The voyage of the plant nursery, H.M.S.Providence, 1791–1793

Abstract

I first discovered letters and other documents pertaining to the breadfruit story while I was seeking information on plants which had been introduced into Jamaica. These documents form part of the Brabourne collection of Banks papers and are located along with the Tobin Journal on H.M.S. Providence 1791-93 in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, Australia. The letters were written to Sir Joseph Banks, who had organized the expedition for taking breadfruit from the South Seas to the West Indies, by (among others) James Wiles and Christopher Smith, botanist-gardeners on the Providence; Dr. Arthur Broughton, a physician of Kingston, Jamaica; and Dr. Thomas Dancer, the Island Botanist. After I had obtained a copy of these letters and the part of Tobin's journal relevant to the West Indies, I thought it advisable to combine information they contained with material I had found during my research in the West India Reference Library of the Institute of Jamaica and the Widener Library of Harvard University, to reconstruct and make available a more complete picture of Bligh's very successful introduction of breadfruit into the British West Indies. Special mention must be made of another important source of information, Ida Lee's Captain Bligh's Second Voyage to the South Sea, which is based mainly on Captain Bligh's log.