dollars, or approximately $18,008 in U.S. dollars). Item 12 is the more detailed account of his journey that Bligh published two years later in 1792: A Voyage to the South Sea, undertaken by Command of His Majesty, for the purpose of conveying Bread-fruit Tree to the West Indies, in His Majesty's Ship the Bounty... AU $25,500 (US $18,730). Next we have a couple of documents signed by the two major players in this event while onboard the Bounty. Item 18 is a fragment of a manuscript document signed by Captain Bligh on December 29, 1787. This was only a few days after they had departed, but already bad weather had caused damage to the ship. Repairs had to be undertaken even as the ship made its journey south and west to still more difficult meteorological challenges ahead. Hordern House notes that documents signed by Bligh on the Bounty very rarely come to market. AU $117,500 (US $86,044). Item 59 is a partial document signed by the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian. The document was signed on April 16, 1788, while the Bounty was making its unsuccessful attempt to navigate its way around Cape Horn. The following day, Bligh determined the Horn was impassible and headed east to take the long route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. This document is also signed by John Fryer and William Elphinstone, two crewmen who remained loyal to Bligh and made the 3,600 mile escape with him. Christian's Bounty signatures are noted to be "exceptionally rare." AU $128,500 (US $94,022). The British were determined to bring the Bounty home and try the mutineers, so in 1790 they authorized the mission described by ship's surgeon George Hamilton in A Voyage round the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora, published in 1793. The mission could hardly be called a great success, though 14 of the mutineers were captured (actually, a few were not mutineers, but loyal seamen who had to stay with the Bounty as there was insufficient room on Bligh's long boat). The Pandora discovered the 14 still on Tahiti, but attempts to locate where Christian and the others, along with the Bounty, had gone were unsuccessful. They had run to isolated Pitcairn Island, and sunk the Bounty so it would not be spotted. Pitcairn would not be visited until 1808, by which time Christian and all but one of the mutineers had died, though their wives and children survived. Pandora Captain Edward Edwards had placed the prisoners in a cage, known as "Pandora's Box." After months of unsuccessful searching for the others, Edwards ran his ship onto a reef on the return voyage. As the ship sank, Edwards was content to let the boxed prisoners go down with it, but a mate onboard threw them a key, allowing ten to escape. Eventually, the ten were returned to England for trial, and three were executed, but 50-plus sailors from the Pandora lost their lives on this miserable voyage. Item 41. AU $17,250 (US $12,519). The Book Collector Autumn 2009 BLIGH AND THE MUTINY on the Bounty continue to exercise a fascination for all those interested in the history of the Pacific only equalled by Cook's voyages. It is now the subject of a Hordern House catalogue, drawn as previously in part from the Parks collection. Of fifteen items devoted to Bligh himself there was one great rarity, part of a document signed by Bligh in 1787 as he was about to sail (A$117,500); a fine copy of An Account of the Mutinous Seizure ... 1790 was A$48,500. A coloured print of the famous aquatint of the event by Robert Dodd cost A$55,000. The draft report of Captain Edwards, sent in the Pandora to retrieve the mutineers, was a modest A$88,500, and the Minutes... of the Court-Martial 1794, an astonishing rarity, A$115,000. The fate of Fletcher Christian, not discovered on Pitcairn until 1808, had a lasting appeal; his hand was represented here by a signature on a document recording the loss of a jar of oil, evidence of Bligh's pernickety attention to detail (A$128,500), his ascent to romantic hero by Mitford Christina: the Maid of the South Seas 1811 (A$1100) and Byron The Island, or Christian and his Comrades 1823 (A$625). Bligh's later exploits, the successful voyage transporting the bread-fruit from Otaheite to the West Indies, here depicted in Gosse's fine mezzotint (A$58,000), was followed by his governorship of New South Wales, which led to the 'Rum Rebellion' and the conviction of George Johnston, an event recorded in a rare broadside (A$55,000). Bligh's midshipman, Matthew Flinders, whose circumnavigation of the fifth continent in 1801-3 revealed the entire coastline of Australia, concludes the story with A Voyage to Terra Australis 1814, illustrated by William Westall (A$62,000). The minor actors in the drama were all present in this remarkable account of the most famous event in Australian history.