Samuel Greatheed (d.1823) was one of the founders of the London Missionary Society. This work, written under the pen-name Nausistratus, was published as a series of articles in the Sailor's Magazine and Naval Miscellany, London, 1820-21, Vol.1, p. 402-6 and 449-56, and Vol.2, p. 1-8. It deals with the Bounty mutiny and its aftermath.

The work is based on printed sources, the then-unpublished journal of James Morrison of the Bounty, and verbal communications from an officer of HMS Pandora, which was sent to the Pacific to find and arrest the Bounty mutineers. It includes a number of details not published elsewhere. For a brief account of Greatheed's interest in Bounty matters, see Rolf Du Rietz's Note sur l'Histoire des Manuscrits de James Morrison in Journal de James Morrison, Paris, 1966.

Captain William Driver (1803-1886) was born Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He went to sea aged 14, and made his first voyage to Fiji in quest of beche-de-mer in September, 1872, in the ship Clay under Captain Benjamin Vanderford. He spent 49 months in the South Seas beche-de-mer trade before returning to Salem. Given command of the Charles Doggett, he sailed for the Pacific again in January, 1831. He remained at sea until 1837 when he retired to Nashville, Tennessee.

The logbook is for the voyage of the Charles Doggett. It begins on January 30, 1831, when the ship was 2,098 sea miles from Salem en route to New Zealand, and ends in March, 1832, when the ship was gathering a cargo of beche-de-mer in Fiji. In the interval, calls were made at Tubuai, Tahiti (French Polynesia), Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Tahiti and Niuatoputapu (Tonga). Driver's visit to Pitcairn Island from Tahiti was for the purpose of returning 65 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who had been moved from Pitcairn to Tahiti four months earlier as it was feared that their island was becoming overpopulated. Driver describes this episode in some detail in an 1871 memoir accompanying his logbook of the Charles Doggett.
See also the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, December 1969:17.

John Buffett arrived on Pitcairn Island in the whaler Cyrus in 1823. He married Dorothy Young, daughter of Midshipman Edward Young, a mutineer of HMS Bounty. In 1856 Buffet moved to Norfolk Island with 193 other Pitcairners in the ship Morayshire.

The diary begins on 8 June 1856, the day of arrival at Norfolk Island. It is kept in a year book of Norfolk Island's convict era, which Buffett apparently found in one of the abandoned buildings at Kingston. It continues to 16 (?) September 1860. There is then a gap until 28 March 1868, when Buffett returned to Pitcairn, where he remained until 4 July 1872. There is then another gap until 17 October 1872 when Buffett returned to Norfolk Island, keeping the diary until 2 October 1875. Another break then occurs until 26 May 1879, when the diary appears to have been continued in another hand until 31 August 1879. From 1 January 1888, when it again resumes, various hands appear. After a break between 4 August 1888 and 1 January 1889, it continued uninterrupted until 31 March 1892. The death of John Buffett, Sen., is recorded on 5 March 1891. The diary is the day by day affairs of the island on which Buffett happened to be - shipping arrivals and departures, births, marriages and deaths, the state of the weather, chases after whales and other remarkable events. At the front and back of the diary are a number of miscellaneous items, including the text of hymns, a description of a dream, the laws and regulations of Pitcairn Island, recipes, poems and copies of letters and Commissariat details.

The articles mainly concern Hawaii, the Society Islands in French Polynesia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Samoa, Tonga, Pitcairn Island and Fiji. The Juvenile Instructor was published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City. For other publications of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints see also PMB 110 for Improvement Era; and PMB 113 for Contributor.