BLIGH: RUM REBELLION

General Court-Martial, held at Chelsea, for the trial of Lieutenant Col. Johnston...

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London, 1811. Foolscap broadside (verso with docket title); originally folded but remaining unbound, with deckle edges; in very good condition, in a folding case. One of the rarest and most significant of all pieces associated with William Bligh.

Known today in just a handful of copies, this single-leaf broadside prints the verdict and sentence of the court-martial of Johnston for deposing Bligh as governor of New South Wales. A "General Order" publishing the findings of the court was published by H.M. Stationery Office for official distribution (known today from the Mitchell Library copy only), but some days after the conclusion of the trial Bligh was shocked to find in a London newspaper a fraudulent announcement of a verdict in Johnston's favour. He quickly had this version privately printed, for distribution to friends and to the press, so as to scotch any harmful rumours.

Bligh had been appointed governor of New South Wales specifically to resolve the long-standing British dissatisfaction with the administration of New South Wales. Indeed, from the moment he took office at the end of 1806, Bligh set about breaking the political and monopolistic stranglehold of the corrupt Rum Corps officers. His main opponent was the discordant and corrupt ex-soldier, John Macarthur. When Macarthur was charged with a breach of Port Regulations in January 1808, he deliberately raised the stakes and had six of his Rum Corps cronies, sitting illegally as a court, grant him bail. When Bligh refused to recognise this improperly constituted "court", the weak and vacillating commander of the New South Wales Corps, George Johnston, was persuaded to arrest Bligh and take command of the settlement to avoid the "insurrection and massacre" that Macarthur claimed were imminent if the disaffected populace - in other words, Macarthur and friends - should rise against Bligh's "tyranny". For a full year Bligh remained in the colony, powerless until the new governor, Lachlan Macquarie, arrived to reinstate and relieve him. When finally the leaders of this extraordinary coup were brought to trial only Johnston was court-martialled while the other rebels escaped criminal proceedings on a legal technicality.

Ferguson was initially unaware of this broadside; several years into his Bibliography he was able to record the then unique Mackaness copy at the end of his fourth volume - and that copy is still the only one recorded in the 1986 Ferguson Addenda (it was sold in 1968 from the second Mackaness catalogue for A$1250, three times the price of Bligh's Voyage in the same catalogue). In recent times the Davidson copy has also appeared for sale.
Not in Spence; Wantrup, 33b and, pp. 99-101.

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