The Bligh Notebook: Facsimile and Transcription (NLA Limited Edition)

The first publication of Blighs own notebook from the launch, issued by the National Library of Australia as a facsimile with a transcription.

On 28 April 1789 Fletcher Christian and his followers seized HMS Bounty off Tofua and set Bligh and eighteen men adrift in the ships launch. In this small notebook Bligh recorded the voyage across the Pacific to Timor, which ended on 14 June 1789. He kept navigational notes and calculations, and he drew eight rough sketch charts of the boats track through the Barrier Reef and along the Australian coast to Torres Strait, together with an Eye sketch of part of New Holland. He also wrote a draft list of the mutineers headed by Fletcher Christian, with a description of each man. The notebook is the manuscript from which Bligh wrote all his later narratives. It belonged to Mr Hayward, one of the men in the launch with him, and is now held by the National Library of Australia (MS 5393). The National Library published it in 1986 in facsimile, with a transcription edited by John Bach. An Allen & Unwin trade edition followed in 1987.

Limited deluxe edition, limited to 500 bound copies, this copy being number 321.Two volumes with loose leaves, housed in a cloth Solander case. The transcription volume is quarto, in quarter leather and cloth. The facsimile of the notebook is a leatherbound duodecimo, issued as its own volume. Three loose facsimile leaves accompany it. The Solander case is quarto. Some mild shelf marks to the case. Spots of foxing along the edges of the transcription volume, the contents otherwise clean and bright. The facsimile notebook and the loose leaves are fine.

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Catalogue Number: HH000904