This was the first complete and accurate account of one of the most extraordinary adventures in the annals of seamanship and crime. On August 14, 1829 the brig 'Cyprus' was sheltering in Recherche Bay on the south-east coast of Van Diemen's Land. She was taking a batch of convicts to the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour. With the Captain drunk, the Mate and Army lieutenant lured out of the way by accident or design, the convicts mutinied under the skilfully disguised leadership of William Walker - alias William Swallow - who had, unknown to the authorities, already once been transported to Van Diemen's Land and had escaped. Swallow's remarkable pertinicity in sailing the stolen brig to New Zealand, the Tonga Islands and Japan, before scuttling her in the China Sea, provides an epic of leadership and endurance, and the adventures of the military guard and the unmutinous convicts who were marooned ashore is an extraordinary tale of vacillating pusillanimity among the officers in charge, and heroism and enterprise in the little double-crossing cockney who did his best to betray his fellow-convicts. The authors have based this book entirely on documentary evidence and shown not only considerable narrative ability but also much skill in disentangling the truth from the many contradictory accounts of an event about which most of the protagonists were only too keen to tell lies to save their own skins.
(ABE Books description).