Details
BULKELEY, John and John CUMMINS. A Voyage to the South-Seas, in the Years 1740-1. Containing a faithful narrative of the loss of His Majesty's Ship the Wager on a desolate island in the latitude 47 South, longitude 81:40 West. London: Jacob Robinson, 1743.
8° (195 x 123mm). 8-page advertisement at end not called for by ESTC. (Some browning, K1 and L4 with tears into text.) Contemporary speckled calf (rebacked in the 19th century, upper cover detached, extremities rubbed).
FIRST EDITION. The authors were respectively gunner and carpenter of the Wager, a ship of George Anson's fleet which rounded Cape Horn and ran aground on 14 May 1741 in the Guayaneco Archipelago on the southern coast of Chile. The crew's efforts to return to civlization made for an extraordinary and controversial story. One group of survivors under the command of Bulkeley and the senior ranking officer, John Baynes, set off in a long boat which they named Speedwell in memory of George Shelvocke. The eighty-one man crew successfully negotiated the strait of Magellan, arriving at Cape Virgenes on 12 December 1741. They then made their way along the entire coast of Patagonia, stopping at Port Desire (Puerto Deseado). The majority continued northwards in the boat, eventually arriving at Rio Grande where the local governor arranged for their passage on a Portuguese ship. By now reduced to just eight survivors, they reached Rio de Janeiro on 12 April 1742, took passage to Bahia where they were delayed for three months, and then continued across the Atlantic, reaching Lisbon on 28 November. David Cheap, captain of the Wager and John Byron, then a midshipman, belonged to a second return party which became the subject of separate accounts by Byron and others. Sabin and Hill refer to two 1743 editions of Bulkeley's narrative though ESTC lists only the one above. Hill 210; Howgego B-186; Sabin 9108.
8° (195 x 123mm). 8-page advertisement at end not called for by ESTC. (Some browning, K1 and L4 with tears into text.) Contemporary speckled calf (rebacked in the 19th century, upper cover detached, extremities rubbed).
FIRST EDITION. The authors were respectively gunner and carpenter of the Wager, a ship of George Anson's fleet which rounded Cape Horn and ran aground on 14 May 1741 in the Guayaneco Archipelago on the southern coast of Chile. The crew's efforts to return to civlization made for an extraordinary and controversial story. One group of survivors under the command of Bulkeley and the senior ranking officer, John Baynes, set off in a long boat which they named Speedwell in memory of George Shelvocke. The eighty-one man crew successfully negotiated the strait of Magellan, arriving at Cape Virgenes on 12 December 1741. They then made their way along the entire coast of Patagonia, stopping at Port Desire (Puerto Deseado). The majority continued northwards in the boat, eventually arriving at Rio Grande where the local governor arranged for their passage on a Portuguese ship. By now reduced to just eight survivors, they reached Rio de Janeiro on 12 April 1742, took passage to Bahia where they were delayed for three months, and then continued across the Atlantic, reaching Lisbon on 28 November. David Cheap, captain of the Wager and John Byron, then a midshipman, belonged to a second return party which became the subject of separate accounts by Byron and others. Sabin and Hill refer to two 1743 editions of Bulkeley's narrative though ESTC lists only the one above. Hill 210; Howgego B-186; Sabin 9108.
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