New Edition Of " Bounty " Journal

French-speaking people with an interest in Tahiti, the Societe ■T des Oceanistes in Paris has done a valuable job in recent years by publishing translations of important books in English on the early history of that island that are now hard to come by.

The latest translation of this kind is of the Journal of James Morrison, which was first published in English in 1935 in a limited Golden Cockerell Press edition.

Morrison, the boatswain’s mate of the Bounty on her famous voyage to Tahiti in 1788-90, was a many-sided man—a seaman, boat-builder, classical scholar, writer, anthropologist, lawyer, naturalist and parson all rolled into one.

Although he appears to have taken no active part in the mutiny against Captain Bligh, he remained in the Bounty after the mutiny and was subsequently branded by Bligh as one of the worst of the mutineers, if not their chief adviser.

Arrested in Tahiti in 1791, Morrison was taken back to England and court-martialled, where he was condemned to death but pardoned by the king.

About half of his journal is a controversial account of his and his shipmates’ life from the time the Bounty left England until the court martial. The rest is a detailed description of Tahiti and of the manners and customs of its inhabitants in Morrison’s time. The journal is a fascinating document on both counts.

The translation into French has been done by Bertrand Jaunez— not from the much-amended original journal in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, but from the “cleaned-up” Golden Cockerell Press version. The translation therefore perpetuates the shortcomings of the GCP edition.

Rolf du Rietz, a Swedish specialist on Bounty matters, has contri buted a four-page note on the journal’s history, which is debatable on one or two small points.—RL. (JOURNAL DE JAMES MORRISON. Societe des Oceanistes, No. 16, Musee de I’Homme. Paris. Price not available.)