The Polynesian Journal of Captain Henry Byam Martin, R.N.
by: Captain Henry Byam Martin, R.N.

Hardcover. Salem MA, Peabody Museum, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price clipped dust jacket. 192 pages with frontispiece, maps, color plates, black and white plates, figures, facsimiles and index. Admiral Henry Byam Martin's first command in the British Navy was Captain of the 50-gun frigate, H.M.S. Grampus, in the year 1846. He was ordered to a sail from Plymouth 'round the Horn to Hawaii for further orders. Those orders sent him to Tahiti for a full year, the fatal year in which the French subjugated the Tahitians by bloody force, made the island a "Protectorate" of France but allowed the glamorous Queen Pomare to be the titular ruler until they took it over completely, as a colony, in 1880. This Polynesian portion of Captain Martin's daily Journal has lain unnoticed in the depths of the British Museum until this publication. But it still sparkles with wit and with acute observations of the personalities and events of that critical year in the struggle between the French and English for the conquest of the Pacific and the hopeless struggles of the poor islanders to defend their homelands and their freedom. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.