The Editor of this little volume (for he presumes not to write Author ) has been induced to bring into one connected view what has hitherto appeared only as detached fragments (and some of these not generally accessible)—the historical narrative of an event which deeply interested the public at the time of its occurrence, and from which the naval service in particular, in all its ranks, may still draw instructive and useful lessons. The story in itself is replete with interest. We are taught by

OTAHEITE The gentle island, and the genial soil, The friendly hearts, the feasts without a toil, The courteous manners but from nature caught, The wealth unhoarded, and the love unbought, The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields The unreap'd harvest of unfurrow'd fields, And bakes its unadulterated loaves Without a furnace in unpurchased groves, And flings off famine from its fertile breast, A priceless market for the gathering guest;— These, etc.— BYRON. The reign of George III wi

THE BREAD-FRUIT —The happy shores without a law, Where all partake the earth without dispute, And bread itself is gather'd as a fruit; Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams:— The goldless age, where gold disturbs no dreams, Inhabits or inhabited the shore, Till Europe taught them better than before, Bestow'd her customs, and amended theirs, But left her vices also to their heirs. BYRON. In the year 1787, being seventeen years after Cook's return from his first voyage, the merchan

THE MUTINY That,—Captain Bligh,—that is the thing;—I am in hell!—I am in hell!—FLETCHER CHRISTIAN. —Horror and doubt distract His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir The hell within him; for within him hell He brings, and round about him, nor from hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place; now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd, wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. 'In the mornin

THE OPEN-BOAT NAVIGATION The boat is lower'd with all the haste of hate, With its slight plank between thee and thy fate; Her only cargo such a scant supply As promises the death their hands deny; And just enough of water and of bread To keep, some days, the dying from the dead: Some cordage, canvas, sails, and lines, and twine. But treasures all to hermits of the brine, Were added after, to the earnest prayer Of those who saw no hope save sea and air; And last, that trembling vassal of the Pole

THE 'PANDORA' —O! I have suffer'd With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her, Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls! they perish'd Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and The freighting souls within her. The tide of public applause set as strongly in favour of Bligh, on account of his sufferings and the successful issue o

THE COURT-MARTIAL If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make, or endeavour to make, any mutinous assembly, upon any pretence whatsoever, every person offending herein, and being convicted thereof, by the sentence of the Court-martial, shall suffer DEATH. Naval Articles of War, Art. 19. The Court assembled to try the prisoners on board his Majesty's ship Duke , on the 12th September, 1792, and continued by adjournment from day to day (Sunday excepted) until the 18th of the same month.

THE KING'S WARRANT Well, believe this— No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace, As mercy does. It was a very common feeling that Heywood and Morrison, the former in particular, had been hardly dealt with by the Court in passing upon them a sentence of death, tempered as it was with the recommendation to the king's mercy. It should, however, have been recollected, t

THE LAST OF THE MUTINEERS Who by repentance is not satisfied, Is nor of heaven nor earth; for these are pleased; By penitence th' Eternal's wrath's appeased. Twenty years had passed away, and the Bounty , and Fletcher Christian, and the piratical crew that he had carried off with him in that ship, had long ceased to occupy a thought in the public mind. Throughout the whole of that eventful period, the attention of all Europe had been absorbed in the contemplation of 'enterprises of great pith an

Many useful and salutary lessons of conduct may be drawn from this eventful history, more especially by officers of the navy, both old and young, as well as by those subordinate to them. In the first place, it most strongly points out the dreadful consequences that are almost certain to ensue from a state of insubordination and mutiny on board a ship of war; and the equally certain fate that, at one time or other, awaits all those who have the misfortune to be concerned in a transaction of this

In reference to the subject of extraordinary passages made in open boats on the wide ocean, and the note thereon at page 127, the following may be added as another instance, the most painfully interesting, and the most calamitous, perhaps, ever recorded. It was related to Mr. Bennet, a gentleman deputed by the Missionary Society of London, together with the Rev. Daniel Tyerman, to visit their several stations in the South Sea Islands, by Captain George Pollard, the unfortunate sufferer, whom the