Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court-Martial

£40,000 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books · No longer available

superb copy, stitched as issued The sensational trial of the Bounty mutineers. A legendary Pacific rarity. In 1789, a gang of disgruntled sailors commandeered the ninety-foot Bounty, rebelling against their captain, William Bligh, following a research voyage to Tahiti to collect plants. Led by ship's mate Christian Fletcher, the mutineers cast Bligh and nineteen of his loyal sailors adrift in a rowing boat before escaping to Pitcairn Island where they planned to settle. They set fire to the Bounty to cover their tracks, but their crimes caught up with them two years later when, after news of the mutiny reached Britain, a ship was dispatched to arrest the mutineers. After rounding up fourteen out of twenty-three of them, they were imprisoned in a makeshift cell on the deck of HMS Pandora. Four died along with thirty-one crewmen when the ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, but the remaining ten prisoners were returned to Britain to face court martial in Portsmouth. This sensational trial led to three pamphlets: the first by Barney, with an appendix by Fletcher Christian's brother, Edward, in which Christian seeks to justify the mutiny; the second by Bligh in which he defends himself; and the third by Christian, replying to Bligh's defence. Bligh had already returned to England in 1790, not as the man who had lost his ship to mutineers, but as the courageous hero who had sailed his men to safety in an open boat over 3,600 miles with scant provisions and navigational equi

• Binding: Hardcover

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