The Discovery of Tahiti

This is the shipboard journal of George Robertson, master of HMS Dolphin under Captain Samuel Wallis, covering the circumnavigation of 1766-1768. The narrative follows the voyage from England through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific and the ship's stay at Tahiti in 1767, the first recorded European landing there. Robertson notes navigation, scurvy, and discipline, then the exchanges of goods, sex, and violence between crew and islanders, including the trade in iron nails and the naming of the island for King George. The book is a primary voyage narrative, not a later ethnography and not a life of Wallis.

Bound in green cloth with a frieze design in gold. Yellow-green endleaves. Transparent plastic dust-jacket. Folio Press and J.M. Dent.