BOUNTY, H.M.S

Statements of the Loss of His Majesty's new ship the Bounty...

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Thomas Tegg, n.d. ? London, 1808. Duodecimo, 28 pp., with a folding aquatint frontispiece showing Bligh being cast adrift by the mutineers (cut close, as often, and with a couple of tears); an excellent copy in quarter morocco. Extremely scarce: a chapbook account of the loss of the Bounty and the adventures of the mutineers. A watermark on the title-page of this copy is clearly marked "1808", providing some crucial- albeit not definitive - dating evidence for the work of the important publisher Thomas Tegg.

Generally speaking, the work happily mixes fact with conjecture, giving the present location of the mutineers as Juan Fernandez Island; perhaps partly based on some of the dottier publications resulting from speculation about the mutineers such as the 1796 Letters from Mr Fletcher Christian which had him holidaying in South America. The frontispiece is approximately based on the famous Dance engraving of Bligh cast adrift.

The main evidence for Ferguson's conjectural date of 1808 is the publication that year of Tegg's Mariner's Marvellous Magazine, a collection of a number of the publisher's chapbooks. Attractively, Ferguson's conjecture is at least partially borne out by the 1808 watermark to the title-page in this copy although, as always, no page in the text has any watermark. The latest date mentioned in the text is 1795, and it seems probable that Tegg had the work in print for (at least) a decade.
Ferguson, 460 (Mitchell and National Library copies only).

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