Many people in the world know about the failure of William Bligh's Bounty voyage. Relatively few know about his second expedition that successfully transported breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies and mapped the treacherous Torres Straits. Without Bligh's knowledge, George Tobin, a young lieutenant on that successful voyage, made extensive notes and did a series of ink and watercolor sketches. After Tobin returned home in 1793, he wrote a memoir based on those notes that he hoped to publish and illustrate with his sketches. Tobin gives a fair appraisal of Bligh and a sympathetic view of Tahitian culture. Now, for the first time, more than a century and a half after the author's death, that witty and insightful memoir, with those well observed sketches, is now in print.
