Publisher's Synopsis
In 1783 the East India Company packet, the Antelope, was wrecked on the Pelew Islands (modern Micronesia). Captain Henry Wilson and his crew developed unusually amicable relations with the Palauan inhabitants, and when they departed, the 'prince' Lee Boo went with them to Britain. Lee Boo was a figure of fashionable interest in London, at once highly regarded for his intelligence, yet treated also as an exotic curiosity. His death from smallpox in 1784 occasioned wide regretful comment. An Account of the Pelew Islands is based on extensive interviews with Captain Wilson, Lee Boo and other participants. This new edition reproduces the text and includes essays on its significance for late eighteenth-century European culture and on the Micronesian dimensions of the voyage and the book. Annotations explain and contextualize points of historical and ethnographic significance and the original fine engraved portraits, artifacts and charts as well as clear new maps are included.
