Logbook Find Ended Long Quest

My discovery of a microfilm of the “Pandora” logbook in the Mitchell Library recently ended a quest which really began in 1951 when I started gathering material for a book on Tahiti.

I then noticed that, according to the bibliography of Dr. George Mackaness’ “Life of Vice-Admiral Bligh” (published in Sydney in 1931), the logbook was in the possession of a Mrs. Edwards-Dent, of Worthing, Sussex About nine years later, when PlM’s publisher, R. W. Robson, was visiting England, I asked him to visit Mrs. Edwards-Dent on my behalf to see if she did, in fact, have the logbook.

Mr. Robson found that Mrs. Edwards-Dent had died in the 1940 s but was told of a niece of hers who lived at a village in northern Wales might know the logbook’s whereabouts. Mr. Robson made a special trip to Wales, only to find the niece had moved. She later responded to an appeal Mr Robson made in a Worthing newspaper, and said she had often heard her aunt speak of the logbook, and that it could be in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, as her aunt had said it should be placed in such an institution.

But inquiries there proved fruitless, as did inquiries to every other likely institution in Britain that I could think of.

The Admiralty Library happened to be one institution that I over looked. —ROBERT LANGDON.