George Hamilton
A Voyage round the world in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora

Facsimile of the rare original edition of 1793; introductory essay by Peter Gesner, Curator of Marine Archaeology at the Queensland Museum.

Small octavo (220 x 140 mm), 204 pages, with five illustrations and a frontispiece map, printed on Raleigh Tomohawk Text; hand bound by Newbold & Collins in quarter cherry Scottish calf.

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About the Book

Edited by Hordern House for the Australian National Maritime Museum " The book that led archaeologists to the Pandora wreck " First faithful reproduction of the book since 1793 " New examination of the infamous Bligh mutiny and subsequent events " Essay by Peter Gesner of the Queensland Museum, the leading expert on the Pandora " Edition strictly limited to 900 copies " Fourth publication in the award-winning Australian Maritime Series " The deluxe issue is limited to 50 copies " Each copy is numbered and signed by Peter Gesner " Exquisitely hand bound in full cherry Scottish calf " Presented in a custom made solander case bound in marine blue Oxford Library Buckram " Fourth publication in the award-winning Australian Maritime Series " A$550 (Australian $) Convert price ISBN 1 875567 23 2 A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora is one of the rarest and least known eighteenth-century publications relating to Bligh's infamous mutiny on the Bounty. Now for the first time since 1793, this book has been faithfully reproduced complete with the frontispiece portrait of Hamilton, and enriched by modern scholarship, as part of the Australian Maritime Series. The story of the Pandora - the ship which was sent to recover the Bounty and to bring the mutineers to justice - is almost unknown to the modern public. Yet the story rivals even that of Bligh's mutiny on the Bounty for drama and tragedy. George Hamilton, with a light and humorous touch, not only brought to life conditions on board an eighteenth-century ship, he provided the vital clue that led modern-day archaeologists to the location of the deeply submerged wreck. On page 108 of the book Hamilton recorded - "A sandy key, four miles off, and about thirty paces long, afforded us a resting place" - and these words led a team of archaeologists in 1977 to select several coral outcrops as a primary search area within the Great Barrier Reef opening known as Pandora Entrance. The significance of this detail ensures that Hamilton's Account will forever play a crucial role in one of the most important marine archaeological sites in the southern hemisphere. As Peter Gesner said, "There, below the reef, within touch, was an almost intact time capsule of the eighteenth century. I dived inside and it was a little like entering a room that had been undisturbed for 200 years". The amazing story of surgeon George Hamilton and the Pandora voyage is thoroughly covered in Peter Gesner's essay which accompanies this facsimile of Hamilton's narrative. THE PANDORA AND THE BLIGH SAGA The mutiny on the Bounty of 1789 is one of the most famous incidents of South Seas exploration. By contrast, the story of the Pandora has languished in obscurity. After Bligh returned to England as a national hero - having survived both the mutiny, and the courageous 3,600 mile voyage in the Bounty launch - the Admiralty despatched HMS Pandora with orders to capture the mutineers and, failing that, destroy the Bounty and the crew led by Fletcher Christian. The Pandora sailed the South Seas for over three months, but met its end when it struck coral and sank off the coast of north Queensland on the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The survivors - 89 of the crew and 10 mutineers - then navigated in open boats for 1100 miles to the Dutch East India Company settlement at Coupang, present-day Timor. Captain Edwards returned to England with the surviving ten Bounty crew as prisoners. The evidence given by these men of the events that led to the mutiny on board HMS Bounty raised serious questions about Bligh's hero status and his conduct as a naval commander. This controversy again fuelled public interest in the South Pacific and the Bounty saga in particular, but only one book emerged from the resultant flurry of publishing activity, A Voyage Round the World in H.M. Frigate Pandora, by the Pandora's surgeon, George Hamilton. First published in Berwick in 1793, it is now available in the Australian Maritime Series.

About the Author

George Hamilton was the surgeon on the Pandora. His naval career is recorded from 1777 in HMS Tortoise and during the American War of Independence he served on several ships in North America and the West Indies. On 13 August 1790 he reported on board the Pandora for service in the South Seas.Although little is known about the circumstances leading to the publication of Hamilton's journal we know that it was an edition which only enjoyed limited circulation (hence its rarity today). Although Admiralty records and contemporary newspaper accounts provided information of the Pandora's voyage, it is this, the published journal of surgeon George Hamilton, that gives the most complete, and certainly the most readable version of events. The author of the introductory essay, Peter Gesner, is the Curator of Marine Archaeology at the Queensland Museum. Currently leading the Pandora excavations, he is widely considered the leading expert on the Pandora voyage and shipwreck. Since the wreck was rediscovered in 1977 he has published several works on the subject. The Pandora is one of the most important shipwrecks in Australian waters. The recovered artefacts from the Pandora wreck will be displayed at the new Museum of Tropical Queensland, due to open in Townsville in 2000. The co-ordination of this excavation project, considered to be one of the largest maritime archaeological projects currently being undertaken in the world, will also be handled from Townsville, making the new Museum a major centre of marine archaeology.The Australian National Maritime Museum is indebted to Peter for his invaluable contribution to this significant publication.

Reviews

Review 1. Sydney Morning Herald
8 October 1998 Review by Tony Stephens
Reprinted by kind permission of the Sydney Morning Herald. PANDORA TAKES NEW LEAF OUT OF OLD BOOK Fresh light will be shed on the forever fascinating story of captain Bligh and the Bounty mutiny with the launching tonight of a book about the pursuit of the Bounty mutineers. Most Australians know something of Bligh, whether through some of the dozen books on the subject or any of the movie portrayals by Charles Lauhton, Trevor Howard, Anthony Hopkins and other. They know that Bligh became a hero after surviving the mutiny, being cast adrift in the Bounty launch and left to travel 5,800 km to safety. They know he was also a bit of a bastard. Debate in recent years has focused on how much of a bastard Bligh was, with the pendulum swinging back towards the heroic side of his character and deeds. Few people know anything, however, of the Pandora, His majesty's frigate dispatched in pursuit of the mutineers. Yet the story of the Pandora almost rivals that of the Bounty for the drama and tragedy. It also contains some interesting sex. George Hamilton, the Pandora's surgeon, wrote an account in 1793 but few copies were published and they are now very rare. Hamilton's words were used to discover, in 1977 the well-preserved wreck of the Pandora, which foundered on the Great Barrier Reef near the tip of Cape York in 1791. Now, the Australian National Maritime Museum and Hordern House have published a facsimile edition of Hamilton's A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora. The book is launched tonight by the British High Commissioner, Alex Allan, who writes in the foreword that the wreck of the Pandora is one of the most important marine archaeological sites in the Southern Hemisphere and that "the Pandora will provide new insights into 18th-century life and the role and interests of those who sailed in the ship". Allan says of the wrecking and the survival of crew and mutineers in their voyage to Timor: "It is an epic story of survival". Peter Gesner, curator of marine archaeology at Queensland Museum, who has written an introduction to Hamilton's book and is leading the Pandora excavation team, says the wreck is like an almost-intact time capsule of the 18th century. "I dived inside and it was a little like entering a room that had been undisturbed for 200 years." Artefacts recovered from the Pandora will be displayed at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, which is due to open in Townsville in 2000. Gesner believes the Pandora story has been cast into obscurity for a couple of odd reasons: the wish among historians to concentrate on the more illustrious and successful episodes of the British Pacific exploration and official encouragement to hide the loss of a king's ship. The Bounty was never recovered, having been scuttled and burnt by the mutineers including Fletcher Christian. Only three of the crew were eventually hanged, nine escaped entirely ending up on Pitcairn Island, where their descendant still live. Yet the accounts of 10 Bounty crew, eventually returned to England as prisoners of the Pandora's captain, Edward Edwards, cast doubts on Bligh's heroic version of the events and his reputation as a naval commander was tainted by the accusations of several mutineers. Edwards captured 14 mutineers in Tahiti before embarking on a vain search around the Pacific for the others. Thirty-one crew and four mutineers were drowned when the Pandora ran aground in uncharted waters on the Barrier Reef. The survivors- 89 crew and 10 mutineers- reached Timor in open boats, just like Bligh, after a 1 770 km voyage. Gesner expects the Hamilton book will rescue the Pandora's last voyage from historical obscurity. He says Hamilton has made an important contribution to historical inquiry and his narrative has been overtaken by the archaeological search of the site. It has been well preserved because Pandora lies in about 36 metres of water, away from light and covered by sand. Apart from its historic value, Hamilton's book read engagingly. Setting out on the packed ship, Hamilton and the crew felt like weevils who "had to eat a hole in our bread before we had a place to lie down in". He tells how sailor from the Pandora sought to honour a dead Tahitian chief by firing a volley from their muskets over his body, only to set the chief's clothes on fire. He also tells how the hospitality of a Tahitian king demanded that the English visitor, Hamilton himself, should sleep with the king's wife. She had in her youth been beautiful, Hamilton writes," but had seen much service and bore away many honourable scars in the fields of Venus. However, his Majesty's service must be done...". toptop Review 2. The West Australian: Big Weekend
20 February 1999 Review by H.A. Willis
Reprinted by kind permission of the author and publisher
© H.A. Willis - The West Australian. PANDORA'S BOXED SET A voyage Round The World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora The Pandora left England in November 1970. After calling in at Teneriffe and Rio de Janeiro, it rounded Cape Horn in late January and, on the morning of March 23, 1791, dropped anchor in Matavy Bay, Otaheety (Tahiti). Under the command of Capt. Edward Edwards, a hard, determined man, the Pandora had been sent on her long journey for a specific purpose. The fourteen Bounty mutineers found on Tahiti were soon wearing chains, imprisoned in the insanitary 4x5m box Edwards had built on the quarter deck. In mid-May Edwards and the Pandora began a search of the islands to the west of Tahiti. But Fletcher Christian, with eight other mutineers and the Tahitians who accompanied them, had taken the Bounty eastward - leaving their pursuers to brood over their whereabouts for almost two decades. After investigating the islands of Samoa and Tonga, and having lost two search parties and their boats (one lot sailed independently to Timor, a feat equal to Bligh's of 1789), Edwards set a course for Torres Strait. There, on "an exceedingly dark, stormy night" at the end of August, the Pandora struck a coral outcrop. It sank just before dawn, taking to their deaths 31 of the crew and four mutineers, still chained inside the ghastly box. According to the ship surgeon George Hamilton's account, 102 survivors set out in four open boats for Timor, where they arrived two weeks later. Edwards ultimately landed his catch of 10 Bounty mutineers back to England in June 1792. In October of the following year three - including Tom Ellison, an innocent boy - were hanged. A good deal of what we know about the voyage of the Pandora and the adventures of those who sailed in it, derives from Hamilton's brisk account published in 1793. Historians have been fortunate to have had an observer as clear-eyed as Hamilton. He understood and conscientiously described the true and "fatal" nature of the European impact in the South Seas. "Happy would it have been for those people" he wrote, "had they never been visited by Europeans, for, to our shame be it spoken, disease and gunpowder is all the benefit they have received from us, in return for their hospitality and kindness". Hamilton did not need to be a doctor to see "the ravages of the venereal disease", and he noted that consumption (TB) had lately "made great havoc" among the Tahitians , who called it "the English disease". As often as not, the havoc and fatalities were rather more immediate. A man on Tonga (the Friendly Islands!) was so entranced by an Englishmen's handkerchief as to be tempted to bludgeon its owner. Avoiding the islander's club, Lieut. Comer "levelled his piece and shot him dead". Hamilton's descriptions of Polynesian weapons and other artefacts collected by the crew of the Pandora have given archaeologists an unprecedented reference in identifying material recovered from the wreck. In fact, a remark in Hamilton's text provided the vital clue to locating ht e Pandora in 1977. Since 1982 the Queensland Museum has been excavating the remarkably well-preserved vessel and Peter Gesner, the archaeologist leading the project, has written an informative introduction to Hamilton's book. The Pandora will continue to be excavated for several years yet (the project has its own Web site). Among items already recovered is medical equipment that belonged to Hamilton. His watch, too, has been recovered - stopped at twelve minutes past eleven. Beyond the spare details of his naval career we know very little about George Hamilton, surgeon, RN. His writing suggests a well-educated and broad-minded man of droll wit. His portrait, presumably commissioned for his book, reinforces this debonair man-of-the-world impression. With only five Australian libraries holding copies of the 1793 original, this extremely rare book has been unavailable to the public. A 1990 limited edition went some way towards supplying scholars, but it only now, with the release of this superb facsimile (the first), that Hamilton's work is more widely available. This is not a cheap book, in any sense of the word. The cherry Scottish calf quarter binding, the marbled paper boards, the classic Caslon typeface (the "Q" tail has more swash than a buccaneer) and the linen texture of the paper are a bibliophile's delight. And that's only the standard edition. The fully bound deluxe edition, limited to 50 boxed and numbered copies, is one of the choicest items to appear on the fine book market this year. toptop Review 3. Nautical Research Journal
Volume 45, Issue 3, September 2000 Review by Mark Staniforth, Flinders University
Reprinted by kind permission of the Nautical Research Journal. A Voyage Around the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora This facsimile reproduces the 1793 edition of the journal George Hamilton, Pandora's surgeon, kept during a voyage to the South Pacific in 1790-1791 to capture Bounty's mutineers. The original is now an extremely rare and valuable work that has never been reproduced in facsimile until this, the fourth volume in the Australian Maritime series. For anyone seriously interested in Pacific voyages of exploration, this is a welcome arrival and makes one late-eighteenth-century account more widely available than in the past. Peter Gesner, curator of maritime archaeology at the Queensland Museum and director of the archaeological excavations of the Pandora wreck site, introduces Hamilton's journal with a twenty-four-page essay that provides a useful short history of the voyage of Pandora and a brief biography of the surgeon. Not unreasonably, the second half of the essay focuses on what Hamilton's text can tell us about the archaeological assemblage being excavated from the wreck site. It is disappointing that Gesner's essay includes only five illustrations, two of which relate to William Bligh and Bounty, and omits much of the available illustrative material directly related to Pandora, including that held by the Australian National Maritime Museum. Hamilton's original publication was relatively short, containing only five chapters and a total of 165 pages. His account opens by suggesting that the British government's principal purpose for the voyage was "to bring punishment to the mutineers of His Majesty's late ship Bounty". Hamilton then devotes just twenty-four pages to what he saw as the "preliminaries" leading up to Pandora's arrival at Tahiti. The social (and sexual) interactions between the crew and the peoples of the South Pacific occupy most of the next eighty pages or so. Hamilton's comments suggest virtually everyone on board Pandora from the lowest seamen to the officers engaged in sexual encounters with the local women and girls, and Hamilton clearly was no exception. He next briefly describes the loss, at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, of Pandora, thirty-five crew, and four prisoners. After the wreck, 102 crew set sail in a convoy of four small boats to make the 1,100-mile voyage through the Endeavour Straits and the Arafura Sea to Coupang in Dutch Timor. The overcrowded boats, limited food, a water supply of just two small wine glasses per person per day, and the blazing tropical sun made this sixteen day voyage a truly remarkable feat. It is unfortunate that the mutiny aboard Bounty- through the huge literature it has generated, not forgetting four Hollywood movies about the subject-has largely overwhelmed and obscured the importance of Pandora's voyage and loss. Certainly, Hamilton rarely mentions Bounty or even Pandora's ostensible task - the search for the mutineers. Instead, he chooses to concentrate on subjects of far more interest to the late-eighteenth-century reading public: descriptions of exotic places, strange wild-life, and, particularly, "other" peoples and cultures. Hamilton's journal is fascinating reading, which brings into sharp focus the world view, and resulting behaviour, of late-eighteenth-century Englishmen when faced with the realities and temptations of the South Pacific. Hamilton himself comes across as an individual with strong opinions who was very much a man of his times in terms of his attitudes to virtually everyone who was not white, male, and English speaking. This beautifully crafted and hand-bound limited edition is clearly a collector's item that, despite its high cost, can only increase in value over time. Review 4. International Journal of Maritime History
Volume XIII, Number 1 (June 2001) Review by Christon I. Archer, University of Calgary
Reprinted by kind permission of the International Journal of Maritime History. Compared with the adventures of Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty, the voyage of HMS Pandora commanded by Captain Edward Edwards is not well known. Well-armed and equipped for retribution against Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers, Edwards sailed from Portsmouth in November 1790 with orders to track down the Bounty. Arriving at Tahiti in March 1891, Edwards received or captured fourteen of Bounty's men and confined them in a temporary prison cage on Pandora's main deck that the seamen called Pandora's Box. After a fruitless search of the South Pacific for nine mutineers who with some Tahitian women had found refuge at distant Pitcairn Island, Edward set a course for the Torres Strait. Calamity struck when Pandora ran onto the Great Barrier Reef and sank with the loss of thirty-five seamen and four mutineers. The survivors included eighty-nine officers and men from the Pandora and ten of the Bounty prisoners. Following Bligh's recent example, Edwards commanded an arduous voyage of 1770 kilometers in the ship's four boats to the Dutch East Indies post at Coupang on the Island of Timor. George Hamilton, surgeon aboard Pandora, published his account of the voyage in 1793 during a time when there was considerable interest in the trials of the Bounty mutineers. A perceptive observer influenced by contemporary thinking about shipboard health, Hamilton made certain on the outward voyage around Cape Horn that Pandora took on fresh water at Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro and stocked lemons, oranges, pomegranates, bananas, and other fruit. He opposed salt meat, promoted the consumption of balanced diets, and he praised a new experimental ventilation system designed to force fresh air into the lower decks. Hamilton kept a barrel of sauerkraut - described as 'this grand antiscorbutic' - open for the crew, who consumed it as a salad with vinegar. Although this was not the best approach to avoid scurvy, Hamilton also advocated beer brewed aboard from malt and hops, cocoa that he believed kept the men fat and strong, rough ground wheat that served as a nutritious porridge with brown sugar, and soft bread baked from wheat flour. In the introduction, Peter Gesner, an archaeologist, expressed special interest in Native material culture objects recently recovered from the submerged wreck of Pandora. Hamilton's account is a rich source on early contact between Islanders and Europeans. Like some other ships' surgeons, Hamilton had much to say about relationships between native men and women and members of the crew. He observed that the Tahitians suffered from venereal diseases and a consumptive illness they called the 'British disease.' After a short stay at Tahiti, Hamilton noted that the ladies 'had left us many warm tokens of their affection.' To protect women of other islands from venereal diseases contracted by the British seamen at Tahiti, Captain Edwards ordered that none were permitted to go below decks. Nevertheless, such was the desire for broad axes, razors, scissors, or even large nails that mothers prostituted their beautiful daughters. Hamilton described the quarter-deck of the ship as the scene 'of the most indelicate familiarities.' Some of the stories of lustful encounters - including Hamilton's own with an older chief's wife that he reported as duty - might have been added to sell his book. He recorded incidents of violence directed against Native thieves and disputes over sovereignty concerning the ownership of fresh water and grass. Hamilton accorded the imprisoned Bounty mutineers little in the way of sympathy except to note that their Tahitian women, children, and relatives lamented their poor treatment and the fact that they were to be returned to England. Even after over two hundred years, Hamilton's description of the wreck of the Pandora on the Great Barrier Reef is both dramatic and awe-inspiring. Despite precautions to sound a safe passage, the ship struck a submerged reef that ripped open the hull. Edwards freed some of the Bounty prisoners to assist at the pumps and to bale at the hatchways, but a nighttime windstorm drove Pandora over the reef and into the broken surf. With heroic effort the crew attempted to throw the heavy guns overboard and to haul a sail under the mangled bottom to fother the listing ship. A loose cannon crushed one man to death and a spare topmast fell and killed another. Just before daybreak it was obvious that Pandora could not be salvaged. At the last minute as water cascaded into the hull through the open gun ports, Edwards released the remaining mutineers from their prison box and removed their shackles. Pandora heeled over sudeenly, lay on its side, and then sank 'in an instant.' Hamilton described the shout of the crew as they were cast into the water and the pitiful cries of the drowning men who could not be rescued by the ship's boats. The voyage of the four boats to Timor was a spectacular odyssey in the annals of small boat navigation. Hamilton noted that those men who succumbed to temptation and drank salt water or their own urine inevitably perished. Although thirst and hunger were constant companions, the survivors managed to obtain fresh water on the Australian coast. Reaching safety at Timor and visiting the mortifying climate of Batavia - 'this golgotha of Europe' - the survivors and their prisoners returned to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope.