In 1787, William Bligh undertook a voyage with HMS Bounty to collect breadfruit from Tahiti and transport it to the Caribbean. If successful, its cultivation was intended to provide a staple food source for the plantations there.

Bligh and his crew arrived in Tahiti in October 1788 and stayed until April 1789. Following their departure, the ship underwent a mutiny, during which Bligh and loyal crew members were set adrift. Miraculously surviving being castaway, Bligh returned to Britain in 1790 and was acquitted from a court martial investigating the loss of the ship. He published this account of the voyage in 1792.