Rare Book On Tonga Goes For £7
p. 87 · Read in the full issue
A copy of Will Mariner’s An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, was sold at auction in Adelaide, SA, on No vember 24 for only £7. This was probably a record low for this rare book these days.
Mariner’s book, a classic of the early Pacific, was compiled by a London doctor named John Martin, and was first published in London in two volumes in 1817. A second edition came out the following year, and an “im proved” edition appeared in 1827.
The book has not been re
published since.
Will Mariner was a member of the crew of the English privateer Port-au-Prince, which was attacked by natives in Haapai, Tonga, in 1806.
Most of the crew were massacred, but Mariner, who was only 13, was spared. He lived m Tonga for the next four years, and was then rescued by the Captain of an English brig that arrived from New South Wales.
Mariner told his story to Dr.
Martin when he got back to London.
The copy of his book auctioned in Adelaide was the 1818 edition.
Only two people made bids for it, and it was knocked down to a
local bookseller who specialises in Australiana and Pacific litera ture.
The book had been part of a large library belonging to the late Dr. E. Angas Johnson, a South Australian medical man, who died several years ago. Other books from his library relating to the Pacific aroused a more lively interest among bidders.
A copy of William Dampier's Voyages (published in London in three volumes between 1697 and 1703) fetched £27/10/-. And The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (London, 1790) went for £36. (This book contains the journals of Lieuts. Shortland, Watts and Ball, and Capt.
Marshall, all of whom made dis coveries in the Pacific.) A Report of the Proceedings of HMS Rosario (London, 1872) went for £2/10/-. This report which concerns atrocities con nected with blackbirding in the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz Islands, was originally sold for fivepence.
The highest price paid at the sale was £B7/10/-. This was for a copy of Matthew Flinders’
Voyage to Terra Australis (Lon
don, 1814).-