On August 14, 1829, the brig Cyprus, carrying a group of convicts to a penal settlement, was sheltering in Recherche Bay on the southeast coast of Van Dieman's Land, now Tasmania. The Captain being drunk, some of the convicts mutinied and took over the ship. With remarkable pertinacity, the convict leader and his amateur crew then sailed the stolen brig to New Zealand, Tonga and Japan, an epic of courage and endurance. Meanwhile, the adventures of the soldiers and passengers, marooned ashore, provide a startling tale of pusillanimity among the officers and heroism and enterprise among the reaming convicts. 

The authors have based the book on original documents never before published and have skilfully disentangled the truth from the many contradictory accounts of protagonists only too keen to tell lies to save their own skins. It is a tale of the sea to compare with the mutiny of the Bounty.

Hardback, DJ, no ill., 205pp.