To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey. The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of H.M.S. Blossom, 1825-1828. Edited by Barry M. Gough.

Cambridge UP for Hakluyt Society. Second Series, 1973 #143. Hard Cover. 272 p., index, plates incl. folding map. ‘The importance of the Northwest Passage in the history of European and especially British expansion is well known. …Peard’s journal of the voyage of Captain Frederick William Beechey, R.N. [1796-1856], and H.M.S. Blossom to the Pacific and Arctic in 1825-8 is a lucid account of one of the most comprehensive British naval voyages to the Pacific since the days of Cook, Vancouver, and Broughton. The Blossom made her way via Cape Horn to the Pacific, called at various places within the Pacific rim, and searched in vain for the expeditions of Captain William Edward Parry and John Franklin, expected at Bering Strait. George Peard, the first lieutenant of the Blossom, gives detailed descriptions of the places visited and the inhabitants, among them Pitcairn Island and the Gambier, Tahitian, and Hawaiian groups. No less valuable are his accounts of Kamchatka, California, and the Northwestern extremity of North America, and various parts of South America. Peard had an inquisitive, scientific mind, and he wrote a clear discursive narrative…’ Dj; fine. Stock#23369.